Johanna at Cognitive Dissonance points to this article “When Piracy Becomes Promotion” about early years of anime fandom, when the fansubbing community was the major source of anime, as opposed to today when you can buy Tokyo Godfathers at Target. I have to admit, most of my initial interest in anime can be traced to fansubs. Back in my youth (um, late 1980s to early 1990s), my only way of watching any anime was to attend the meetings of the anime club at the local university, where they would screen fansubs of Zeta Gundam, Bubblegum Crisis, Ranma 1/2, etc. I think I still have some really bad quality dubs from that era. Up until a couple years ago, I hadn’t watched any recent anime except for Cowboy Bebop, but my little sister sent me some fansubs and I started getting into anime again.