Just read the news that somehow, pirates in China have managed to release bootleg version of the Spiderman 3 movie 2 weeks before the official debut date in the US. Given the fact that this came right after news that Windows only managed to sell 244 genuine copies of their latest Vista Operating System in China, it seems to give a solid indication that there is a large underground network,in China at least, of people who are to rapidly lay their hands on digital material, reproduce them in massive numbers and then re-sell them.
But a discussion of the ethics of this phenomenon is not the focus of this article. Instead, I think that there is a hidden value that can be tapped onto here. Looking at it from a highly positive light, it seems that there is an entire self-motivated system of distributors (of digital content) who seem to be able to re-produce digital content on massive scales and then push them out through their underground networks in record time.
This brings me to the case-study which concerns the relationship between Japanese Animation Studios and their fans (with absolutely no intention to compare them to be pirates but rather to broadly look upon them as "unofficial distributors") who actively help them to sub-title and then distribute their productions online (mostly through p2p networks). Once again barring the legality argument of the whole situation, one cannot help but see the value that these dedicated fans bring for others who want to watch the animations but are not able to because they are all in Japanese and typically only sub-titled in English. And for most part, the Japanese Studios do not seem to actively pursue the issue. Some reasons why this may be so are because (1) these fans who do not understand Japanese and English would not have purchased the original product anyway had not be subtitled, and (2) this correspondingly increased fan base actually helps to drive the sales of complementary products such as figurines and hobby kits. This effect is vaguely similar to the effect of popular cartoons in the 80s which drove to increase the sales of the toys based on them, but now imagine that all the producers have to do is to create the content in one language and an underground network of people value-add to this by translating that original work in all languages. (Could this be akin to open-source content which drives a secondary industry?)
The point I'm trying to make is that regardless of whether we view these "unofficial distributors" in a positive or negative light, it seems that they are here to stay and are undoubtedly an integral part of the current global business environment. So, what I'm putting forth is perhaps the controversial notion that instead of trying to clamp them down and then run business in a model that totally ignores their presence and impact globally, but to acknowledge them as an inevitable actor in the international business and think of business concepts and models where such forces are present.
Who knows, there may just be some symbiosis where these underground networks will be able to generate livelihood for their "employees" in the way they know best and at the same time, businesses gain an additional, massive distribution system for free?
[ A more detailed explanation of the fansubbing phenomenon can be found on Wikipedia]
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