Region block North Americans from illegal streaming sites. Legal issues solved!

They are the self-proclaimed saviours of anime. The knights in shin­ing armour char­ging through the inter­net, slay­ing those they deem to be unworthy. No, not the OEG. TAFAP, which isn’t an acronym for a porn site (which is what most sites end­ing in FAP usu­ally are). They are True Anime Fans Aren’t Pir­ates and they will have about as much suc­cess at tak­ing down pir­acy on the inter­net as a pigeon on a pogo-stick has at reach­ing the moon.

It’s all a bit silly, this web­site. Totally ignor­ing the reas­ons pir­ates exist in the first place, if the some­how man­age to take down one web­site another 5 will appear in its place. They won’t cre­ate a shit­storm, although they might cre­ate a slight poo-smelling breeze if they’re lucky. Now that’s not to say I’m all for pir­at­ing and everything. I have my Crunchyroll mem­ber­ship and my small but proud col­lec­tion of anime dvds. But you have to look at the reas­ons pir­at­ing exists in the first place.

Let us take one example why people go to these shady stream­ing sites: The anime is not avail­able in their coun­try. It may be licensed by Fun­im­a­tion or who­ever and they may even have a few epis­odes stream­ing online so you can get a taste of the product and aren’t buy­ing blind. But our little example, some 16 year old from Poland, can’t watch Spice and Wolf leg­ally because there is no way she can watch this anime else­where. She tried the online stream­ing but was greeted with the usual video-shaped hole with a help­ful little notice telling her she had got­ten her geo­graphy all wrong.

So here’s my suggestion:All these illegal stream­ing sites should region block North Amer­ic­ans. Wherever the anime has been licensed and is avail­able leg­ally, region block that area from watch­ing the video. That way, when a Fun­im­a­tion guy comes along to tell you that they own Spice and Wolf, you just ask them to show it to you. They shall be greeted with that black, rect­an­gu­lar hole in their mon­itor with a small mes­sage pro­claim­ing that this video is a bit picky about its view­ers. And just like that, no product has been illeg­ally dis­trib­uted where it was avail­able leg­ally. Prob­lem solved!

(yes, my tongue was quite firmly placed in my cheek for most of this post)