Channels without a license

[irmar]

@tijgerpanda18_420

all I can see on viki is chinese;taiwan;etc dramas

Really? If you look here at Discussions people were complaining because viki ditched most Taiwan lacorns and a great number of popular Chinese dramas also disappeared - and more disappear by the day. They have been complaining quite loudly.
I wouldn’t have known otherwise, since I almost never watch those, my preference is Korean. But, to be fair, those other countries’ dramas are the minority.
I did a small experiment for you, and you can reproduce it. I went to “Explore” and put as year 2015. Then, as country, I put Taiwan, then China, then Korea. And counted the available licensed dramas. Then I repeated this for 2016 and 2017.

2015:

• Taiwan: 29 shows, of which 3 variety.
• China: 41 dramas
• Japan: 15 dramas
• Korea: 85 shows (of which 7 variety) and 3 or 4 films

2016:

• Taiwan: 16 dramas,
• China: 43 dramas
• Japan: none (only 1 fan channel which was never licensed)
• Korea: 80 shows (of which 3 or 4 variety) and 3 films

2017 (so far):

• Taiwan: 3 dramas
• China: 14 dramas
• **Japan:**none
• Korea: 22 dramas so far, of which 7 on air and 2 coming soon plus 1 film and of course a number of fan channels awaiting license*.

Numbers don’t lie. So your statement that “all you see is Chinese, Taiwan etc. dramas” is incorrect.
I don’t think you really want us to do this little game for all years since the beginning of viki.

(*) ABOUT FAN CHANNELS
As I wrote above, I am not counting unlicensed Fan Channels. But there is a difference between fan channels for upcoming series, whose license viki may or may not get, and fan channels of old series, whose license has expired and viki is probably not interested in renewing, or which never had a license to begin with.
Viki has announced that ALL the old fan channels will be taken off by this summer. And it seems that the majority are Chinese series.See this thread R.i.p. fan channels - #66 by deadliftdiva_548 from which I’m copying this useful info:

@bjohnsonwong

The reason they’re mostly Chinese dramas that are Fan Channels is because material from China is not taken down from the internet as readily as that of other regions, such as Korea and Japan, so Fan Channels for Cdrama were able to be created and last longer. The links aren’t deleted for copyright infringement as commonly.

If they are upcoming dramas, there are more chances that the Korean ones will get licensed. 1) there is more demand 2) it’s easier to get the license for a number of reasons (dedicated websites for Chinese content etc.). For instance, “While You Were Sleeping” will air in September and, given that it is a much awaited Lee Jung Suk vessel, viki is sure to fight hard to gain the license. And it’s probably the same for “The King Loves”, with Im Siwan, which will air in July._
Here is another useful post about why viki buys less Chinese dramas:

@xingfenzhen

The Chinese production companies all operate its own channels on a certain tube-like site with popular series getting multi-million views per episode, this coincided with release of crowdsource subtitle and translation tool for that tube-like site. This was not the case even a year ago. It seems to they would just want to do things themselves now rather than licence things out to third parties (at very least, it strengthen their negotiation position, which can make licences too expensive for viki to acquire)
While I still like viki better to introduce dramas to my non-chinese speaking friends, since the subs are of a better quality and consistency, but that’s a shark in a tank of small fishes and could have game changing ramifications. Especially since viki is a K-drama focused site to begin with.

And finally this new thread, about a major Chinese site which will now start translating its dramas.
■■■■■ dramas will finally be available with subs?!. This will be a major competitor for Chinese content on viki.

As for Japanese dramas and the lack thereof, it has been discussed in another thread, from which I copy this useful info:

@dudie

I heard the license process for Japanese content is complicated. Not for Viki alone but in general Japan likes to keep things more for themselves so getting a license is hard and most likely when they are willing to give a license they ask a lot of money and come with a set of rules which might not work out. As for limited Japanese subs, I have a channel where eventually the Japanese subs where locked because the content owner did request it.

I had hoped that now Viki is Rakuten’s (which is a Japanese company) it would lead to more Jdrama on Viki but I guess not

P.S. It’s not useful to post multiple license requests. Viki staff have explained to us that they see the IP of the person sending the request, and even if you send 100 requests, they will count as one.
I understand your frustration about many dramas not being licensed for Europe. I had the same frustration, and that’s why I became a volunteer here, to be able to view (almost) everything without restrictions. I think it’s a good idea to give it a try.