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Old Dec 30, 2007, 06:10 PM
Jazzz Jazzz is offline
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Default Doujin category

I must admit that I'm a bit lost with the Doujin category - what exactly counts as Doujin and what doesn't? The definition given on the page is "unofficial album by a fan arrangement group (One-UP Studios counts as this). The key should be that it was commercially released, so Overclocked Remixes do not count". How can a commercially released album be unofficial? If it wasn't properly licensed, wouldn't that be illegal? Can anyone perhaps give an example? What about the Project Majestic Mix album: I'm aware this is a fan project, but it was properly licensed from Square, so what makes it less "official" compared to any other FF arrange album (and there are some that were not produced by Square Enix, e.g. "Music Inspired By Final Fantasy" or the new "Distant Worlds" CD).
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Old Dec 30, 2007, 07:00 PM
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Gigablah Gigablah is offline
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Indeed, using that definition the Project Majestic Mix albums would actually be official releases. In practice though we're using a somewhat mixed definition of the word "Doujin" -- extending it from its original usage in japanese to include anything fan-made. That's a matter up for discussion.

But I can tell you that
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Originally Posted by Jazzz View Post
How can a commercially released album be unofficial? If it wasn't properly licensed, wouldn't that be illegal?
Yes, it is indeed illegal. The way doujin works in Japan though, is that the copyright owners tend to turn a blind eye to unofficial fan works as long as distribution is kept limited, although sometimes this is not the case. If you want examples, pretty much every doujin album in Comiket is unauthorized.

America has considerably more robust enforcement of copyright law, so fans there tread carefully with unofficial works -- almost none are sold commercially.
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Old Dec 31, 2007, 01:20 PM
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Liontamer Liontamer is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
America has considerably more robust enforcement of copyright law, so fans there tread carefully with unofficial works -- almost none are sold commercially.
Nah, it's just a very substantially smaller market, but there are definitely a notable/significant amount of American doujin releases done commercially, usually bands. What's a lot rarer are desktop musicians releasing arrange albums commercially, or even at all. It's almost exclusive to live acts.
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Old Jan 1, 2008, 02:18 PM
Jazzz Jazzz is offline
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Thanks for the quick reply, guys! Perhaps it's more a question of what is an "official" release then? Manufacturing quality (CD-R vs. industrially manufactured disc) could indicate a Doujin release, though it's not sufficient as a criterion as a lot of these fan projects seem to get a real factory pressing. However, officially licensed products (like PMM) should be listed as official releases in my opinion. The aforementioned OneUp Studios are a good case to differentiate this: their earlier releases like the "Very Best of SEGA" CD were properly licensed and would thus count as "official". They stopped doing that with "More than Mario", which is a prototypical Doujin project as you described it (commercial release without being licensed). What do you think?
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