Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Raw Provision Update

Like a lot of things in this world, things evolve, including fansubbing. It's what makes fansubbing better, and also much, much more annoying. In this update, raw provision gets a slight edit (and so soon from my original post on RP).

As was mentioned in the original post on raw provision, cappers in Japan are required in order to record the television show on-screen to be streamed onto the hard drive. Japanese cappers, like their American counterparts, label the files they distribute. American cappers usually label with some sort of distribution group. Japanese cappers, on the other hand, label their files generally with a "Trip ID" which allows people to find files captured specifically by them, as some Japanese cappers are known to have files with exceptional captures with good filtering and lack of artifacts from the capture. The Trip is basically an anonymous handle that people use, like on instant messaging programs, forums, chat rooms, and multiplayer games, which generally provide a mask of anonymity.

Unfortunately, as with all copyrighted material, copying and capturing falls under copyright laws, and according to several raw providers and fansubbers, Trip IDs have been cracked on a fairly wide scale with Winny, and to a smaller extent Share, and apparently several cappers have been arrested or have been threatened with arrest for their activities. As the result, many cappers have either dropped capping or left Winny and moved to Share. A third p2p (peer to peer) program for raw provision has also come out, Perfect Dark, but it is still in its infant stages.

So, the updated list of programs used for raw provision are as follows:
Winny (diminishing/being phased out)
Share (fairly reliable, though may also follow Winny soon)
Perfect Dark (rising, but not used widely)

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