The Aladdin Complex

This was originally going to be a Facebook status update, but I couldn't decide between the two sentences and neither was appropriately short:

"Ryan thinks $700 for a 49-episode television series is outrageous."
"Ryan thinks non-Japanese fans of Japanese TV are forced to choose between piracy or never getting to see it."

Suffice to say, 27 episodes for $364.75 and 22 episodes for $314.99 is out of the price range for 95% (out-of-my-ass-figure) of people who would otherwise be willing to purchase this.

The response to this claim (and hence my chosen title for this blog update) is, "Poverty does not legitimize thievery. If you can't afford nice things in life, tough. You don't get to have them. That's life. You may think it is unfair to you, but it is even more unfair to the people who invested time and money in the product for you to just come along and take it without permission." But the thing is, what do you tell somebody who's already gotten a taste of Paradise? How can you expect them to ever go back to eating stale bread when they've sunk their teeth into mouth-watering steak?

The other problem I have with the answer is that it places all of the blame on the consumer and none of it on the situation. And by this I mean that there is justification in blaming this dilemma on the different countries' different means of making television programs break even. In America, commercial advertisements drive everything. Most television series pay for themselves with their first airing and so any money made from DVDs is just icing on the cake. Hence super-low-priced DVDs for things like Lost or Friends. In Japan, they also have commercial advertisements, but the money flow just isn't the same, and so Japan's television studios rely on the home market if they want to turn a profit. This is why media in Japan -- films, shows, and video games -- is so much more expensive than here in America, but why books are comparably priced (at $5 to $10 per average 300-page book, just like it is over here).

For the record, I agree that in the end it's up to the individual to say, "I'll go back to eating to stale bread." I just think it sucks, that's all. Not even because I'm being whiny and greedy, but because as far as I can tell there's no reason we shouldn't all be able to eat steak as it is. I mean, it seems to me that if Japanese television made money the way American television does that we wouldn't even be having this discussion.