[This article has been cross-posted to YouTomb.]
Fansubs: fan-produced subtitles added to original footage of foreign television programs or films.
Most commonly a practice by fans of Japanese animation, fansubs have, since the 1980s in America, allowed fans of anime to view the Japanese-language media and share it amongst friends. While technically illegal [1] in terms of copyright law, fansubbing in the Internet age has proliferated to a point that 1) fans rely on fansubbing groups to keep up with the latest series, and 2) the animation industry has felt the need to form a conversation around protecting their intellectual property [2]. By the end of 2008, the demand for English-language fansubs reached such a critical point that major Japanese animation companies teamed up with the (previously illegal) Crunchyroll.com to distribute fansubs streaming online in a timely manner (read: one hour after television broadcast in Japan) for a fee or after a longer period (one week) for free [3].
In the summer of 2008, I traveled down to Baltimore, MD for Otakon, the largest East-coast anime convention, and attended the Fansubber & Industry Discussion panel (viewable online [4]). After the panel ended, I snagged Interactii, one of the members of the popular fansubbing group Dattebayo Fansubs, LLC [5], for a quarter-hour to ask a few questions, reprinted below: