As the others allude to in the About section, in my Real Life I do a great deal with copyright.

The Anime Industry runs on copyright infringement.

Just about everything the fan community does with anime is infringing somehow. This type of statement could be made about fandom in general, but it’s particularly true with anime. And the anime industry wouldn’t exist as we know it without it- in Japan as well as the US.

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In an effort to write more, I’ll probably be posting some anime reviews over the next few weeks. In this post, I’m going to briefly discuss my history with anime; in the next I’m going to discuss some Things You Should Know before I get to proper reviewing- particularly involving the nebulous relationship between anime fandom and copyright, and then I’ll start posting reviews.

I’ve been involved with anime for some time now. I met my wife at that anime club when we were undergrads. My first publication of any sort was a story in Animerica back in the late 90s (although that’s my only anime-related publication to date). I helped start the anime club at Syracuse University. I was active at the UT anime club for many years, and I’ve been the faculty adviser to that club in the past (don’t let that fool you, though- I’m only “faculty” in the most technical sense of teaching at a University, but I’m still a doctoral student). And a good part of my current interest in copyright came from my initial brushes with copyright in anime fandom.

Long story short, the subject is one I find important. ^_^