by Ryan Mathews

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December 1998

I've always been grateful to Jei for allowing me to use the first page of this column as a soapbox, to rant about whatever I please. Trouble is, every now and then, I just don't have anything to rant about! This is one those months. So, instead of my usual editorial, I'll just make two brief comments.

First off, on the subject of the DVD player: Thanks to all who emailed me with advice. Shortly after the November column was posted, I went ahead and bought the Panasonic A110. I'm very happy with the player, and I can now say from experience that the format's advocates are correct. The picture quality is incredible, and is, on the average, superior to laserdisc. The superior picture is especially evident while watching animation, with its large areas of solid color that highlight every imperfection.

Now that I own a player, I have a new favorite site, Anime on DVD. If you're an anime fan with a DVD player, or are thinking of buying one, you need to visit this site. The site contains technical specs and reviews of every anime DVD released in the US, plus everything known about each DVD that has been announced for the future. In short, if the anime has been released on DVD, or is going to be, you can learn about it here. The site is updated several times a week, almost daily.

Secondly, I'd like to explain why I intentionally skipped some sites this month. It was a decision of the conscience. The sites in question were online retail sites, and the issue of conscience involved SM compact discs.

For those unfamiliar with this controversy, let me explain. SM is a professional CD pirating company based in Taiwan. They obtain legitimate compact discs, especially anime soundtracks, and market low-cost bootleg copies. They can get away with this because Taiwan never signed the Berne Convention, which protects international copyrights. As you might expect, many anime fans find this appealing. After all, a legitimate anime CD, imported from Japan, can run you from $25 to $40. The same music on a bootleg SM CD is often no more expensive then a domestic mainstream music CD such as you'd buy at your local Tower Records.

I have always put SM, and by extension, retailers that sell their bootlegs, in the same category as fansub bootleggers. Both are profiting from the work of others while those others share no benefit. But while fansub bootleggers are the pariahs of anime fandom, SM retailers proudly hawk their wares in dealer's rooms at conventions. (Thankfully, many conventions are now enforcing a "No SM" policy.)

I'll be honest. I'm no saint myself. I've traded tape copies of music with friends. One friend has, on several occasions, used his CD-R burner to make copies of hard-to-find CDs for me. Both practices qualify as piracy. But somehow, I can't put such "casual piracy" in the same category as selling SM CDs in large quantities for profit. It's just so blatant! SM doesn't even sneak around. They put their logo on the front cover of each bootleg. They're proud of what they do!

Now, I don't argue with people who buy these bootlegs. I have a friend who's into them big time. At least he's honest about why. "Yeah, they're bootlegs, but they're cheap and I want the music on CD." We're still friends. We just agree to disagree on this point. However, feeling the way I do, I couldn't in good conscience plug any site that advertises SM CDs. This column isn't about CDs, so I didn't browse the CD page of every site. But when the site announced "SM CDs for sale" on the home page, that was it for that site.

Having gotten that out of the way, let's move on to this month's topic!