Visual Art’s fires off a couple C&D notices
July 30th, 2010, by
Posted in Translation
, Tagged: AIR, Dote up a Cat, Visual Art's
Visual Art’s, a company best known for their Key brand of visual novels, has sent out two cease and desist notices at fan translation groups that were translating their games. The first of these was Dote up a cat that was released under VisualArt’s 13cm brand and was being fan translated by Tengu Translations. The second cease and desist notice was supposedly for the well known visual novel AIR that was released under Visual Art’s Key brand and was being translated by the fan translation group Enter the Wired. A lookup of the IP address found in the header of these cease and desist notices indicates that the address belongs to Visual Art’s. While these two titles were being translated by two different translation groups, the same individual manages both of these fan translation groups and was the recipient of both cease and desist notices.
The cease and desist notices were sent in English, and the Dote up a cat cease and desist notice is reproduced below. The recipient indicated that he received a nearly identical e-mail for AIR.
Mr.TenguTrans
My name is Tomotaka Ichinomiya.
I am working for visual arts Judicial Affairs Division Ltd..The act that you are doing violates the Copyright Law.
It warns. Stop the translation of “Dote up a cat!” at once.When your violation continues, the visual arts Ltd. have the possibility of managing legislative measures.
Your sincere correspondence is expected.
——————————————
Visual arts co.Ltd.
Judicial Affairs Division
Tomotaka Ichinomiya〒531-0073
VA the first building
2-12-16 Honjonishi,Kitaku
saka Prefecture Osaka City
TEL:81-6-6377-3388 FAX:81-6-6377-3399
——————————————
Tengu Translations has indicated that their plans for Dote up a cat is to try and negotiate some sort of agreement with Visual Art’s, similar to how No Name Losers has been negotiating with minori this month. In the event that these negotiations fail, Tengu Translations has reminded people that they have another title they plan to translate, Niji no Kanata ni, a title which they recently received permission to translate from #define.
Dote up a cat is an eroge that was released in 2006 by 13cm where the male protagonist is a dog man in a hospital, and his patients are a number of cat girls with serious illnesses. A partial translation patch was released just this past week.
AIR is a well known romance/drama visual novel that was released by Key in 2000. The protagonist begins the game looking for a girl in the sky as the last wish of his deceased mother and arrives in a town just as summer is beginning. AIR was later adapted into a 14 episode anime by Kyoto Animation in 2005, as the first of several Key anime adaptations that have been produced under Kyoto Animation. A film was also produced by Toei Animation, which was shown in theaters shortly after the Kyoto Animation anime began airing. Enter the Wired took over the AIR translation last summer after progress on the title stalled for an extended period on TLWiki.
UPDATE: Tengu Translations claims that they have now received a response to their negotiations inquiry with Visual Art’s quoting millions of yen for translation rights.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I couldn’t care less about “Dote up a cat”, but it’s kinda sad for AIR, I’m sure a lot of people were waiting for this, including me.
July 30th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Otanaast, zalas. zalas said: More movement from Visual Art's: http://bit.ly/9s7Sbw [...]
July 30th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
@Anon 1 I’m more saddened to see the translation for “Dote Up a Cat” get a C&D then Air since the Air project hasn’t been updated for a while.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Make your announcement tomorrow, No Name Losers, and make everything better!
July 30th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
too bad air got c&d. i’ve been waiting for the patch for ages.
July 31st, 2010 at 12:37 am
@5: you don’t sound like you’re really waiting though
July 31st, 2010 at 11:49 am
All those C&Ds are about the same ridiculous as the feminazis crusade.
July 31st, 2010 at 1:36 pm
It looks to me as if they’ve already given up on Air.
Publishing your intentions before negotiating seems a bit funny to me, as Key will simply make sure it’ll fail. Publishing you fear of legal prosecution (in their blog) before negotiating also seems a bit comical.
This isn’t “NNL’s style” at all. This is more like sending Visual art a begging letter, which is sure to fail.
August 3rd, 2010 at 12:51 am
I hope the Dote up a cat translation will continue. Air would never have been finished anyway.
August 4th, 2010 at 6:24 am
All of these C&D letters are cheapskate. They don’t want their VNs be translated by Fan Based Groups since they are after Commercial Groups to translate their works because it would produce some profit. In their point of view such Fan Based translation are like Financial liability for Future commercialization toward the western market of their Visual Novels even if they have no initial intentions in doing so. It is sad to see when these companies are too focused in profits rather than giving pleasure towards their fans. In short BLAME THEIR LAWYERS WHO PUT THIS LEGAL CRAP INTO THEIR MINDS.
August 5th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Hmmm, well since I don’t think the Air project was gonna get anywhere I’m actually fine with this. If nothing else it means that Key might consider commercially releasing Air.
Though correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the original Kanon project get C&Ded? I know it go picked up by a different group but didn’t the original translator have some issues?
September 11th, 2010 at 7:32 am
Arteas:
Not so much C&Ded as a crisis of conscience. Of course, it’s possible there was a C&D letter involved, but not officially. Having said that, Haeleth seems to have gone AWOL shortly after anyway, so it may have just been an excuse to stop the project due to increased commitments irl.
… And now I’m reminiscing about when encubed’s forums were the VisualNews forums, and before that Haeleth’s Gemot.
July 20th, 2011 at 10:15 am
[...] even Kanon had a translation. Currently, it doesn’t look all that much better as Air got a cease and desist order and the translation for Kanon only came out a couple of years ago. When I left college, I [...]
August 15th, 2011 at 11:06 am
WHAT? I was on the VNDB, and it lists it as a complete patch. Complete as in they finished the patch, or complete, as in they were going to translate the complete novel? Either way this is dissapointing, but at least we have the Air anime to watch.
/latetotheparty