I, against my better judgment, watch Naruto on a weekly basis. I skipped a lot of the first series, because its almost nothing but filler, but like Shippuden. Unfortunately, the only way to stay current with an anime series is to either learn the lingo and sail the sea, or rely on fan-dubs.

Fandub (fandubbing, fandubbers): an online service in which a coalition of similarly tasted people come together as a brain-trust to translate and subtitle a foreign series (usually anime). See also, piracy.

So yeah, 90% of the anime watching world watches fansubs. The motivations for this are myriad, such as they're cheap, they don't have a TV, a prefrence of subs to dubs, or they, like me, would prefer to stay current, which is not an unreasonalbe request. If a translation company wishes to compete with fansubbers, it, according to Interactii of Dattebayo: "would have to be available just as fast, and free."

Surprisingly rising to the challange, Viz (The Company behind the Naruto dub) will begin releasing the anime in subtitled format the next week of the Japanese airdate. While not as fast and apparantly "stiff" in translation quality, this is a great step to eradicate piracy, not by squelching it with red-tape and wagging fingers, but by cutting off one of the reasons why piracy was created.

Piracy exists in many forms: media, video games, literature, etc. In many cases, the property stolen is unavailable to those attempting to "leech" it, or it is obsolete and even forgotten by its company. An example of this is emulation, the use of a program to simulate a game console and software. Would you like to play Super Mario Bros 3? Do you have an NES? If you don't, do you know where to get one? If you do, can you tell me? Emulation is one of the forms of piracy most legitimized, due to the fact that the consoles needed to run them are no longer produced. However, this is being conquered by another company: Nintendo. The Wii has implimented the Virtual Console to allow owners to run NES, Super NES and N64 games on thier Wii system.

It seems like this is another step in a much larger scheme, one that will quell any need for piracy simply by convenience. As for me, I am a consumer who will gladly support any product that I love. I once downloaded Firefly illegally after its run on Fox was cut short. In the time since, I have purchased the DVD set three times (and given away these copies to proliferate the signal). The point that I would like to make is that I, like many others, am a die hard fan. We are loyal and ravenous. Many of us will find a way and if that involves illegal activity, then perhaps it is due to the negligence of the company in question. Fans deserve to be respected and honored for the loyalty they give. I congratulate Viz on taking the steps it has and also congratulate Dattebayo for honorably stepping down once this change has enacted. I would love to see the rest of the world follow suit. What's next?