this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Crunchyroll has faced backlash after voice actor David Wald revealed the company has been illegally opening and distributing his fan mail for the past five years, violating U.S. federal law regarding obstruction of correspondence. This revelation sparked widespread outrage, highlighting Crunchyroll's questionable practices, including its monopoly over anime distribution in the West following its acquisition by Sony. Critics argue that Crunchyroll has become complacent, exemplified by the failure of its original content and a significant price increase for subscriptions. Furthermore, Wald's situation underscores broader issues within the company, such as alleged discrimination against voice actors and a toxic work environment. Crunchyroll's response has been inadequate, stating they are investigating the matter but failing to acknowledge their responsibility. This incident adds to the growing list of grievances against Crunchyroll, raising concerns about the treatment of voice actors and the future of anime distribution.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

So happy I didn't buy a crunchyroll subscription

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

following its acquisition from Sony

Has anything good EVER come from big company acquisitions AT ALL?

Geocities -> acquired by Yahoo -> crap -> death

Youtube -> acquired by Google -> ad crap

Blogger -> acquired by Google -> crap

Macromedia -> acquired by Adobe -> Monopoly crap

Washington Post -> acquired by Bezos -> political crap

MySQL -> Acquired by Oracle -> copyright crap

Github -> acquired by Microsoft -> crap

Reddit -> acquired by Conde Nast -> political crap

Twitter -> acquired by Musk -> utter crap

Every single time I see a cool startup get bought by a big player, all I can see is the service going to shit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Crunchyroll's (then Funimation) acquisition of Animelab is what led me to stop paying to stream anime.

Lower quality videos. Harder to navigate. Distracting watermarks on the side of the screen. Blocking VPNs. Ads even though you already pay them.

I hate that there is so little effort put into preventing monopolies from buying out the competition

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Idk if it's appropriate to mention this:
Opera --> acquired by kunlun --> marketing lies and became a trash browser

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Just went down the rabbit-hole of the acquisition of MySQL as I was bored. What a fascinating story.

Dude who originally made it in 1995, Michael Widenius, named it after his daughter My, hence MySQL. He sold it to Sun for $1 billion in 2008. He then turned around, forked the software, and produced MariaDB (I always wondered why it was named that) starting a new organization around it in 2009. It's functionally nearly identical, often able to be used as a drop in replacement, assuming you aren't using new features developed after the fork. Last month, he sold it again, the same fucking base software, to some private equity firm (yay...). What a guy.

Unfortunately, he's run out of daughters to name software after and already used his son's name for something else, so we might be at the end of open-source, community-driven DB solutions from Michael. To be fair, relying on any projects from him to be free and open indefinitely is apparently not a good idea anyway.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

MySpace -> acquired by News Corporation -> insta death

Also, Twitter was always crap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Also, Twitter was always crap.

So true cancel culture,drama,toxicity,etc

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Well yes. That's the point. Cut costs (slash staff, quality, etc) then make as much money as you can as fast as you can off the goodwill and fan loyalty built up by the original product/service.

Vulture Capital doing what it does. Make everything shittier AND more expensive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I was just thinking today that any time i hear about a new company ill ask “are they publicly traded or planning to be?” I feel like thatll save a lot of time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Blogger is no longer supported and is suffering greatly people are leaving it in droves. You might as well call it dead

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Holden being acquired by General Motors was okay for a while. Then it died, because they couldn't be stuffed with the Australian market, or the local car industry at the time (and in doing so, likely kicked off its demise).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Roster Teeth and Wizards of the Coast. Those turned out just cycling great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Roster Teeth was in charge of their own demise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is Crunchyroll actually beholden to US law if they are a Japanese owned company?

Here in Australia the moment someone in the US cries foul it is waved away because simply not applicable to the laws of this country regardless what US federal law is broken, the same way all these other international companies wave away breaches of Australian law 🤷🏼‍♀️

I guess it would come down to the employment contract and if he was employed by a Japanese company or a US owned one?

Not sure which is why I ask.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If an Australian company has a shop or office in the US, what happens in that shop is beholden to US law. If a Japanese owned company commits US crimes while in the US, they are committing crimes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Ah yeah fair enough that makes sense. Cheers!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It will never cease to amaze me how people don't understand the law. No opening that mail was not a federal crime, if it's addressed to the business building than it is considered property of the business even if it has a specific person's name on it. They are fully within their right to open the letter, is it a dick move and are they assholes? Yes, is it a federal crime? Absolutely not

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd be curious to see a citation because everything I can find suggests it's still obstruction of correspondence and a federal offense as they were not the intended recipient

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Another reminder that we need to keep Crunchyroll from operating in SEA market.

We enjoy our anime being available on several platform at the same time. Whether it was on Netflix, Bilibili, Muse YouTube, or regional smaller platform.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ngl seeing nasi goreng threw me for a loop

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

TIL there's Malaysian Lemmy instance called "monyet" nice name

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I always downvote videos on the technology community, because in my opinion they don't contribute to the quality here.

But for hating on the shithole called Crunchyroll, this post deserve 1000 upvotes.

[–] [email protected] 133 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Plus, OP delivered a text version.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago

I am phenomenally excited about that. I hope it becomes a universal thing.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Ah yes, technology videos are really bad. Especially that Technology Connections guy, he's the absolute worst.

And don't even get me started on technology video reviews, tutorials, guides, educational materials and tech news. I only consume technology information in newspaper form. This new video thing just won't catch on.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

in my opinion they don't contribute to the quality here.

As respectfully as possible: huh?

We're on a link aggregation site, for posting links to things off-site and discuss them in relevant communities

If something is a video or article it makes no difference on its quality or relevance to the community at hand, no?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Videos demand more of the user. They demand audio access. It's not accessible for casual browsing.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They're trying to get outcompeted by nyaa. I refuse to pay money for that shit show of a streaming service

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Is there a better service now that they also bought funimation?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Yes, it's called qbittorrent

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Learn to torrent and use nyaa.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Weren’t they founded on doing crime? AFAIR they were a piracy site.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

You can take the company out of the pirate ship, but you can't take the pirate ship out of the company

[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

script: Well, guys, it turns out that Crunchyroll has committed a federal crime, and it's not something that they've done in just one instance. It's something that they've been doing for the last 5 years. We only found out about it very recently, though, on October 25th, when David Wald, a voice actor, tweeted that if he's been sent anything in the last 5 years in terms of fan art, fan letters, anything, then he has not received it. Because apparently, Crunchyroll has been stealing all of it. This is in direct violation of U.S. federal law, or more specifically, the U.S. Code 1702: Obstruction of Correspondence.

This has gone absolutely viral; everyone is talking about it if they're in the anime sphere in the West. I feel like it's not only the perfect opportunity to raise more awareness on this disgusting behavior, but to also sit down with you and show you why Crunchyroll has been a terrible company for years now, and that this only adds more to their shady, unpleasant history. Let's talk about it.

So, Crunchyroll, as it stands, is the biggest anime distributor and streamer in the West. So if you're outside of Asia, this is most likely the service that you're using for anime, unless you're a pirate. Some people, and even publications like the South China Morning Post, credit Crunchyroll for turning Japanese anime mainstream in the West. It's a very impressive company with its size in non-Asian countries and its catalog, but it wasn't always this anime licensing sweetheart. In fact, at some point, Japanese license holders wanted to take the website down.

You see, the website was founded in 2006, and back then it was a pirating website. Not a single thing on this page was legal. But it wasn't just about anime; it was about anything, whether it be Asian drama, things related to video games. It was like YouTube, but for pirates, where anything could be uploaded. There were no limits, except maybe adult videos. This is the exact website you would have seen in 2006. Bleach's 108th episode had just come out, and Naruto's 24th episode had just come out as well. It's a crazy time capsule.

In 2008, they somehow convinced a venture capital firm by the name of Venrock, based out of Palo Alto, California, to invest $4 million into them. After this, they sought to become legal—a legitimate space to share anime content. On January 8th, 2009, they signed a deal with TV Tokyo to host episodes of Naruto: Shippuden. Obviously, you can see how big of a deal that is, and immediately started to delete all the illegitimate content on its website that they didn't hold rights to. They then continued to get more and more anime licensed from Japan for their Western audience, and you know what? They had a talent; they knew how to choose the animes that they licensed and then translated, because of course there's a lot of anime that gets made every single season.

This is what made them different. No one could really compete that much with them because anime wasn't really seen as a big deal until very recently. This is when Sony decided to create FUNimation, a direct competitor of Crunchyroll, back in 2017. Now, of course, seeing that it's Sony, they had one hell of a lineup of popular anime, but they didn't really know how to pick more underrated ones that the Western audience would enjoy—at least not as well as Crunchyroll did. But honestly, who cares? You have an industry, and you have multiple competitors all trying to do their own thing; that's very healthy.

But unfortunately, that didn't last too long. In August 2020, there were reports coming out that Sony actually wanted to buy Crunchyroll. Things were advancing; they had offered $1.1 billion to buy it. But on March 24, 2021, as things were coming to a close, the United States Department of Justice extended its review of this because they thought that maybe, just maybe, this could become a monopoly of anime outside of East Asia. Somehow, okay, some way, I don't know who got bribed, who got threatened, but it got approved, and in August 2021, the deal was finalized. It was one of the biggest mistakes in the anime industry because this effectively meant that Sony had become the major monopoly when it comes to anime content outside of Asia.

Seeing that Sony owned so many anime streaming websites, including Wakanim, which was in France, they decided to merge everything into Crunchyroll, really solidifying the idea that they're now a monopoly. One of the main reasons why people hate Crunchyrolland of course Sony—is due to this monopoly. I mean, look at this email that was sent to existing FUNimation customers when the merger happened. The first few paragraphs are reassuring you that, hey, don’t worry, your account info isn’t going to change—your watch history, all your preferences, everything is staying. But then you read the final paragraph, and it says this: "As part of our transition to Crunchyroll, the price of your new Crunchyroll plan will increase from $55 a year to $100 a year beginning January 28, 2025."

So yes, the price you were paying had effectively doubled overnight, and you couldn't do anything about it. What were you going to do about it? Go to a different service? Oh wait, Sony owns everything, and now it's under Crunchyroll. But even worse, and I think this is probably the worst part in all this, FUNimation had something Crunchyroll didn't. Instead of having to pay for a subscription, you could just flat-out buy the anime that you wanted digitally, so you could watch it any time. Well, Sony said, "You and what you own? You don't actually own anything." This was the explanation Crunchyroll gave you when you inquired about your FUNimation digital copies. They said, "We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from FUNimation. Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support FUNimation digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported. However, we are continuously working to enhance our content offerings and provide you with an exceptional anime streaming experience."

We appreciate your understanding and encourage you to explore the extensive anime library available on Crunchyroll. So this was a very disgusting corporate-speak way of saying that everything you own is now in the gutter. I mean, Ubisoft said that gamers should get used to not owning their copies. Look at their stock price; you do not want to be like Ubisoft. This is what a monopoly actually looks like, and it's terrible.

That's not the only thing, though. Look, anime is Japanese; it was created in Japan. Crunchyroll knows this, and they actually have a studio in Shibuya, Tokyo, to make original anime. At some point, though, they decided to use subscription money to create their own studio in Burbank, California, to make anime within the United States. As you can see from the rating, 1.6 out of 10, that was an utter disaster. High Guardian Spice is the biggest piece of trash to come out of anime in the last 10 years. It was marketed as anime for diverse groups, most notably highlighting their LGBTQ+ representation. Well, you know you messed up when even people in the LGBTQ+ community hate this show to death—like, no one likes this; this is terrible. When you become a monopoly, you become lazy and complacent. You stop taking risks, and you completely forget what made you great in the first place. This show is proof of that. Oh, and let's not forget that at the end of 2023, they had to settle a class action lawsuit with their own consumers because they violated the United States Video Privacy Protection Act by disclosing its subscribers' personally identifiable information to third-party companies like Facebook, Adobe, etc. Of course, it's a very large list. They initially tried to deny the claim—okay, they lied—but then settled anyway to avoid any uncertainties or expenses associated with continuing the case. So not only were they a monopoly, not only did they double the price of annual subscriptions and are offering nothing to show for it, they were also selling their own users' data.

And by the way, the settlement was terrible it was $30 per Crunchyroll user. Like, wow, thanks. My data probably cost more than that. But these three reasons I just gave you I think are enough for you to think, "Wow, this is a terrible, lazy monopoly that can do whatever it wants because no one can even compete."

This brings us back to the crime that they committed against David Wald. Now look, David Wald is a seasoned voice actor. He's been in the industry for a long time. He doesn't just dub anime, which is the act of voice acting English dialogue for something that isn’t originally in English; he also voice acted in games. Some of the biggest animes he's dubbed in were Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, or even Vinland Saga. Now, you'd think that Crunchyroll would give a veteran voice actor like himself the respect he deserves. Well, no. It turns out Crunchyroll has been receiving packages meant for David and distributing them to staff instead without him knowing for 5 years.

Look at this tweet as an example.He says, "Dear fellow workers at Crunchyroll, below is a photo of the complete contents of one of the packages addressed to me that was opened and distributed to employees. If you ended up in possession of any of it, I would very much like it returned to me." As you can see, there are many things here. I should mention all of this is handmade. Even this, even though it looks like an official magazine, the character itself is Iosa Kush Shindo, and this is someone that David voices in dub.

Harumi quoted,"I remember when my friend put this together to send to you. It was a group effort; everyone was so looking forward to you getting it." This is extremely heartbreaking. David replies and says, "I promise you the situation will be rectified. We're just lucky you sent me a photo of the unique contents and the 🤬10000 charlimit

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

So is it -just- committed a federal crime or have been doing so for years

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Had been. But we’re in a post-accountability era for corporations so most likely nothing will happen.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

As far as I remember they started as a pirating site and only later started to acquire more and more streaming licenses. By all means they shouldn't even be in business today.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago

Crunchyroll has a monopoly on Anime? Shit, someone better tell Nyaa.

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