Drama Fever: A Lovely Way to Burn?

(HOT OFF THE PRESSES! [Erm... HOT OFF THE INTERWEBS?] According to a number of posts on the November 9, 2012, Drama Beans open thread, Drama Fever is testing the water by allowing international viewers for a limited time only. If you’re not in North America, now’s your chance to see what the fuss is about! Here’s a post about the offering from Drama Fever’s blog.)

The Drama Fever Google TV app I’ll probably never use—it’s not as good
as the web interface, which I can access just as easily.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Facebook becoming a “utility”—something as fundamental to modern life as electricity and running water. I’m not on that bandwagon; I never even signed up, believing my privacy to be more important than posting daily updates about my cat or friending elementary school classmates I’ve lost touch with. (Newsflash: If we’ve lost touch, there’s probably a reason.)

On the other hand, it’s getting pretty darn hard to imagine life without Drama Fever. It’s the first thing that pops up when I turn on my television, before even the option for local or cable networks. I spend a horrifying amount of time on the site, and am always relieved when they carry something I want to see. The streaming competition just isn’t tenable: Viki is buggy, Crunchyroll has a tiny selection, and the Drama Crazy class of illegal sites are unreliable, low-res nightmares stuffed with ads that usually cause my computer to freeze.

I’ve been a premium member of Drama Fever for almost as long as I’ve been obsessed with Korean drama. And while the service isn’t perfect, it’s absolutely the best value I get for my entertainment dollar. According to my drama list, I’ve watched 1,285 episodes over the past year and a half (!), the vast majority of which were housed on Drama Fever. That means I’ve paid under 5 cents per hour of of television. If things stay as they are, it’s hard to imagine that I’d ever end my membership.

My worry, though, is that things won’t stay as they are. Drama Fever’s recent redesign was fine and gets better every day, but two months on it’s still littered with features that don’t work the way they should. There are little problems and big problems, ranging from it being impossible to navigate beyond the first page of user reviews to the inexplicable quasi-functionality of the Currently Watching feature. Once upon a time, clicking on a show listed there would take you right to the episode you most recently watched, but now it drops you at the series’ first episode. (Sometimes. Other times it seems to pick a random episode in the 5 to 8 range.) In combination with the redesign’s less-trustworthy “you’ve watched this episode” checkmark and lack of the “watch again” screen for episodes you’ve completed, I’m always having to hit play on multiple episodes to find where I actually left off. And then there are the mouseover notes that have disappeared altogether—they used to be a handy way to see the other shows actors had been in without navigating away from the drama you were watching. With a slowish internet connection, that was a blessing.

Even more concerning is that Drama Fever might just start focusing on their new Spanish-language content at the expense of Asian shows. As a service geared toward North American users, it’s no wonder they wanted to expand their offerings into Latin American programing: there’s a huge population of people here with roots in that region, many of whom are native speakers of Spanish. Now that it’s possible to watch shows on Drama Fever without subtitles, the site is in a prime position to market to this group. The word of mouth potential is so enormous that it’s not hard to imagine this material taking over the site.

I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but it’s my impression that Korean drama gets much less attention in mainstream American media than the closer-to-home Spanish-language programing. For one thing, people are familiar with telenovelas because there have been a number of American remakes, including Ugly Betty and an upcoming Sofia Vergara project. (Dear McG: How about an American Boys over Flowers? Please?) The Hispanic population in America is also about three times as big as the Asian population. Clearly, heritage doesn’t determine viewing habits, but it might just mean more press coverage, more infrastructure, and potentially more buzz.

Nice subtitles—even if they’re blocking
Lee Min Ho’s pretty face.

On the bright side, Drama Fever’s new video player is pretty awesome: I love being able to watch things in high definition, which really improves the experience of gorgeously filmed shows like Arang and the Magistrate. The ability to change the subtitle size is also nice. Drama Fever’s selection of dramas is still incredible and growing every week. They even stream most of the new shows I want to see (although I’m getting a little antsy about the new Yoon Eun Hye drama, which still hasn’t appeared on their Coming Soon list).

I also find it interesting that Drama Fever has recently replaced their original version of Secret Garden with higher resolution files and re-edited subtitles. I don’t have much company on this one, but Secret Garden is probably my least favorite Korean drama of all time. (The only thing that might make me enjoy it more would be cutting out all the parts that include human beings—I could actually sit through the resulting thirty minutes of pretty scenery and interesting architecture without wanting to scratch my eyes out.) I don’t remember the Drama Fever subtitles or video quality for this show being particularly bad, though. Does this mean they’re going to be revisiting all the popular old series and making improvements? Because their Coffee Prince is grainy as all get out, and its subs aren’t particularly good (even if they are the official ones).

(Some random facts about Coffee Prince on Drama Fever: you can tell by the numbers in its URL that it was the first drama they ever uploaded, and although they recently improved its crappy descriptive copy, it now incorrectly says that Choi Han Gyul is from a “wealthy hotelier family.” Plus, it calls him “Han Kyul,” in contrast to the show’s subtitles.)

I’m also glad to see that new shows are being added from Korea’s jTBC cable network. This channel aired a slew of programs this spring that had Korean-speaking bloggers buzzing, including A Wife’s Credentials and the sitcom I Live in Cheongdam Dong, but as of yet none of those shows have made it to Drama Fever. (As far as I can tell, they’re only available streaming on one legit site, and even then only partially subbed.) Drama Fever once carried new shows aired by this network, so I was wondering if they’d had a falling out that represented the end of the relationship. It seems that’s not the case, though, as both jTBC’s Beloved and Can We Get Married? have been recently added. (I’m dying to watch the later, might I add.)

As conflicted as I may be about some of Drama Fever’s practices, it’s still the website I visit most often, and probably will continue to be. Here’s hoping, anyway.

>>Sidebar<<
Drama Fever Facts Culled from the Internet

• It started operations in August 2009 and now has more than over 400 streaming titles, for a total of more than 10,000 hours (“About Us,” Drama Fever)

• Drama Fever has “two million unique advertising-supported monthly visitors, having added an additional half million viewers since mid-March [2012]. Seventy-five percent of current DramaFever viewers are native English-speakers of non-Asian descent, underscoring the broadening appeal of foreign content, which has historically been attractive to art house and independent film fans. Traffic is doubling every six to eight months and is up 400% since early 2011.” ( “Drama FeverCompletes $6 Million Round with Backing from Global Media Giants,” Drama Fever press release)

• “DramaFever sees significant opportunities to attract millions of new users from adding Latin American telenovelas, Bollywood movies, and expanding the service to potential new viewers in Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Australia.” (“Drama Fever Raises $4.5 Million in SeriesB Round to Found Global Expansion,” Drama Fever press release)

• By early 2013, Drama Fever will carry 60 Spanish language shows from Argentina and Spain (“Asian-Spanish Fusion for Drama Fever,” Variety.com)

• In 2013, Netflix will stream 500 hours of Drama Fever content. (“Drama Fever adds Spanish Flavor,” C21 Media)

• “DramaFever is already the largest single source of online revenue for its Asian content partners.” (“DramaFever adds Spanish-language content, hooks up with Netflix and iTunes,” Gigaom)

Copyright and Other Dilemmas

Image from Donnapie @ Tumblr

When I graduated from college ten years ago with a degree in English, I only knew one thing: I wanted to spend the rest of my life working with books. So far, I’ve managed to do it—but with each passing day, it becomes less and less clear whether my industry will still exist by the time I’m ready to retire. And two reasons why book publishing is on such shaky ground are the erosion of copyright enabled by the digital revolution, and the lack of respect it breeds for the services my employer and I provide.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that I’m torn when it comes to fansubs. On the one hand, I love them—they’re for the people and by the people, and often far, far superior to the official subtitles. (See, for example, my fawning discussion of the differences between the subtitles on Coffee Prince’s DVD and the ones created by WITH S2.) On the other hand, I see why the networks and their sanctioned international outlets don’t appreciate fansubs. They’re companies just like the one I work at, and they need to make money to survive. When fansubs are easily available, the dramas’ makers lose control of the product they’ve invested in and are less able to recoup the money they’ve spent.

And when that happens, everybody loses: When you can’t find a decent book to read in ten years because everyone’s self-publishing unedited crap on Amazon, don’t come crying to me. I’m going to be too busy working swing shifts at McDonald’s and falling out of America’s ever-dwindling middle class.

But my sympathy for the makers of Kdramas doesn’t mean that I wasn’t horrified to realize that two of my favorite Kdrama sites disappeared earlier this week: MySoju and DramaTic (z”l). There’s some interesting discussion of what happened on last Friday’s Dramabeans open thread (see the posts starting at 35). Presumably, both sites fell victim to complaints about the legality of their subtitles. (Here’s a site that confirms that Drama Fever filed a cease and desist suit against Google, probably as owner of YouTube.)

I’m as guilty of watching illegally streamed video as the next person, but I only do it when I want to watch something that’s not available from a legitimate source. I happily pay my Drama Fever annual fee (a bargain at twice the price) and am also about to pony up so I can use Hulu Plus on my Roku.

Because I’m a mental midget when it comes to techy things like getting subs and video from different sources and making them work together, watching downloaded dramas isn’t the slightest bit of a temptation for me. This means my relationship with DramaTic has largely been as a reader of commentary—he kept me real. It’s easy to get lost in fangirlish OTP obsessiveness and lose light of things like a show’s objective quality and actual, qualitative merit. DramaTic never did that, and although our opinions differ on a lot of fronts (e.g, I ♥ trendies), the context and sense of history provided by that site have made me an infinitely better, more informed viewer of Korean drama.

I can see filing copyright complaints against My Soju: it is to Kdrama what crack dens are to the real world. But DramaTic? Its owner was only posting translated text files, not video. The ugly truth, though, is that both the words and images that make up our dramas belong to their copyright holders, and they can file suit about abuses against either.

The question is, Why should they? A rising tide lifts all boats. Thanks to fansubs, these dramas reach passionate international viewers the television networks themselves aren’t prepared to exploit—and those international viewers do things like buy DVDs, soundtracks, and ridiculous tchotchkes. (You certainly would not find a replica of the necklace Jun Pyo made for Jan Di in my jewelry box. No, you certainly would not.) When someone fansubs a show, it’s a giant advertisement for not just sixteen (or twenty or a hundred) hours of television—it’s an advertisement for an entire genre. Maybe even an entire nation.

This crackdown on grass-roots support for their product is even worse in light of its fundamental hypocrisy: Guess who subbed the show I’m watching on Drama Fever right now? That’s right…WITH S2. That fansub site is credited at the beginning of each and every episode of 9 Ends 2 Outs—and a lot of other shows that Drama Fever continues to stream. They’re benefiting every day from the efforts of some fansubers, yet they turn around and file copyright claims against others. On what planet does that make sense?

In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the state of American popular music in the early 2000s. As that point, it seemed likely that peer-to-peer file trading would wipe out traditional record labels, and maybe even the music industry itself. But after a lot of regrettable fighting against the people they should have been courting—music lovers around the world—the music industry was saved by one thing: the convenience and accessibility of iTunes. Back in the day, I used Napster and Limewire and Pirate Bay just like every other college kid. But now that it’s so incredibly easy and affordable to buy from legitimate sources, why would I bother to download things illegally? 

With the help of its sales network, the music industry made itself indispensable not by crushing the people who loved their product, but by finding a way to work with them. That’s what Drama Fever should be doing right now: providing a service so good, universally accessible, and complete that fansubs wouldn’t be necessary.

As an English-speaking North American viewer, I know I’m incredibly lucky: Korean networks will do practically anything to get their dramas into my hands and on my TV. The potential market here is huge, and just like the purveyors of Kpop, they want a piece of that pie. But for that to happen, they need to realize that biting the hand that feeds them isn’t going to help.

Imagine how much time someone like DramaTic’s webmaster invested in the many, many hours worth of subs he made available at his site. Instead of having websites like his removed from the Internet, the Kdrama Overlords should thank whatever God they pray to every day for their dedicated fans. 

I honestly believe there’s a way for everyone to win here—why not find it?