hetalia | Hetalia Files

Entry tags:

community: discussion

Hetalia Files

Hello, I'm sure a number of you know I run the Hetalia File Archive, a website that references all the official related posts on this Hetalia livejournal community. These posts include news, blog updates, scanlations, game info, and of course links to downloadable content such as raw & fansubbed episodes and audio...

It has been brought to my attention recently that the fansub links from the first two seasons have been deleted from LJ, and upon further investigation, that MegaUpload, which has been used to host a lot of fan uploaded content, has been seized by the American government under Copyright Infringement. This means there's probably a good chunk of links not working on my site right now.

Anti-Piracy is a big issue in the US right now, although SOPA and PIPA were turned down this past week. I'm a little in debate with what to do with my site concerning links to downloadable content. I wouldn't mind hosting the content myself, but being that my site is run on US ground, US laws apply to it.

I'd love to recommend FUNimation's streaming episodes as an alternative. I think they did a very decent job on the sub for the series and I'm all for supporting the company. Unfortunately a big chunk of Hetalia fans are not from the US or Canada and therefore can't access their content.

I'm a bit at a loss to what my options are in this matter. I want to provide this service to the fandom as a whole, but I don't want to... push my luck per se. I've been running the site since mid-2009 because I wanted to find posts easily myself, and decided to share it with others. Now and then I run into people IRL who have visited the site and they thank me for it, which amuses me, yet I get embarrassed too since I'm shy and the site still isn't as nice as I'd like it to be. But I've put hours upon hours of work into it, so I don't want to stop, and their compliments are encouraging for me to continue the work.

So I'm not sure what the future will hold for all that work, or even for future content posts here on LJ or other communities. If I get any Stop and Desist notice on certain content, I will abide to them, but I still want to be able to serve the community in some way.

Anyway, I guess I'd like to hear what everyone else's opinions and concerns are at this point. What direction would you like to see this go in? Or if anyone has some alternative suggestions?

Thanks for reading all this. I know it's not the joyful post this community deserves, but I think it's something to be addressed. Let me know what you think!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(deleted comment)

The problem with FUNimation doing that is that they only have the rights to distribute the anime in North America. So I'm sure it's not necessarily that they wouldn't want to share it with people outside those two countries.

It seems to me that most episodes are still available in MediaFire, though? And MediaFire doesn't seem to be closing, so it's safe for now. Now then, I wouldn't advice for you to host the content itself; someone from outside the US should be doing the dirty work (LOL). And you should be safe as long as you're linking to things uploaded by someone else, and not hosting the content.
But yeah, relying only on FuNi's streams is a big no, and relying on a US-based server doesn't seem to be wise at the moment. An alternative is needed; I've heard of Russian and Chinese servers, but I haven't looked more onto it...

I do think that linking to FuNi's streams is a perfectly fine alternative, though (and even a beneficial one), as long as it's not the ONLY alternative...

That's about episodes. Audio is a whole different matter, since FuNi doesn't have any right over it. I think it's pretty safe to keep linking to CDs and such, since Japan doesn't seem to be involving itself in this mess.

Mediafire may go down in the future, though. I think filesharing websites on a whole are likely to be targeted under the new laws. That's what's worrying :(.

Edited 2012-01-25 17:19 (UTC)

But the Hetalia Archive isn't quite....filesharing, since all it does is to link to LJ. What's more, linking to posts that, more often than not, are protected. It's not quite straightforward. If anything, they would have to go after LJ...?

I do agree about MediaFire, though. I don't think it's time to freak out yet but and uploading everything we can somewhere else, but we should start looking for alternatives indeed.

When I was talking about filesharing websites I wasn't talking about LJ, but rather filesharing websites (filetram, MF ect) themselves. But yeah, I do think that mediafire is next :(. When that happens I'll be screwed.

Livejournal is in Russia so it's not affected by american laws.

I wasn't talking about LJ specifically when I was talking about MF though, but rather filesharing sites *themselves* (i.e that Livejournal posts may have *links* to). Whose time is probably running out by this point :/. I have a feeling a lot more sites than Megaupload will be going down in the following weeks...

Doubtful. A lot of sharing sites are in countries that have no interest in doing favours to the USA, look at Megaupload, the Netherlands only closed 60 of 600 servers megaupload has there.
And even if that were not an issue it still took them a grand jury and more than two years to get to this point.

Just wait and see I guess...if worst comes to worst, we'll be stuck passing them through email or something. XD You could make it an actual archive and post lyrics and things like that. :)

Yeah, I do want to collect lyrics and such like that.

There's also Malaysian servers - I know some sites that host shared Sims for-pay files on servers in Malaysia, where apparently Anything Goes.

Fittingly I just finished the first set of episodes on the YouTube channel, and the fansubs are still better, mostly. So I'd really love to see the Archive stick around - with this comm being almost entirely fanstuff, the only way I can be sure I'm keeping up to date on the official stuff is the Archive. T__T I don't think hosting the eps yourself is a good idea, if just for bandwidth usage, but there will *always* be ways to host episodes, no matter the laws. (Maybe you could go to some kind of private sharing model, although that gets inefficient because new watchers would have to get a hold of Sharers, and ...yeah, too complicated.)

You could also use rapidshare, located in Switzerland and as a result almost untouchable for the USA.

Megaupload had servers in the Netherlands and China and they still got shutdown.

Just because it's in a different country does not mean they can pull a Pirate Bay and be ignorant of US laws.

Actually it does, it depends on the governments of the countries the servers are in if they wan't to collaborate with the US government or not.

You could link to Funimation's Youtube account, which does stream to more than just America and Canada (though i'm not too sure which regions it is available in; I can see it in Australia.), though you do have to be registered on youtube to view it.

Oh, and THANKYOU for setting up the Hetalia file archive!

FUNi's youtube doesn't have full eps though. But thanks for the suggestion.

And you're welcome. ;w;/

Why is everyone just worried about the USA? Firstly Megaupload was shut down because of business practices and not because some people happened to have uploaded pirated material against megaupload's wishes on it. Secondly, it was done in collaboration with New Zealand (and some other countries I believe), so if you think that no one is involving themselves with this but the US that's incorrect. This was an international thing. I know someone brought up Japanese servers, but from what I've picked up regarding news on ANN and the like, Japan's government is actually more vigilant regarding this kind of stuff. And to add to that, the reason that in the past anime companies in the US have been forceful about making people stop fansubs is because the Japanese companies that released the product ask them to (which is why sometimes unlicensed in the US titles will get cease and desist orders).

If you want the safest alternative possible, upload it to a server located where ACTA (http://frozen-in-tyme.tumblr.com/post/16264447102/youranonnews-acta-in-a-nutshell-what-is) (which will be a BIGGER problem than SOPA or PIPA would be for stuff like this) is not planning on being an issue. That outlaws the following countries- United States, the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada.

You need to find a country where piracy laws are really lax. Most big countries have been looking for ways to crack down on piracy. It's not just the US.

I love your site btw. It's fantastically useful. ♥

Edited 2012-01-26 04:24 (UTC)

Hmm, I didn't get to research the megaupload thing earlier aside from seeing the US District Court message on the site. It doesn't really surprise me that other countries would be involved. It's not an issue in only one country after all. And Japan being involved doesn't surprise me at all either.

To us it's a simple matter of trying to share something we love that we can't access easily without the internet. For the companies, it's a much more complicated and serious thing. I really don't blame them. It's just disappointing in a way for the rest of those who have no access at all to the series. I wish there was an easier way that we could enjoy and support the series we love.

My goal was always to just link to official info shared here on LJ. I don't think I'll get into hunting down alternatives myself, but I know a lot of people will be disappointed. =w=;

And thank you~

Hmm... yeah this whole issue has been a mess for everyone. You could still use sites like MediaFire and 4shared for the time being but only time will tell if those sites will still be up after all this. D:

Listing FUNi's subbed and dubbed videos would be beneficial on the site since it is legal (especially for any Americans or Canadians getting into the series and want a more legal way to view them). You could also include the Dybex streams for users living in France. We have links for up to episode 52 on the wiki which are hosted on DailyMotion. (Here's an example: http://hetalia.wikinet.org/wiki/Episode_01)

Edited 2012-01-26 19:44 (UTC)

I was reading about ACTA today, and how MegaUpload's promotional video on YouTube was taken down by some music company that had no rights to it claiming it was infringing copyright. (Before MegaUpload went down.) This stuff that people are fearing from the new laws already happens ´m`;;;

And so I was also thinking about how the future of fandoms like this will go if the net becomes a lot more controlled, it seems like we will have some interesting times ahead.
Honestly, if I were running your site I would for now link to places where non-US people can buy the APH episodes on DVD or something (or did they not release any?) until we know a bit more about where the internet control is really heading, then see what the options will be for bringing stuff up online ourselves again.

Did anyone ask the American dub company if they have plans on trying to make it possible to sell it to Europe? (Personally though I'd rather hope we simply released the eps with subs over here like we do with a lot of other series, I have no interest in the US dub)

Thank you for your work on the file archive! I've visited it a lot! (6w6)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hetalia Files

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject