CHV Lives On

Gest, you dolt, you missed the point again.
*Smack*
I'm not looking to destroy Disney as a company (although that would be nice ). I'm not protesting their unfair trade and labor practices, or even every anti-trust violating branch of the company. This isn't a problem with business practices, or even Disney's successful attempts at buying every vote they want. I'm only pointing this out in an attempt to see these films given the proper treatment.
The original R1 DVD specs for Princess Mononoke, a Miramax release, included ONLY the English dub, not the Japanese dub. And (as I've said), while I have no problems with the English dub, I also feel that the Japanese language track should've been included as well. It took a mass of crazed otaku geeks, writing letters and calling Disney, to have them re-think their actions, and eventually release a bi-lingual DVD. And hell, if it wasn't for the actions of someone like John Lassater at Pixar, that may never have happened.
While the "mass audience" may go for this, Disney is now seriously at risk of alienating a core group of fans, something which is unwise, at best. And this core group, while probably not as large as the anime geeks (at least in the US), is a decent share of the market. Hell, look at my DVD collection. More than HALF of them are non-English, with a good number of them being Japanese or Cantonese. Its the same with many, many others.
I think many people are wising up as well, and Sony's release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon definately proves that. I easily could've seen a backlash if they had released the film dubbed, and I'm positive their box office numbers wouldn't have come close to what they actually were. Then, they took the correct road with the DVD, releasing a dub IN ADDITION TO the original audio track. They also didn't edit ANYTHING in the film, whether its the music or certain scenes that are "too Asian." Disney would not have taken that road.
Yes, you are correct in pointing out the similarities between this and the Americanizing of anime. However, I was never FOR that, and despite my feelings of certain anime dubs, I have always felt that the DVD releases should contain both audio tracks, since they certainly have the technology to do so.
The key difference here, is that if you want the original Japanese DVD of an anime that has been chopped in the US, you can still get it. However, Disney's grasp extends further than most people believe, and they're "cracking down" on both US and foreign distributers of LEGAL copies of these films, made by Asian companies.
Katy at least seems to get the idea here, although (as you've all said), I'm sure many of you know what its like having to do what Bumz had quoted. The fight against Microsoft's DRM plans is a completely seperate issue, and doesn't belong here.

I've always known "how it feels", as this is hardly the first incident where I've been pissed off by the destruction of art (yes, films [at least most of them] are creative works of ART in my book).
As I said, I'm opposed to the alleged problems when companies try to "Americanize" anime, but none of them directly applied to me as this, and other situations have. I'm relatively new to anime, and hell, I probably wouldn't have even known Fox (or the WB, or whoever the hell it was) hacked up animes like Escaflowne (another which I havn't seen ). And likewise, I doubt many of you would've known Disney is hacking up decades worth of films as they have, and continue to do so, without a post like this.
You all need to get off your lazy butts and write a damn letter, or at least give them a call or email. Or better yet, for the otakus, write to someone like John Lassater @ Pixar, voicing your support for his attempts to give these works of art the proper treatment they deserve.

Bumz, the problem is, most of Disney's releases don't even have the CHANCE to be subtitled. They'll change the dialogue in the dub and leave it at that.
The only real instance of them changing the translation in the subtitling is in Iron Monkey, where a few lines were "fixed", wrongly, of course.
Thankfully, Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express was given a relatively proper treatment, save for the less-than-stellar audio quality (hell, my LD almost sounds better than this).