Serious Business
Edit: Thanks to everyone that’s donated so far. Assuming the amount displayed in Gittip is weekly and not one-time, it should cover us for the near future.
I’ll sign up for and make a list of different donation options later, so keep the suggestions coming (especially from those of you unable to use Gittip).
A message from your friendly neighborhood great leader.
TL;DR: No funds, please donate. (guide below)
As some of you may or may not have realized, it is no longer possible to donate to us by Paypal.
This has been the case for the last three months.
Now, Paypal is an awful service and all, but it does have sort of a monopoly over moving money online.
The fees of the last three months have been entirely covered by the one Bitcoin a random gentlemen donated back in December.
The plan was to set up our own donation system in these three months, but our resident website guy decided to work on a mona mining pool instead. Which uh, isn’t very profitable, by the way. It’s not profitable at all.
Now funds have ran dry. The next payment is due in a week.
A while ago, in a desperate bid to save Commie, I set out to find an alternate donation service online that didn’t need to know my SSN, my favorite color, and what size shoes I wore in 4th grade.
I found a promising site called Gittip. I put a Gittip widget in the donation sidebar.
Nobody actually donated through Gittip.
Now, why did nobody donate through Gittip, when we managed to scrape by with Paypal? I honestly have no clue, but in hoping it’ll convince some people to do so, I wrote a guide here:
http://privatepaste.com/4bbfb11aa1
If several people wanted to contribute weekly, that would be amazing, and I wouldn’t need to go day to day wondering if we had enough to cover this month’s bills. We need about $50 a week, which is $5 from 10 people, or $1 from 50 people. By site statistics, there are nearly 80,000 visitors a week. That’s 1/16th of a penny from each person if everyone contributed. As that’s entirely unreasonable, if you have a stable source of income, please consider making a small (optionally recurring) donation. (we’re practically all broke college students)
Please give this some serious consideration.
Thanks,
-RHE
We now return to your scheduled programming.
PS: Yes, I did consider BTC/LTC/other cryptocurrency donations. However, the market for those are currently very unstable and it’s gotten rather hard to readily exchange them for fiat money. You can still donate with these however. Our payment address is in the sidebar.
This post was written yesterday, but due to the nature of the situation, I chose to wait a day before publishing it.
Posted by RHExcelion under Defend the Motherland, Saving Fansubbing | Permalink
Did Paypal closed your accounts due to you making fansubs?
yes
Have you guys tried any sort of crowd-funding like kickstart? Or would they much like Paypal crack down on you guys like a lighting bolt of Zeus for your evil subbing and translating machinations?
What follows is just a FYI style opinion/observation. I might be wrong but what if I’m right in saying that most fine people don’t want to give their bank and credit card info account info to some web media they don’t trust/use for other stuff already.
I for one don’t trust/have much faith in whatever it is you guys are using instead to keep your website fed and watered simply because I’ve never really heard of it/used it for stuff I buy online.
I have PayPal and I trust major sites like Amazon and the protections around major crowdfunding software backing up stuff like kickstarter.
With this in mind, maybe you need another avenue that has some built in street cred/trust with the technically illiterate masses who shop online if you want to survive.
Just my 2 credit opinion given in relative anonymity of the internet, feel free to ignore me completely and do whatever you want. I will be watching your struggles to survive with mild interest from across the ether.
Best of luck! We will be watching!
hah, it would definitely be against kickstarter’s rules for a lot of reasons. especially since fansubbing is technically illegal.
I always thought translating something into existence when it doesn’t exist in your native language in the first place was more of a murky grey area unless someone associated with the copyright said no, no, no three times over a roast beef sandwich on a Sunday…oh well, in that light we shall consider your work a labor of love for all the peoples of the world…at least until some dangerous strangers comes to make your website and all your disappear in a whiff of invisible smoke and mirrors.
*Raises a glass of vodka* Here’s to the joy you bring the world with your technically sorta maybe a little bit illegal and morally grey enterprise!
*Wishful thinking* Maybe the creators of the VN you are working on will adopt you for your fine work on translating their VN?
fansubbing in our context is taking japanese intelectual content, slapping a translation under it and uploading it.
If commie where to release the scripts only and not even hint at the shares, there might be some hope.
else, it’s out of the frying pan into the fire.
Well I’m pretty sure why nobody used gittip^^.
Normally people don’t even consider making a new Account on a Website for the purpose of tipping. They also only allow Bank Account from the US and almost nobody in Europe (atleast in Germany) uses Credit Cards.
What would be an acceptable option for you Europeans then?
The only way I’ve ever donated to something other than by using paypal was using google wallet. I don’t know if that’s an option for you but it worked for the torrent tracker I donated to.
Money Laundering.
>almost nobody in Europe (atleast in Germany) uses Credit Cards.
Huh, that’s the first I hear of that, around here in Sweden everyone uses credit cards or debit cards, both usable online. That was the case when I was visiting Finland, Norway, Denmark and Hungary too.
Here in italy the use of credit card isn’t really spread few people use them actually
People over 40s don’t use it a lot, but I guess it’s not really the target.
Italy what? Last time I checked Italy has this thing called “Postepay” which works as a VISA (credit card) for online shopping. It is more like an empty card which you need to put money in. Oh, and you can get it easily in every postal office. Its use is widespread, so much that it has a de facto monopoly.
On the real cc, the penetration is low, because of business not using it (I mean physical stores, online ones use it, even the small ones).
The bad things that can happen on cc in Italy are the same as the rest of the EU (comparing with DE, FR, SW, NL).
Norther EU states like NL may use inet banking more (or at least I’m told so, which would make sense).
Only thing in Italy is that the “tricks” scammer used in the past in the rest of EU will still be used in Italy (so behind the times).
So please, no excuses, if you don’t want to donate don’t use cheap excuses.
[I got a better one: “unemployed”, more realistic. Too bad it’s my case]
Oh yes, I do live in Italy, so it’s 1st hand info.
People in germany don’t like virtual currency like that, since it makes tracking your actual reserve a hassle.
Krauts don’t like to have a credit tab standing.
I’m helping! Hope you get to 50 $ soon.
NOW GET TO SUB DANDY.
Ill try to donate the leftovers from my monthly income, don’t really mind spending some money on my favourite fansub :D
Never really thought of it before, but since I use you guys all the time I’ll start the monthly thing.
Just starting with 1 a month, but I plan on raising it to a few soon.
Sorry, a week*
Have you considered flattr? I already have an account there and truth to be told I’m hesitant to give my credit card data to some unknown company. Direct, one-time payment would be my preferred payment method.
i’m guessing they will not appreciate the nature of our operation
Are you sure? BakaBT had a flattr button for quite some time (though not many people seem to use it unfortunately).
Yeah, bakabt is still using flattr. seems like they don’t care about torrent sites.
I’m guessing they wont care as the founder is one of the founders of The Pirate Bay and active in the Pirate movement. But I dunno. Anyway, I don’t think you can get much donations from it as the average donation I’ve got is in the €0.2 – €0.5 range so far
The only way to withdraw money from flattr are Paypal or Skrill (moneybookers). Skrill requires me to upload a valid ID and a utility bill to “verify my identity”.
I’ll try see if I can donate through Gittip from the UK. By the way, how the heck did UTW pull it off with $3700+ in a single day using PayPal whilst you guys got suspended?
I’m sure we’ve gotten close to that amount over the course of how long we had the Paypal up (which was a few years).
And I’m guessing they transferred the money out of paypal to a bank account or something before it amassed so Paypal wouldn’t get suspicious.
Glad to help you guys out, keep up the great work!
How many shares do I have to buy to gain a controlling interest?
About as many as Facebook bought of Oculus Rift.
inb4 a certain blogger/wannabe-fansubber foaming at the mouth…
inb4 all his comments are already marked as spam.
“This post was written yesterday, but due to the nature of the situation, I chose to wait a day before publishing it.” Probably a smart idea lol. Anyway, I hope you guys get enough money to pay the bills. I’d donate too if I wasn’t broke.
commie going bankrupt?
THIS IS NOT JUSTICE
You should consider a fallback for us autists who use noscript/requestpolicy, because the gittip widget doesn’t show up with either of those enabled.
can’t you just go to the link?
I can’t see the link without enabling gittip. Of course that’s not hard to do, but once this post sinks behind releases newcomers won’t know there’s anything they’re not seeing.
I’ll get the site guy to do something.
Looks like we broke Gittip…
sasuga
As embarrassing as this is, I can’t afford more then 1$ a month right now. Pathetic, I know, but I lost my job. Still… hope it helps.
Only when Spaec Dandeh is released
Damn just when i though lets give my big friends some money to get by. it only accept credit card (which i dont have) or bank transfer) which costs more than the actual payment i want to make (by figure of means) damn you PayPal leave us alone!
What’s an acceptable method for you?
putting money in an envelope? that wont work as well i guess ^^. Never actually looked into anything else besides using PayPal. (which isn’t a viable option anymore)
>due in a week
Thats a little too general. If its before saturday, I oughta be able to throw some dosh your way though.
In any case, your donation will help for next month’s payment if it doesn’t make this month’s.
There you go, you damned Communists. $5.00/month for the time being.
shekels pls
Maybe try looking into http://www.paygarden.com
You might be able to take gift cards as payments. Not sure if they transfer the card to you, or if you get cash at the end, but if all else fails, it may be another route to take payments.
It is suppose to be completely anonymous, by the way.
Sorry for spamming the board! But on last thing. The users who donate just use gift cards, and they don’t have to use credit cards. I seen it on “private internet access’s” site as a payment type for the vpn service. OK that is all, just trying to help!
I’ll take a look.
Never tried this site before, but I wanted you to know I support you.
I’ll try to send what I can monthly, but considering my mood right now and wanting to make a difference, I’ll be sending you US$100 for the month.
Thing is, I don’t quite understand when I can disable the donation, as I can’t really apportion more than this amount for the month.
Please reply back through myemail when you can as this is kinda serious business for me.
Cheers,
-Victor
Cripes. Not sure if my donation went through or if I accidentally removed it.
It doesn’t go through until the end of the month, if you’re referring to gittip.
Then I must have removed it. Will fix when I can.
Do you accept tips directly through email? I use the Cash application, ask rcombs about it.
This
https://square.com/cash
Just tried it out. I guess it works.
I’m going to be that guy and honestly offer my two cents. Why should I, as a person, donate to an illegal service, that is otherwise provided legally to the individual, when money could better be spent on legal distribution methods to view said anime.
As it stands, looking over a number of your titles that you guys are doing, you are doing nothing but anime that has been provided by legal venues, such as Crunchyroll, FUNimation, etc., when those subtitles (and in one case, dub) are perfectly acceptable quality. What is the purpose of translating these from scratch and producing your own subtitles, when another method of viewing is perfectly available. Not to mention, a number of titles are available for free, some the day of or the week after, or have a low subscription cost fee per month. Or, if you really are impatient and poor, there’s always the option of seeking rips of these.
Either way, I see no benefit from providing a group such as yourself money. Not to mention, the legal implications you guys are doing so in asking for said donations, as if the ideal of subtitling anime that is legally available isn’t already questionable enough.
>perfectly acceptable quality
Definitely not always true.
>What is the purpose of translating these from scratch and producing your own subtitles
We almost never do this.
You know, you might have a stronger argument if you were better informed.
I like how you totally ignore the fact I said you guys are still asking for donations to continue an illegal operation.
Because I don’t have a problem with that, and clearly neither do most people here.
So, let me get this straight.
You don’t care about the legal implications that you are, essentially, taking money from the fans, that could be spent else where on legal products (such as the simulcast streaming services), that you are, as you said, not redoing the subtitles from scratch, which implies you are “fixing” or “modifying” official subs, and getting money for doing so.
Because if that’s correct, I have absolutely, no respect for you guys as a group. At this point, you guys are nothing more than pirates trying to make some money on the side. You aren’t even a fansubbing group, period (which, honestly, even then has legal implications still). Even if you claim that these are for “server costs”, you are still getting money for an illegal services, especially making it off of legal subtitles.
I hope the rights holders take note of what you’re doing, because there is nothing that you guys are doing that is right. I really hope this group, as a whole, gets shut down.
And that’s all I have to say on this.
Are you doing your Dark_Sage impression?
I’ll think you’ll find a lot of people donating cannot legally watch the streams because of region locks.
Also, there is about a 0% chance we will get shut down since the website is hosted by Nyaa, which I’m pretty sure would’ve been shut down years ago if it was possible.
And finally, we make exactly $0 on fansubbing. The money we get monthly goes exclusively to pay for our server which is what makes fansubbing so many shows possible.
Are you nuts? They’re not taking anything from anyone?
herkz did not come to my house, put a gun to mu head and told me to give them money or die.
And are you serious? Where have you been the past 2 years? Companies like Funi know about this, but they cannot actually DO anything about it. They tried 5 times, with no results. They tried the sue people, it didn’t work. Get it?
>herkz did not come to my house, put a gun to mu head and told me to give them money or die.
What level donation do I have to make to get this?
You want to pay herkz to come to my house and put a gun to my head?
Not cool, dude, not cool…
;)
Why not?
Well, coming from Europe, I can assure you that there are exactly zero (0, nil, nada, nuthin’) services that allow me to watch anime legally. Last time I checked, I had to wait what, two, three years? to be able to BUY a freaking DVD.
http://www.wakanim.co.uk/catalogue
doesn’t seem like zero to me, sir.
>search for Precure
>No series match your search.
It does seem like zero to me, though.
Also, this shit does not seem legal.
It’s what All The Anime uses and links to from their site.
>Our series are available in the following English-speaking countries: United Kingdom, Isle of man and the Republic of Ireland. If you are not in one of these areas, the videos will unfortunately be blocked.
TIL UK, Isle of man and Ireland = entire Europe
wat
I don’t see any mention of entire Europe being those three countries in that sentence.
>fansubbing
>not entirely legal
BREAKING NEWS, LADIES AND GENTS, HOT OFF THE PRESSES
You. Are. High-larious!
And such the newbie, if you think there is anything new in anything you’ve said. Where is that We Are Anonymous graphic or video showing how old-timey people were so sure the newfangled wireless radio (yup, they called it that: wireless!) was gonna shut down the music halls, etc.? I got a fever so can’t find it myself. But that graphic or video was so perfect to show how these arguments were not new–on either side, actually.
Don’t worry: I’m not feeding a troll, I’m just poking a dead one with a stick.
Oops. Forgot to add that my friend and I each have a buck, even though we’re on permanent medical leave.
So, because I enjoyed poking that dead troll so much, we’re gonna try to figure out how to send you our $2 to support our opportunities to poke at dead trolls in the future. Nobody can object to that, surely!
After all, it’s all about…*community*… That’s what we’re *really* supporting here!
(Dammit, I can’t find the sarcastic italics button! Wasn’t sartalics supposed to be supported in the latest browsers? Grrr…)
I don’t care it’s not legal. They give me anime the way I want it, so I want to support them. Why is that hard to grasp? Why should I care about Funi or CR? They aren’t providing me with anything, since I’m region locked out of their streams.
Those services aren’t available everywhere, they mostly US-only. Here in Sweden our only option is the dozen or so old anime that crunchyroll offers, If you want anything else, it’s from fansubbing groups.
Sent $10, waiting for spess dandi now
Set up a Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/) account and draw dicks for us every week for money. They won’t have to know about fansubs. It’ll be a totally legit front!
https://www.paysafecard.com/en-us/
Maybe this is an option for you guys. I don’t know shit about it though.
Cummie Sobs, I love you guys. Faggots. Hopefully you can find a good way to receive donations soon, I’d love to chuck some money your way. Have we exhausted the google wallet route?
Give me the rest of Space Dandy dual-audio and I will pay you.
On a more serious note, couldn’t you just use a personal PayPal account and not make it so…. obvious what it’s for?
we were using rhe’s personal account…
How do they know the money is funding fansubs though?
apparently some guy at paypal came to this site and took a bunch of screenshots as proof it was for illegal activities
lol
They don’t have much to do if they even come to take screenshots just to get someone off the service lol
A long list of available crowdfunding options:
https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com#see-also
If you have any Canadian members, you could use Interac E-Transfer. It only requires giving an email address. Sender and receiver need Canadian bank accounts. It seems easy enough to set up.
https://www.interac.ca/en/interac-etransfer/etransfer-detail
we’re all red-blooded americans
but really, we are, so it won’t really work
I had the same problem, downloaded and installed chrome with standard settings and it worked.
Dunno why it didn’t work with Firefox, even though i said to request policy and no script to temporary lift all restrictions.
This is what you get for spending all the donations on shit not for fansubbing.
[citation needed]
or did the server that costs $200/month magically stay alive without anyone paying for it?
I’m really interested in that $200/month server thing, because that sounds fucking expensive since Commie doesn’t host much bandwidth-consuming content (i.e. only torrents, no DDL).
I would very much like to donate because I love Commie, but I’d like to know more about the specifics of how the money is spent, if that’s ok with you.
it pays for the encoding server/ftp
i’d like to know more specifics
if Google wallet is ok with tf2 shops, i’m sure they will be fine with a sub group. there is also stripe, which is used by humble bundle.
now to the point of my post, are you guys doing soul eater not?
While you may think this is a very strange and round about way to do it. Try this method.
Google Play store(dafuq?? wha? 0_o)
Create a small program application and all it does is donate money.
I suppose you could link the comments or make an android comments section with in it, so that users could say something short.
If not mistaken, cost to do this is $20us and you can run the funds pretty easy to your bank. Then transfer the money(physically?) to another bank account to cover the obvious…you don’t want another account to be closed, duh!
By the way. Many areas of the world have at least 5 banks in 1 small city. Just open up a normal checking and physically transfer the funds from one account to the other bank that regards your site.
Ex:
Google funds bank –> withdraw from that bank and drive across town to the other and have THAT one up the funds you need to the website folks to pay them.
Pain in the ass, but simple enough with little hassle after you get the donation app up and running.
Several reasons why:
1- It is not required for anyone to use a credit card or anything directly associated with the user.
(also amazon, as they have amazon payments via cards too)
Tis a legit way to pay with out getting a rotor rooter up yer butt with a camera watching every deal.
2- It is easy to collect and nobody will give a sh!t.
3- Many people use android.
^Confirmed for drug dealer.
Donated! That service is really easy to use and convenient.
I’ve been using you guys subs for so long and yet I’ve never donated… Thanks for keeping up the hard work and for giving me my anime fix for the last >3 years I believe. I’ve set up weekly donation. And I’m starting my first full time job soon so I won’t be a broke college student for long! :)
I don’t mind donating more than a buck monthly, but the donation method is pretty difficult…. Mind finding some easier way for me to send money to?
if we had one we’d use it
>Asks for donations
>Hasn’t released Space Dandy in weeks
Stallplex pls
So I registered my credit card on Gittip and it says 402: Client Error – Payment required
What do? Instructions not clear enough.
Also, I’m not in US. (if that matters)
>not able to instantly exchange coin to fiat
duh
GUYS!!!
Have you ever thought of using Patreon?!
I’m certain plenty people here can let go of a dollar or two a month, and with enough people that could easily stack up beyond hundreds a month! Not sure what the legality status of it all is but maybe this is an option?
Best of luck Commie, I still haven’t watched Stardust Crusaders 9 and I goddamn won’t unless it’s your release, you’re the best!
In my day we used snail mail and wrote a check. Not signing up for some account I don’t want, and don’t really care for the ‘cancel weekly donation for a one time’ thing. If you email me an address, more than happy to send you a check. Give me the routing number to your bank, and I’ll send it electronically (at the bottom of your check) and I don’t have to deal with the lousy postal service.
Just made a small donation with bitcoin (by far the easiest to use for me).
However I was wondering if maybe subbable.com is a possible option for you guys. I don’t know if they would allow it but it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.
Maybe Patreon? http://www.patreon.com/
Try Patreon rather than Kickstarter. They’re set up to do recurring donations, per month or per piece of content, but they’re looking into adding one-off tips as well. They don’t have many restrictions on what the creators are creating, and they work internationally.
I’d donate weekly if Mahoyo was revived :3
The donations don’t affect Mahoyo whatsoever.
$20 if you use a service that I can actually pay $20 to.
Ok I really don’t know much about doing online transactions to pay for illegal fansubbing but if you pay for your server monthly using electronic payments, then wouldn’t this be possible:
Set up a new donation service through Paypal, but just have someone hold onto it as a personal account. Don’t actually make any payments through it. Then, use another service that takes a blind-eye to your actions (Gittip, Google Wallet?, etc), transfer the money from Paypal to the other service, then make the monthly server payments.
Sounds like a pain in the ass, and idk if it would even work, but if it’s feasible I think it would be easier for everyone in the long run.
I exchange both fiat for bitcoin and bitcoin for fiat several times a month through an exchange, its an exchange based in my country (brazil), they both take my fiat and send fiat to me from/to my bank account, I assume US, Europe and mostly everywhere else has at least one exchange with the same features. I see people in the internet mentioning coinbase, bitstamp and localbitcoins, though I havent used them since those are not from here.