Welcome to Fuwanovel. A fansite dedicated to serving you fan translated visual novels.

Fuwanovel Prototypes:
These screenshots represent how the site will look when it is 100% complete and in operation. (News content are all made up)

.......

Homepage revised

....	'Browse' page revised

Download page in 'Browse'

.........

FAQ' page

.Fuwanovel Objectives Revised

23/03 Site redesign photoshops (24.3Mb)
24/03 Fuwanovel html/CSS templates: Front Page, Browse Page, Download Page, FAQ page. [Click Here for Full Pack]
24/03 Data Dictionary: Google Docs
06/04 We are recruiting Game Testers, and people who can create Banner Art for the site. Please follow link
09/04 "Upcoming" Page designs [PNG][PSD]. Otome Games top banner [PNG]

Vision
Everyone can enjoy visual novels in the West.
Please see blog post on Visual Novel Aer

forums.fuwanovel.com
wiki.fuwanovel.com
fuwanovel.com

Lessig explains why the US internet broadband is so "sucky".

Aaeru:
Short four part MINI-documentary "Everything is a Remix" by Kirby Ferguson.
This is Strictly mandatory viewing for anyone who cares for Japanese subculture and
especially the fan translators. No exceptions. If you stop people from copying, you kill creativity.

Download hi-res MKV of Part 1 (with subtitles) Subtitles can be added and edited here.

Download hi-res MKV of Part 2 (with subtitles) Subtitles can be added and edited here.

Download hi-res MKV of Part 3 (with subtitles) Subtitles can be added and edited here.

Download hi-res MKV of Part 4 (with subtitles) Subtitles can be added and edited here.

Aaeru's Comprehensive Bashing Ground of Copyright and Intellectual "Property". In this section you will find pure slaughtery.

“When I first read Stephan Kinsella’s essay 6 years ago, I thought, This is the most embarrassing thing I have ever read! It is absolutely wrong. And I was horrified that anybody could call for the repeal of Intellectual Property. I thought, this was crazy. Well... it took me 6 years to come around. It is an intellectual problem. And if you find anything I am saying implausible, I would suggest to you to give it some time and look for examples of where absence of IP works and the presence of IP stagnates and I think you will see more and more examples and eventually come around to this position.”

- Jeffrey Tucker of Mises institute

	Authors: Beware of Copyright [PDF, 3 pages]	"Old-fashioned copyright is nothing but a form of modern tyranny in the digital age. It has no future. Bail out of this wicked institution and make sure that your work has a future" - [Jeffrey Tucker, Page 113, Bourbon for Breakfast]
	If You Believe in Intellectual Property, How Do You Teach? [PDF, 5 pages]	"Lacking a university position and a professorship, she (Ayn Rand) actually managed to make the whole of the English-speaking world her classroom. But rather than be thrilled at what she had done, she had the opposite reaction, which is exactly what one might expect from a deeply flawed conception of intellectual property."- [Jeffrey Tucker, Page 117, Bourbon for Breakfast]
	Is Intellectual Property the Key to Success? [PDF, 3 pages]	"One of the greatest tragedies of intellectual property law is how it generates intellectual confusion among successful business people. Many are under the impression, even when it is not true, that they owe their wealth to copyrights, trademarks, and patents, and not necessarily to their business savvy. For this reason, they defend intellectual property as if it were the very lifeblood of their business operations. They fail to give primary credit where it is due: to their own ingenuity, willingness to take a risk, and their market-based activities generally. "- [Jeffrey Tucker, Page 123, Bourbon for Breakfast] Also see Does Monopoly Create Wealth? [article]
	The Evils of Intellectual Property Jeffrey A Tucker [Youtube, 8minutes for part 1]	"Ideas. Unlike real property, are infinitely reproducible. Real property, cannot be infinitely reproduced outside a situation in which there is a miracle." - [Jeffrey Tucker] Two part clip taken from a full one hour speech. Has bad breathing noises but the talk is good. Click here for Part 2. Also see The Means of Innovation [youtube, 13 minutes]
	Innovations in Technology \| Jeffrey A. Tucker. [Youtube]	This is a fascinating FASCINATING talk about REAL innovation and REAL human progress. And it didn't come about because of Intellectual Property you know. Absolutely a pleasure to listen to.
	Against Intellectual Property [PDF]	Intellectual Property is not even a legitimate type of property right. It is a piece of fiction. It creates artificial scarcity for the purpose of profit. It also undercuts real property rights. [Stephan Kinsella] If you prefer video, see Stephan explain his reasoning here in this youtube.
	SOPA is the Symptom, Copyright is the Disease: The SOPA wakeup call to ABOLISH COPYRIGHT [Stephan Kinsella]	"The copyright industry is actually right that these ridiculous laws are needed to sustain the copyright monopoly. General-purpose networked computers, free and anonymous speech, and sustained civil liberties make it impossible to maintain this distribution monopoly of digitizable information. As technical progress can’t be legislated against, basic civil liberties would have to go to maintain the crumbling monopoly. And these are the laws we’re seeing on the table." - [Rick Falkvinge]

	Copyright does not protect ideas. It protects expressions of ideas. However the distinction between the two is necessarily arbitrary and therefore unfair.	"The problem is that the idea/expression dichotomy is not and has never been clear. It is highly subjective and comes down to the whims of the judge. There is no simple definition to separate an idea from an expression - like the Star Wars example used above: space emperors and starships? That's an idea. Exact characters and storyline? That's an expression. But what about all the stuff in between? What about a brand new story set in the same universe? Or one that had very close analogues to all the characters, but with different names set elsewhere? What about a new version of the same story written from an entirely different perspective with all new details? What about an unauthorized sequel that only references the original?" It's a complex and difficult line to draw, with several different competing tests and standards for the courts to consider. That's not exactly a fringe opinion - it's acknowledged by people from both sides of the debate. Some good reading: http://www.edwardsamuels.com/copyright/beyond/articles/ideapt1-20.htm http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/I dea-expression_dichotomy International perspective: http://www.jiclt.com/index.php/jiclt/article/download/50/49

"People want to be thought of as the Artist's friend. I might download songs from the internet, but I will also buy the CDs because I want to support the band. If you are obeying copyright, you are on the side of the artist. This is a very emotionally effective thing. The artists is the side I want to be with. Nobody wants to be with the publisher's side. But if you tell people that copyright is with the artists, then they will feel funny about copyright infringement. The industry understands this 100%. They know how to talk."

- Karl Fogel at Open Tech Strategies, LLC

	The Surprising History of Copyright and what it means for Google @GoogleTechTalks [youtube]	Copyright was not designed by the writers and artists, asking for a means to earn a living or an economic basis for creativity. It was designed by the publishing industry to support a certain kind of distribution mechanism (i.e. the Printing Press), one that is completely obsolete in the face of the internet. - [Karl Fogel] OR read Karl Fogel's article titled, "The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World"
	“Economically when you spread information you create demand for it.” - John Perry Barlow (Co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation http://eff.org/)	Recently there was a "forum" in which corporations and governments got together to discuss how they were going to control the internet. For some reason they invited John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And sure enough. MASSIVE Disagreement ensures. This is a MUST watch..
	The Sky is Rising	For years, we've been hearing doom and gloom reports about how the industry is dying, how customers just want stuff for free, about analog dollars turning into digital dimes... and about how new & outrageous laws are needed to save these industries (SOPA & PIPA). Yet, what we find when looking through the research -- from a variety of sources to corroborate and back up any research we found -- is that the overall entertainment ecosystem is in a real renaissance period. The sky truly is rising, not falling: the industry is growing both in terms of revenue and content.

	The Sky is Rising [Google Docs]	Executive Summary Opportunities Abound: Enablers, Not Gatekeepers One of the key lessons in the gradual shift in market power in the entertainment industry these days is that the power of the old gatekeepers is declining, even as the overall industry grows. The power, instead, has definitely moved directly to the content creators themselves, who no longer need to go through a very limited number of gatekeepers, who often provide deal terms that significantly limit the creator’s ability to make a living. One of the key reasons for going with a traditional player was to get that initial funding to create the art. But platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, PlegeMusic and others route around the old players (and still succeed). What this means is, we don't have a need for copyright anymore (assuming copyright is what allows creation to happen which it is not). Get the pledges from fans to fund development, create the content, and then just release the product to the world for free. As long as the artist has that initial funding, they can complete the work. No mandatory payment. No licensing fees. No royalties. How to make money as a creator, post-internet Louis CK: Open, Human & Awesome The Video Market Ed Burns’ Newlyweds: Back To The Roots; Simple, Cheap & Good Kevin Smith’s Red State: Profiting By Avoiding The Gatekeepers The Book Publishing Market JA Konrath and Barry Eisler: The New Opportunities In Self-Publishing Paulo Coelho: What If Piracy Increased Rather Than Decreased Sales The Music Market Cee Lo Green: The New Music Success Story Is Not In Selling Music Jason Parker: One Working Musician Shows How People Will Pay The Video Game Market Valve: Infringement Is A Service Problem, Not A Legal Problem Minecraft: Keep It Simple And Awesome Humble Indie Bundle: Making People Want To Buy Changing the Debate

	"But without copyright, how will artists and writers make a living?"	"This is a great example of a question that is best answered by being left unasked. Copyright is not how artists and writers make a living today and it has never been. Copyright isn't paying anyone's living. There are a few superstars, Stephen King is doing well off copyright. But it doesn't make any sense for society to organize the way it shares information on the production of a few superstars, while everybody else either ends up in debt or breaks even. The way that creativity makes a living, meaning not just writing but music or in performing arts, in general are through a variety of means that have been true for centuries, before copyright, during copyright, and from now on, they will continue to be true. Patronage, the day job, subscriptions, performances, piece-work commissions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work). Various publications, e.g. magazine revenues themselves are not heavily dependent on royalties, it is dependent on advertising and subscriptions. And traditional publishing still works without copyright. By signing a contract with the writer, they cause the work to come into existence, they can control over the marketing and timing of the release and it makes sense to pay someone to produce the work which is then going to be released into the world, free, and will become the first in market with thousands of copies. There are also new methods of supporting creativity, the free-flow of information, the attachment of easy meta-data, and micro-payments." - [Karl Fogel]

"The free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied."

- Kevin Kelly co-founder of Wired Magazine

	Better than Free	Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world. - [Kevin Kelly] More info on this subject at wiki.mises.org.
		Copyright laws do not protect an Artist's ability to make a living. It protects an Artist's ability to make a living using ONE business model. The business model of selling copies.
	Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period.	"I wanted to address the ridiculousness of the "can't compete with free" statements that people love to throw out. If we break down the statement carefully, anyone who says that is really saying that they can't compete at all. The free part is actually meaningless -- but the zero is blinding everyone." - [Mike Masnick, Techdirt.com] Also see Explaining The Economics Of Abundance In Two Minutes Or Less With A Whiteboard:

"Woe is the life of the modern day student living in "Darkest Africa" for obviously we are still being kept in the slave quarters of the world. Harsh words? My friends try and live in a society where such Acts as the Intellectual Property Acts of the world [impede] your advancement in life."

- Louise Szente, Misers or Sharers?, 2001 (Photo: Alan Story)

	If you support copyright and Intellectual Property, you are supporting the argument that culture and knowledge should not be a public good. It should be privately owned. What you are essentially saying is that those people living in the "developing countries" of the world are not entitled to have the culture and knowledge of 1st world countries.	"We should make it illegal for three-quarters of the world’s population to play visual novels." Knowledge and culture must not be free. It must be rationed to the people by their ability to pay.

	The democratic process exists precisely such that regulations to best allocate resources to those who need it the most can be achieved. Society needs culture and it needs knowledge. Society benefits if there is free access to culture and free access to knowledge because it enriches our lives and empowers the impoverished. Copyright in its original form was never intended to prohibit the public from access to 'Products of the Mind'. Instead, it exists to facilitate it. By subsidizing the (then) very expensive activity of the Printing Press by granting the distributors a limited monopoly, they hope to encourage more copying, not less. But with the advent of digital technology, copying has become free. We no longer have to pay a price for having centralized distribution. That is why The Internet completely obsoletes copyright.

	Fuwanovel	"Visual novels for the world means visual novels for the whole world. Not just rich countries." "If copyright is to fulfill its purpose of encouraging the spread and sharing of knowledge and information for public use and access, then it makes no sense to prohibit translation or even distribution. Paying large sums of licensing money does nothing to help culture & knowledge spread. In fact it only serves to inhibit it."

	The Purpose of Copyright Copyright was created as "An Act for the encouragement of learning."[1] It did so by guaranteeing the public ACCESS to the work of "learned men." You can see this clearly by the requirement to donate FREE copies to the nations archive for public use. "no person shall be entitled to the benefit of this act...unless he shall first deposit" Only AFTER you have given the public access to your work, can you subsequently claim the limited exclusive right to TRY to profit from your work. Original US law requires at least two copies be deposited, original British law requires copies be sent to every major library (nine) which was later increased to twelve. The US copyright act itself, is clearly derived from the British "Statute of Anne". (Almost as if by a plagiarist.) Direct statements can be found there as to the intention of the concept. "Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books;"[2] Copyright was NEVER intended to protect the authors and/or publishers from the public. It directly addressed the problem of PUBLISHERS cheating authors, and thereby discouraging them from writing any of their learnings down. Since most people did not have direct contact with these "learned men" there was no way to pass on this knowledge to the next generation without some means of distribution. By vesting the work in the author, the act gave the learned men incentive to write their work down. By requiring deposit copies to go to libraries and archives, the act encouraged learning by enabling ACCESS to that knowledge. (Everything else is a corruption of these basic principles.) [1] http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf [2] http://www.copyrighthistory.com/anne.html

	Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?	This article is a fascinating summary of a book titled "Information Feudalism" [Peter Drahos, John Braithwaite]. As the authors put it, “Old protectionism was about keeping your rival’s goods out of your domestic market. New protectionism in the knowledge economy was about securing a monopoly privilege in an intangible asset and keeping your rival out of world markets. But that meant persuading your rival to play by rules recognising your ‘right’ to the asset.” The persuasion game meant making strong Intellectual Property Rights regimes a top objective of US foreign policy and trade negotiations. The corporations’ single goal was worldwide subservience to their property regime governing the main assets of the new economy: intangible information. The full pdf is available here. "The intellectual property rights regime we have today largely represents the failure of democratic processes, both nationally and internationally. A small number of US companies, which were established players in the knowledge game (see Chapter 3), captured the US trade-agenda setting process and then, in partnership with European and Japanese multinationals, drafted intellectual property principles that became the blueprint for TRIPS (see Chapters 8 and 9). The resistance of developing countries was crushed through trade power (see Chapter 6)." - page 12
	The Copy/South Dossier: Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in the global South [PDF]	This is an incredible piece by Alan Story on the social and economical effect of privitizing information. Result: "Poor countries suffer."
	There Can Be No 'Balance' In The Entirely Unbalanced System Of Copyright [Alan Story]	Alan Story revealing the injustice of the Berne Convention. The Berne Convention is the one that Fuwanovel clashes head-on with that says copyright should be treated equally across the whole world. (well actually it is the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but same thing). A full ravaging of the Berne Convention can be found here. I encourage everyone to question the law, particularly the IP laws (IP = intellectual property). Don't just thoughtlessly go along with whatever the law says and take it for granted that it's good for us. This stuff is not good for us. Supercharged International trade laws destroy our freedom of expression. These laws are NOT moral. They are NOT democratically shaped. They ONLY serve the interests of the superelites and the corporations. The international laws that Fuwanovel violate are one such EXTREME Implements of Injustice. The expansion of international IP law is a history of BRIBERY, of COERCION, the BULLYING of weaker countries into submission by exploiting differences in negotiation power. THREATENING countries with economic serious consequences for non-compliance (such as denying them the ability to trade with the US). It is complex injustice, completely hidden to the public. Here is a recent example, US threatening Spain to implement SOPA or here.
	Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization [Html]	Geneva Declaration brutally criticizing the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) for disregarding the concerns of lesser nations. Without access to essential medicines, millions suffer and die; Morally repugnant inequality of access to education, knowledge and technology undermines development and social cohesion; Anticompetitive practices in the knowledge economy impose enormous costs on consumers and retard innovation; Authors, artists and inventors face mounting barriers to follow-on innovation; "WIPO must ... express a more balanced view of the relative benefits of harmonization and diversity, and seek to impose global conformity only when it truly benefits all of humanity. A "one size fits all" approach that embraces the highest levels of intellectual property protection for everyone leads to unjust and burdensome outcomes for countries that are struggling to meet the most basic needs of their citizens."

“Copying is an inherently social activity"
"Copying between two people is social. When I make a copy for you, it carries with it a little bit of reputation capital, a little bit of recommendation, a little bit of "you might want to try this, it meant something to me", but it can mean something more forceful than that. It can mean something as forceful as what happened to the Secrets of Ya-ya Sisterhood where women who had read the book and had their lives transformed grabbed their friends by the collar and said "Read this now it changed my life!!!".

"This is how media sells. This is how media spreads. The more copyable a media is, the easier it is to socially evangelise it. And that means the internet is great news for creators and authors."

- Cory Doctorow, editor at Boing Boing, author, journalist & activist.

		"It's in human nature I think, to think of what you did as legitimate but when someone does it to you as theft." - Cory Doctorow

More Resources

QuestionCopyright.org -- FAQ --- Answers some Big Questions.
An extract from "Winning the Web". [PDF, 2pages] A very concise introduction to the Global Intellectual Property Regime.
Free Learning. Essays on open educational resources and copyright. This is an excellent excellent collection of writings on copyright.
Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation The copyright war is an attack on our freedoms to use our computers the way we want to.
The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free
1. Redefine the market based on the benefits.
2. Break the benefits down into scarce and infinite components.
3. Set the infinite components free, syndicate them, make them easy to get -- all to increase the value of the scarce components
4. Charge for the scarce components that are tied to infinite components
Copyright Is Theft, Unauthorized Copying Is Not Theft‎.
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:IP. A sizeable body of work that exists to destroy the pro-copyright argument.

5000+ Artists line up for a Pirate Bay Promotion. (Artists are beginning to understand funding themselves through others' tips while maximizing their exposure on the net is smarter than requiring mandatory payment)

Copyright and patents stifle innovation – JUST ASK HISTORY by Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party.
Peer to Peer (P2P) in a nutshell. An introduction to the concepts of P2P by the p2pfoundation.net
Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture. [Youtube] What the Entertainment industry can learn from the Fashion industry. TEDtalk By Johanna Blakley.
Argentinean professor charged criminally for promoting access to knowledge. His story is not unlike the obstacle faced by Fan Translation, particularly Fuwanovel.
France: Copyright is more Important than Human Rights. "It's time the people stopped recognising copyright altogether, and just enjoyed their natural liberty to share and build upon their own culture. France should be questioning copyright, not questioning human rights."
Questioning Copyright · Thursday August 18, 2011 by Crosbie Fitch. "This is one of the BEST pieces on Copyright and it's intrusion on Human Rights. A MUST READ."
European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform with 113% Voter Turnout. "I'm sorry but this is the kind of people we are up against. They don't even play by the rules anymore. They are beyond the law."

Thomas Jefferson talking about how we should use the Internet in 1813!
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them. [Techdirt]
Beware Of Those Who Claim They're 'Saving The Culture Business' When They're Really Protecting Those Who Strip Artists Of Rights. [Techdirt]
What Happens When You Get Two Internet Haters Together? An Interview That Kills Brain Cells. [Techdirt]

Copy Catfight How intellectual property laws stifle popular culture. by Jesse Walker.
The Legality of Copyright Infringement. Piracy (as in uploading/downloading) is not a crime. Selling copyrighted works however IS a crime. There is a difference.
No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? Fascinating piece. Germany's incredible industrial expansion in the 19th century was due to the absence of copyright law.
IP, the Internet, Culture, and the Business of Culture, IIPSJ, 20 Jan 2012. Robert Levine getting his butt kicked for writing this book, "Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (2011)"
The Costs of Intellectual Property. I would add to Stephan's list, the millions of lives lost in South Africa to HIV/AIDS thanks to the US drug patent owners denying poorer countries the ability to produce generics.