[Maru]

Ironically, I would credit the PC-ification of our media (when it was more right-leaning) and some of the early censorship tactics and other consumer blocks to expaditing and encouraging an entire generation of kids to literally be raised upon the practice of piracy... thus making certain things far less immutable in the consumer's mind when it comes to the "worth" of things that are officially licensed... so attitudes towards media have clearly changed to be more liberal, not only economically speaking, but also clearly of the mind that people prefer to get things from the source...

Cartoon Network just replayed the content then (I guess it has it's own stuff now?), but they pretty much changed their fortunes by delivering content that wasn't tampered from it's original source (with Adult Swim)... that used to be the territory for piracy... in some ways, I guess it made anime more profitable. The same way early cartoons were only made if they could sell toys to go with their media venture, etc... before that, they were pretty much a channel with nothing but Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry reruns... it wasn't much more than the local channels were playing here during "peak" hours, as much of it was widely syndicated cartoons.