Pirate Generation

For anyone easily hurt or riled by allegations of Crunchyroll being illegal and quite grimey look away now.

If you’ve not done so or are expecting a rant then unfortunately not! In today’s shorter than usual blog post I’d like to point out the extreme irony of Crunchyroll though. A site based on its pirated content, with a userbase consisting of at least 60%-70% who can’t tell what they’re doing is wrong, who can blame them though? A brief look at their profiles gives the game away, often the average age is 14 of them!

This highlights a crucial fact: Just as companies are coming to terms with the fact Crunchyroll are there to stay (for now at least until the cross one too many lines), there’s a bigger problem they need to accept first. If you look at every takedown Crunchyroll has done, in an almost spiteful way they have kept the comments for those items open, and in them at least one or two per 5 comments says something to the effect of:

Hi! Lol sux this is down here, come to my site instead, we have all the parts to My Aunt is A Magical Badger www.yarrshivermetimbers.com

At the end of the day – what companies need to start taking in, very seriously, is the battle for “pricing video” on the internet is basically lost. For every takedown you do on Crunchyroll there is someone willing to, with or without help*, there will be at least 2 individuals who try to capitalize on the fact or “bring it to the masses for free”. Increasingly over the next 5-10 years as this generation of barely into puberty kids hit the phase where they can plan big – it’s not far off to say you will see hundreds if not thousands more sites like this. All because kids don’t want to know that it’s illegal or the harm it may be doing to the work they enjoy watching for free so much.

The CEO of Crunchyroll & artists rendering of the userbase, as seen from the eyes of many in the industry…

If France successfully fostered a generation of manga fans (and continues to) then this may well be the next phenomenon. Not the UK/EU/US fans who were weaned on anime seeping into their everyday lives like regular cartoons – but a generation who are very digital savvy, with all the tools needed to create a YouTube-esque site for their favourite anime at their fingertips.

Wired wrote a very interesting article on the point a while ago, about how the new price point is in fact £0.00 (or $0.00) if you will. Check it out if you’ve got a moment and see, this isn’t a revolutionary nor is it a proprietary idea. In the end it’s just something companies may need to focus on and redevelop their models so they can profit from streaming however they can.

I suppose it’s safe to say that despite VC backing, Crunchyroll may well go under at some point. The question is, will the industry really be ready to step up and take a plunge into what they can do with a price point of “Free.”?

* The cynical side of me wonders how much of these new sites have had some kind of help given the speed of them to pop up..