The Age of Fansubbers and Money
There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about scanlating and moneymaking. Here’s a post from us regarding the other side of the anime/manga fandom.
Now before continuing, here’s a disclaimer. Is this post going to be biased?
Oh hell yes.
Here’s the thing;
Watermarks are retarded
Does Commie use watermarks? No. Not even a logo of the group plastered all over the title scene, which some notable groups love to do.
Do you see this shit? Do you know how fucking annoying that is?
Why do scanlation groups do retarded things like the above? The answer is Money, which will be covered a bit later. For now, more ranting about how incredibly retarded watermarks are.
The argument scanlators have is that they want people who read manga online to know where it came from. Does it fucking matter? You’re a fucking pirate, get over yourselves.
You hear a lot about how Mangafox “steals” their work, and in response scanlators have resorted to watermarking a perfectly good release to shit.
Guess what? Anime streaming sites exist too. There are a fucking ton of them, and we at Commie don’t give a single shit about our “work” being “stolen”. We don’t even use logos. If you were to stream our release on a random site, unless the upload has [Commie] in the title, you would have no fucking idea it was from us. (Unless, of course, you recognize LT Finnegan, but that’s a separate story)
There also exists a “good” manga reading site, Batoto. Batoto actually allows scanlators to be paid for their work through ad revenue. Look around on this site. Do you see ads? No. Do you think any of the 50 million anime streaming sites listed on Google pays us? No, no they don’t.
So how does fansubbing remain alive? What motivates people to do it, if it isn’t money?
Donations. Commie has subsisted entirely on donations and Fileserve money. Now Fileserve is dead, and we will have to do with only donations just like Wikipedia. We have zero ad revenue, no other sites paying us, and absolutely no watermarks.
Now scanlators might argue:
The amount of work put into scanlating is greater than that of fansubbing.
Bullshit.
The average team of people that sees an episode from start to finish consists of at least five people, each putting in a couple of hours. That’s one episode. We do (or at least try to do) seventeen episodes a week. How, you may ask? Sheer willpower and manpower. Commie has a staff of over twenty active members, and we hope to at least double that. None of them are paid. None of them ask to be paid. They do this for the pride, for the enjoyment, and honestly, for the friends you can make while subbing cartoons. Proof? Over 70 people have applied for intern positions in the last two months. These people want to “give back” to the community, and some of them will go on to do exactly that.
A server for providing manga is more expensive than a fansubbing server.
Again, bullshit. If the guys running those things had any idea of efficient coding, a 100mbps server with a decent quad core CPU could provide for everything. Such servers are cheap, $100 at most. Incidentally, encoding the average 720p anime episode would take at least four hours on said server. Bandwidth? What about bandwidth? Commie’s server dishes out 3TB a month, and our XDCC puts out another TB on top of that. Even if you stored your goddamn pictures in uncompressed PNG at full resolution, they would each be about 2MB. You could fit 150 of those pictures in one anime episode (100 for 10bit).
In conclusion? There is no conclusion. There are “good” scanlators out there who don’t watermark their releases, but their number has been consistently dwindling. Get over yourselves.
You are complaining about people stealing your already stolen work.
Woxxy:
Compared to the [author]’s work, ours is a shitstain, only worth minor credit and a read.
If scanlating completely dies due to people protesting over not being paid for a hobby, then we fansubbers will be laughing at you (not that we’re not already). While you wage war with Mangafox we at Commie will continue providing as many series as humanly possible while training an entire generation of interns.
Long live fansubbing
Posted by RHExcelion under I'm not being sarcastic why would you think I'm being sarcastic, International Politics, Red Army Parades | Permalink
Good post, totally agree with you. Always thought it was dumb that they were angry about Mangafox making money off of ad-revenue instead of them, when they are both ripping off the original authors.
Either way, everyone should be visiting those sites with ad-blocker on in the first place to give them both the good ole fuck you.
They are angry that mangafox makes $3000 a day just for ripping and uploading manga using bots while scanlators themselves are hardly knows and almost never get donations going into red and paying the cost themselves. Batoto also makes a shitload of money but they just give like 10% of it back to the scanlators who don’t go into red that way.
anime fansubbers are more popular and can raise more donation money.
HOLY COW
What fucked up logic is this shit?
You damn hyprocrites…
So accepting donations is okay, but making money of ads is not!?
You crazy?
Ads don’t cost the leecher anything, while donation does.
Both have the same result though.
And how are groups to get donations when nobody knows that they did the work?
You’re just dumbfuckers….
The reason you don’t put a logo in your releases is because you don’t want other people to notice what a crap you release.
HOLY ANALPAIN
Agree here. I watch a lot of your releases and here you are complaining back at ppl who are doing the same job as you because you can’t switch over to a different browser or go to a different site that has clean versions on it. Just proves how much of hyprocrites you guys are.
What a crap, indeed.
You have no room to talk, drama queen. But hey, at least you get noticed for your shittastic releases! Isn’t it great?
http://tlnote.neozeed.net/post/14380849182/elementary-school-level-plural-fuck-up-from-ore
http://tlnote.neozeed.net/post/13178584326/derp-from-gan-kon-ch-1-by-guess-who-japanzai
http://tlnote.neozeed.net/post/12765010880/what-from-oreshura-h-chapter-1-by-guess-who
http://tlnote.neozeed.net/post/10343812181/from-ore-no-kanojo-to-osananajimi-ga-shuraba
SO MUCH BUTT-HURT.
Although, to be fair, RHE, you might want to warn them to get the bottle of lube ready next time.
I think your missing the point. The main argument isn’t ads vs no ads, its Watermarking vs not watermarking (and the reasons why – ad revenue included).
Commie’s argument (the way I interpreted at least) is basically there’s no such thing as a “moral high-ground” when it comes to scanlating because whether the ad revenue goes to you or mangafox, neither of you deserves it since your both pirating someone else’s work (although you guys do put work into it to translate, are you kicking back any of the money you gain to the original authors? no) So basically you shouldn’t be defacing the original images just because you want people to visit a different website (where you make money off of).
Donating is different from ad revenue in that its completely voluntary. Unfortunately there are still quite a large number of people that don’t know how to ad-block so to them visiting a website with ads is not voluntary.
Btw, Personally I don’t care that you guys make ad revenue off of your scans, and i doubt the vast majority of your readers begrudge you that money either. But the method your taking is the wrong method imo. Instead of defacing your works with watermarks so that the inferior version gets spread to mangafox, you should help batoto get better, not drag down both.
The main advantage of mangafox is they offer a better “service” than batoto; faster servers, more user customization, etc.
The watermarks just make both sides look greedy and douchey.
ya know i have to point out one thing here. any money that scanlation people make does essentally go back to the mangaka and makers. since you have to buy the actual copies of the manga and other materiel. Oh and if your going to be so but hurt talk to japan about making a paid translated manga site. If your going to be to lazy to do that and make money that way. STFU sit the fuck down and enjoy your pirated anime.
Wow dude. Just, wow.
Accepting donations while having zero ads tells me as a leech viewer.. “We dig this shit, so we translate it so others can get into it as well. Kick us a bill or two if you enjoy what we shared.” Where as a watermarked POS tells me “We know how to read Weaboo and you dont. If you want into our circle give us your money.” PROzacc, you have inspired me. I just donated fifty bucks. Hey Commie fags, keep up the great work! Buy a shot or two of your favorite swill on me, and I look forward to more of your releases.
DaytonC (as well as PROzess, and that awesome choice in donate icon) you have inspired me to donate as well, albeit only half your amount.
Keep up the good work Commie!
I really don’t see the problem with the ads myself. The people who are throwing fits because they’re not being asked to give up their own money strike me as ridiculously retarded, complaining just to hear themselves whine.
The watermarks I like considerably less, but as described by woxxy earlier, it’s sorta necessary, due to the inherent differences between the two scenes in the way the product is distributed. Also, while I don’t actually know myself, it certainly seems intuitive to me that it’s more expensive to obtain manga raws than animu. Both involve a share of one time equipment purchases for the folks on the providing ends, and both have subsequent reoccurring fees.
Now, I don’t know (or give enough of a damn to care to) anything about broadcast in Japan, so for all I know every animu is broadcast on its own channel you have to subscribe to. It sounds more like most animu we care to watch comes through subscription channels in the vain of HBO, though. Certainly a good deal of it broadcasts on regular channels as well, no? So, personally, I wouldn’t consider the cost of a cable subscription extra, as not many people *don’t* have tv. Otherwise, I would probably put channel subscriptions on par with monthly or weekly magazine subscriptions. Thus leading me to the point that scanlators who wait for tankobon for high quality raws probably have to shell out more cash than fansubbers (discounting the ones who sub blu-ray or something). Again, I don’t have any knowledge of the actual distribution channels for all these pirated cartoons, but yeah man.
And obviously, I would say subbers have far greater server costs. Or *should*, at least.
I think that that particular point was, what’s the fucking problem with ads? Don’t like? Get ad-block plus and donate, quit being butthurt whinyfags. As I said about the differences in distribution channels, I could believe that scanlators receive less publicity for their releases, and thus less opportunity to recoup their costs. So I see where their coming from with the watermarks.
Imo, the real problems lies with holy fuck prozess. Do you see how Woxxy responded to criticism like this? It was fucking *productive*. You are such a self entitled troll, it’s unreal. How do you expect someone to take you seriously when this is how you act *all the fucking time*, even on your own damn site? blablabla i’m tired now
But one last thing.
Why is the comment box sooooo fuuuuuuuucking smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall???????
There’s more than just the channel subscription cost (and the cost of living in Japan / owning a satellite dish or similar, for that matter) – capping equipment for TV signals isn’t cheap. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Right, but again, it’s a one time purchase. It’s a considerably higher purchase than a scanner, but I was just grouping them in the same category. I do stick by completely discounting the cost of living in Japan, having a basic subscription, etc. Unless you quite literally send people over there for the purpose of obtaining animu, then it’s sort of a given.
>HOLY COW
>What fucked up logic is this shit?
>You damn hyprocrites…
Are you mentally retarded?
There’s a HUGE difference between covering your expenses [domain, bandwidth, servers, source material, translator(many want $$$ these days), etc] and INTENTIONALLY trying to turn fansubbing/scanslating into a business model driven by profits.
Once these every group is composed of greedy fucks, looking to make exploit idiots like you, you can kiss niche anime/manga goodbye. Because if an episode/chapter of bleach nets in downloads/page views in the tens of thousands, any series which only generates a couple hundred will be instantly dropped.
The only “dumbfucker” around here is you, stupid.
BTW you spelled “hypocrites” wrong, stupid.
LOLOL this is too funny. Especially the fact that Fansubbers like you guys can easily get raws online sources like nyaa.ue or other torrenting subs. While scanlations have to find raws online with buy Quality or actually use the money from donations to buy raws.
Yeah I guess anime raws just magically appear on torrent sites without any effort or money involved on the part of the provider.
Raws on nyaa.eu are on the same rank as manga raws from Share. They have to have their own capper in Japan to give them proper raws.
Channel subscriptions also cost money, oops.
And recording devices and the Internet connection required to upload the stuff and human effort and proxies to do everything uncaught…
Someone had to record the anime, the same shit happens with manga; the problem is that there is less nice people willing to scan manga
no
Ah, going to use batoto instead of mangafox from now on.
Commie does great stuff. I buy tons of anime dvds of series I watch fansubbed. Hell I still have the fansubbed files on a backup hard drive (getting near 350 series worth) but every time I have extra cash I poney up and buy a set. Why? Because the original company that licenced it, provides money to the orginal maker should get money so that the industry keeps working. Now should fansub sites make money? No way. By making money I don’t mean donations which fan subbers use to actually host the sites and such. Making money off on something you didn’t have the right to sell to start with, since it’s not like they give anything back to the original producers.
As for Prozess (really can we take anyone serious that uses Pro in their name??) his complaint is that adds dont cost a leecher anything. So basically you are a cheap fuck that wants to leech but not give any money back.
As for noticing who does what I download subs from specific subbers even if multiple groups are doing it. I wait for the sub group that I know is doing a good job to do their release.
100% What this guy said ^
I have a couple Fansub groups that I go to for the stuff I want to see, because I know they will produce something I know I’ll enjoy watching. I also have waaay too much money put into figures & shit that I never would have purchased had I never seen the series that they came from, So the original artist gets his as well. Win, win.
Is Fileserve open for downloads again because I just downloaded something there a second ago?
You know I’ve always been very critical of your dubious dedication and sub par releases, yet, after reading this, you’ve earn a good mark on my book.
I guess you guys are ok. Now get the fuck back to subbing my chinese cartoons.
Aaah! Finally! Somebody after me own heart!
I used to be with a yaoi scanlator until the founding members went crazy on me and then I rage quit.
It has always amused me when scanlators go all nazi on you because you either a) don’t worship the ground they walk on by commenting and then they kick you out of their little LJ community or b) you dared to upload their releases somewhere else and share them with the world. Keep in mind that the leader of said group is a fucking retard who didn’t go above ESL level 2 and her English is a sad thing, but she has the balls of steel to scanlate Japanese manga from the Chinese scans and pass it off as the best thing since rubber dildoes. Figure that out! It’s all for their fucking e-peen which considering they’re all women, theirs is twisted and hairy.
So yeah, watermarks are annoying as all hell. They’re distracting and full of irony. Scanlators don’t want to share, really. That’s what it comes down to. With a clean scan, just delete the English and put in your own language. You don’t have to bother buying the book, ripping it and scanning it. And forget cleaning it and the editing is watered down to deleting and adding. The hardest part has already been done for you.
I’ve always wondered who works the hardest and from what I’ve seen in fansubber websites and blogs and what I know of scanlating, everybody has their own work cut out for them. Neither is easy and they’re both expensive. Scanlators need to shut the fuck up and either do it for the love of the art and stop with the annoying watermarks or quit. It’s that simple.
MAN after reading this I give my all to you guys >3333<
You guys are awesome. o_o
Every time I use mangafox, i’m pleased by the death of moronic scanlation groups. Haters gonna hate.
At the end of the day, you’re still a pirate.
“Every time I use mangafox, i’m pleased by the death of moronic scanlation groups. Haters gonna hate.”
You’re definitely a manga reader(almost everyone watching anime reads manga), but you still dare to say that to them? To your “free manga-docs”? The ones providing you all the manga fun?
You must be an insane and a truly ungrateful person to be able to say something like that…..
You can criticize “those scanlators that watermark their work” all you want(though many of them have good reasons for doing something like that), but saying something like “i’m pleased by the death of moronic scanlation groups” would mean you were born from shit and will die in shit.
Only a shitty human would diss someone who’s providing them free entertainment and fun.
The way you said “Every time I use mangafox, i’m pleased by the death…” shows you don’t care whether a scanlator watermarks their work or not.
You just have got no respect for your “entertainment providers.”
Not only that, you read their work and then pray for their death?!
YOU’RE THE BIGGEST SHIT I’VE EVER COME ACROSS IN MY ENTIRE LIFE UNTIL NOW.
Fool, don’t you realize that without those scanlators you’d be sitting like an idiot, crying for your daily/weekly manga fix?!
These fansubbers could only sub the “anime adapted from a manga”(I’m not saying that this applies for every anime, I’ve already seen the exceptions. I’m saying this is that’s way things work most of the time). And most of the time ‘only a part of manga’ is covered in its anime.
To read the real and complete thing, you need manga, and to read manga you need scanlators.
If you don’t know this already, usually an anime is made after its manga(not always).
And there’s numerous manga that don’t have an anime adaption.
That means the real thing lies with scanlators…
And YOU’RE PRAYING FOR THEIR DEATH?!
YOU’RE PLEASED TO SEE THEM DYING?!!
GET SOME LIFE, YOU IDIOT!!
Not only the ones watermarking their work, but the ones that people consider “good” scanlators would die(and I’ve seen the dying) because of sites like Mangafox.
1) No ‘real’ exposure = No staff = No releases = Groups die.
2) People not visiting the scanlator’s site = Hardly any comment on their site = Lack of response = Scanlators gradually lose their will to work = Group die.
Read my post and think about it carefully.
This also implies to all of you who’re criticizing “scanlators”.
Remember- “Manga is the real thing(most of the time)”…
So, we can live without fansubbers, but living without scanlators is impossible.
(And I don’t want anyone to mention that they know Japanese so they can live without scanlators, because then why would you look for fansubbers?!
Only a ‘real fool’ would argue with that point, because it’s completely obvious that we’re talking about the majority, and everyone knows that most of us don’t know Japanese.)
One more thing…
What the HECK?!
You read scanlators’ work, enjoy them, wait for their nrxt release eagerly, and then you’ve got the guts to say that they’re ‘pirates’?!!
IDIOTS, they spend their precious time, do so much physical and mental work, and try to provide you your manga fix, don’t ask for anything in return(most of the scanaltors) and you call them idiots?!!
Heck, we all know what they’re doing isn’t legal, but is that the way to call them after they do so much work for us?!!
At least avoid calling them such names that sound insulting.
When all of us already know the truth, is there any need to use such rude words for them?!
Are all of you so ungrateful that you can’t even appreciate their work, and avoid using rude/insulting words?!!
Example:
Man 1: That girl has been raped, you know…
Man 2: Yeah, it must be hard for her now, haha…
The girl hears their conversation and commits suicide. She wasn’t able to bear the social insult anymore.
—–End——
This is what you guys are doing.
We all know what they’re doing, but saying that again and again means we don’t respect them.
And when they see such words and comments, it would definitely make them feel bad.
And who knows some scanlators might have even left the scanlation world after listing such words.
Everyone has a certain limit, and if one day the scanlators decides to leave their work after not being able to take anymore shit from the leechers(who don’t have any right to say anything), we’ll be all in deep shit.
I’d like all of you to think about the points I’ve mentioned.
I’m sure you’ll start thinking about scanaltors in a different way if you carefully read and understand my points.
I’m just your average ‘reader'(I visit scanlators’ site and say my thanks to them, so I’m a ‘reader’, not a ‘leecher’), who reads tons of manga and don’t want to stop just because of those ‘shitty leechers’.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post!
So, you’re saying scanlating is like rape.
Suddenly it all makes sense.
A fool will always remain a fool…
Just like you, idiot….
It’s obvious what I was trying to explain, but a shit-head like you won’t get it anyway…
Go to grade school and learn something…
I think this guy might be a little bit mad.
Well, not more than you and your fellow fansubbers who made such a fuss about watermarks.
You guys are fansubbers, so you don’t have any right to say anything about scanlation.
And “U mad Bro?”
Holy Fuck , fuck those shit, fuck politics
*slow golf clap*
bravo.
XD I just read that manga you used as an example (Highschool DxD) ON Batoto and it was even watermarked there -_-;;;;; REAALLLY FUCKING ANNOYING to have that face pop up when the page loads, then it oddly disappeared after a few seconds O.o How the hell did they pull that off with jpgs?
Thank you for your amazing work so far, and I hope you may continue doing so for years to come.
I use Chrome and I don’t see the watermarks for more than half a second. What browser are you using?
>> Does Commie use watermarks? No. Not even a logo of the group plastered all over the title scene, which some notable groups love to do.
Um…
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4914/commieanother03a3862426.jpg
Read the previous comments.
I don’t think thats a problem, in fact it made me laugh.
But yeah, its not screen filling, or bothering. (And you can get rid of it)
Haha I know, I was just kidding.
I saw the High School DxD watermark at that page too and of course at mangafox.I was like screw this scanlator >:D
Not to nitpick, but you said you have about 20 people, and johnny_dickpants recently said there are 40 give or take a few useless people. So which is it?
Anyways, thanks for not being greedy.
there are 20 useless people
“What motivates people to do it, if it isn’t money?
Donations.”
Wut.
Nice one.
LOL
Those donations aren’t giving anyone a wage. No one’s working for money here. Did you miss a step somewhere?
e-peen
C’mon guys. If you’re enjoying and can read manga from scanlators even if they watermarking their releases, you should appreciate them rather than boasting they are shit. Forget about scanlators v fansubbers. Both manga and anime need efforts and dedication and spending their precious times to be released for our FREE and ILLEGAL enjoyment. Imho that deserve the credit. Whether they’re trying to make money for whatever goals using whatever methods, we as readers, watchers, leechers are in the same boat: illegal doers. Using watermarks or not, credit yourself or not, it’s still piracty. Even if the scanlators credited their releases, they never credited the artworks as theirs (but the authors, even if they never credit it). Imho, mangafox and streaming sites which exists just for pure profit without doing the “main dirty works” themselves are what I called shit. You can still read one piece w/o mangafox. You can watch Shana w/o streaming sites. But you can’t read and watch anime w/o scanlators and fansubbers. Again, why complaining about other using watermarks? Is watermarks making the manga /anime looks ridiculuous? Or is it reducing the quality? Or is it an eyesore? Before you argument with that, you SHOULD first remember that the anime and manga you get from fansubbers and scanlators are illegal. Don’t complain fansubbers/scanlators policies to watermark their releases. You’re asking illegal doers whom use their resources to release anime/manga w/o watermarks because you desired a clean-from-watermarks anime and manga for your illegal virtual products keepsake? That’s laughable men. You should be grateful enough that you can even get to watch and read and even keep it for FREE. If you don’t like it watermarked, why don’t you find the raw and do the illegal process yourselves? Or even better, why don’t you buy the official products?
What’s laughable is that you are attempting to justify slapping a watermark on someone else’s art because you think that your miniscule contribution is worth more than the original. That I should have to see your name and automatically associate your name with someone else’s work.
Internally justify it all you want, but keep it between you and your therapist.
If I ever start my own sub group I’m gonna call it [IllegalVirtualProductsKeepsake]
Nice idea, man. Sarcasm or not, decide 4 urself as neither are my intention.
Illegal? Not in my country, faggot
Ads aren’t necessarily any worse than donations (malicious ads are). Ad blockers and script blockers are pretty much necessary to even use a browser anymore. The whole reason I started using ad blockers in the first place was because of otherwise legitimate sites hosting malicious ads (against the site owner’s permission). I really don’t care about a banner here or there, if it allows me to support a site I enjoy. However, I can’t support having malicious ads trying to jack my browser.
Also, watermarking always has been and always will be a pile of horseshit. Really, it’s not your fucking work to begin with so stop trying to fucking brand it as if it were. Watermarks as a whole are full-on retarded but using them on something that isn’t even your work just brings the retarded to a universe imploding new level.
I consider the whole wanting to recoup costs a bit of a gray area because of two reasons. One, most of those expenses can be eliminated by using free services. Two, I’d rather people donated supplies than money. Donated servers or raws gives a lot less reason for people to think you’re just in it for the money. I realize neither of those are necessarily convenient or easy but they’re at least a bit less gray. However, sites gathering up copyrighted material that was translated by fans, for free, and then redistributing, for profit, isn’t about doing stuff for the fans; it’s a business.
The last thing any scanlator or subber should want is for their work to become part of a business model. It’s a lot easier for publishers to turn a blind eye to fans basically giving them free advertising; it’s another story entirely when you’re blatantly ripping off their work for profit.
I will say this about scanlations though, it does require more “physical” labor than subbing does. You don’t have to scan an episode frame by frame into a computer. All that turning pages and putting them in a scanner is hard work. You might even build up a sweat if you do it the correct way and unbind them first.
One final note about scanlators, they tend to be even bigger drama queens than subbers. It must come from all the intense physical labor involved.
well you guys make awesome subbing anywayz, live long mann
I’m a “scanlator” (sorta. I do everything EXCEPT the actual scanning) and I’m quite surprised anyone would think that it’s more difficult than subbers. These guys are doing huge numbers of projects in a short amount of time and with competition. I can go 60 days between releases of the same series and nobody cares. And frankly, some other posters here make too much of a fuss about Kanji. I’m not very good at Kanji either but many manga come with a magical thing called “furigana” which makes them easy and I also have 2 kanji OCR programs which make the non-furigana stuff I do almost as easy. Really, I’d much rather be a scanlator than a subber.
Agree with you Commie. Watermarks are for IDIOTS WHO THINK THEY MATTER.
Pirates fighting over moral ambiguities. It’s like a con-man arguing with a car-thief over who is more morally upstanding.
And the customers are just standing around commenting to each other to see who is actually right, forgetting that neither will ever be right, while the original car-makers continue to produce cars and the cycle begins again… Love it.
More like the con-man complaining that the car thief steals shit cars and needs to do a better job.
Maybe I’m just a nostalgic old-folgey, but I kind of miss Hawks and Certhy. Back when scanlators weren’t so self-righteous.
just go on batoto except if you like reasized scans by mangafox
big deal
The thing subbers & scanlators don’t get is that your all doing DEDICATED ILLEGAL COPYRIGHTS, you do NOT have LICENSES nor PERMISSIONS to do so. Your all stealing money from the original creators/authors. You should NOT or ALLOWED to be profiting even donations that is why its called “fan”subbing, your doing because your a fan of anime and should NOT expect to be paid, profiting or donations.
Seriously? No money is being stolen at all. Piracy has been proven to actually increase revenue for the copyright holders. Read the above comments. Others have bought figures and licensed copies of the shows because they know that their money is well spent.
Most fansubbers don’t profit from donations, but instead use the money to maintain their own hobby of translating anime and providing it for their peers.
It is illegal, but only because it has been deemed so by people who don’t understand the benefits.
Also, **You’re: It means “You fucking are. ‘Your’ does not.”**
I know right? I really hate it when people don’t know when to use “your” and “you’re”!
Piracy increases revenue and no money being stolen? You’re joking right, millions of dollars are being stolen from piracy. Hundreds of thousands of people downloading torrents or ddls pretty sure not even half of those people buy the cds/dvds/bds and multiply those into dollars. Why do you think anime takes so long and few releases in US? Simple, not enough people buying! Why? cause most people already seen them, blame torrents, ddls & fansubs… they think they’re doing for the greater good of the viewers but in business wise these affects the anime industry since more and more people will be buying less dvds/bds.
Bandai Entertainment downsizing.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/bandai_downsizing_ken_iyadomi_interview
This is the same as this -> http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/1506305_700b.jpg ( from 9gag)
I see how hurt they are..
>9fag
and here someone thought that the whole world itself was only US
(¬_¬)
===============
Not always. As long as I can afford it, I always try to buy the original copy of manga
Actually, whatever that link says aside, the real reason that Bandai has retreated from America is because Japanese realised that while they were paying $40 per episode, we were paying as much for the whole series.
So, Japanese started importing their exported anime, and that is why Bandai was losing money.
God bless you. I scanlate a little bit. Just for fun. There are plenty of respectable scanlators that do it for the community, but occasionally I come across someone that tries to coax a profit out of the work. It makes me sick.
Doing a hobby for appreciation/money simply is wrong.
Watermarks in scanslation destroys the work itself -> fail@hobby.
“Does Commie use watermarks? No.”
What about the Watermark in the Another OP? It is such a brilliant Idea :P.
That was our typesetter being sneaky, I doubt it’ll stay in.
Hey Commie,
I’m an editor for Soba-Scans which is a smaller scanlation team, and we’re perpetrators of what you’ve complained about with scanlation teams. Though we don’t do things for the reasons that you’ve listed (other than credit).
We do have watermarks on our images, but we try to keep it small and in the exact same location so it doesn’t ever move around and distract readers. We’re 100% donation based and rely on our readers to help us get manga overseas so we can scan them and translate them.
Credit can go a long way, because I can think of fansubbers I wouldn’t download seeing their name, and I can think of fansubbers I would immediately go to seeing their name. I feel the same with some scanlation teams where you know what you’re getting into with the content whether it be translation ability, editing, or even the type of content in the manga itself.
I’m not a fan of mangafox, but I do follow your thought of “we steal content and bitch about others stealing” – what I really don’t like about mangafox are the users haha. They’re all very arrogant whiney 14 year olds complaining because they don’t have things faster, I’m sure fansubbers can relate to that-very- well. “ITS BEN RELEASED IN JPN FOR A HOUR NOW, GOD WHY ARE U TAKING SO LONG?????????’
>I feel the same with some scanlation teams where you know what you’re getting into with the content whether it be translation ability, editing, or even the type of content in the manga itself.
This has absolutely no relation to what’s mentioned in our blog post. We don’t usually insert watermarks in our releases (sometimes certain staff members get bored, but even so they’re softsubbed and can easily be removed or disabled), and as mentioned in the post, the only way to tell that a Commie release is a Commie release is from the file name. It’s not like scanlators don’t put their own group names in the .zips or .rars they release. In other words: watermarks, no matter how small, are completely pointless. (I’m aware of other types of “watermarking” that’d pretty much instantly identify groups, like us using LT Finnegan on almost everything, or the encoding settings used for releases, but let’s not count those as watermarks.)
And about the whole “RELEASE FUCKING WHERE” bullshit you seem to think is immature, how about considering the fact that typical scanlation groups are excessively slow compared to speedsub groups like ourselves? Yeah, like we’re gonna believe it takes a whole day to just scan, translate and typeset text on 20 pages of manga. (I don’t really care about manga and scanlators, so correct me if your group doesn’t spend days to scanlate shit.)
We at Commie believe in efficiency, and that includes pestering staff members at 4 am (local time) in order to get shit done. Everything is done fast, not just to be the first (although that’s the main reason), but because it’s a challenge to do things fast, and we like challenges. We find fansubbing fun, and we don’t just sub out of commitment to our leechers.
PS: before anyone accuses us of hypocrisy with regards to Maria, it’s almost fully done and stalled at QC, I think. The problem with shows that have been stalled this long is that people stop being motivated to do it fast, because what difference does a day make when it’s already a year late?
Hurr durr looks like I forgot to reread the post before posting and included a shitload of redundancy in this comment.
“It’s not like scanlators don’t put their own group names in the .zips or .rars they release”
Herp Derp, the people that are downloading the rars or zips most likely already know the scanlator’s website or group name.
How are people that read manga on online readers supposed to download the rars and zips?
You also seem to be under the impression that all mangas have 20 page chapters, come on crispy clean high quality paper, and has text entirely in white speech bubbles.
I can assure you that the average manga chapter has more text to typeset than the average anime episode. Which for the most part has the positioning of the text on by default. You should try typesetting manga before bitching about the slow speed of scanlators.
I’m sure that is only a select few immature people. A single person who complains like an idiot creates much more of a ruckus than nineteen people who wait patiently (I hope that makes sense).
[…] have any of you guys seen this? Apparently, I’m not alone in my opposition to excessive […]
*manly tears* You make me proud! T_T
Keep up the good work comrads!
Funny, I was just talking over about ANN about copyright and people who agree with it even though they don’t follow it and here I see a post with stolen, etc. all over it
Well, I don’t think you stole anything or that scanlators are, and as for watermarking, I may find it annoying but I just won’t go to places that do it (I don’t read manga for the most part anyway).
I feel the same way about ads if they are annoying. Animetake has particularly annoying ads that popup fullscreen, thankfully I’ve found that I can just f11 to get out of those.. but if I hated it that much I wouldn’t use that site, but it’s convenient in most other ways so I still go there.
I’m a now retired scanlator, and I agree, but also disagree with some of what you said. I never had any desire to make a dime from scanlating, and never watermarked my releases. However, I NEVER wanted a site like Mangafox to host my releases and make 3k a day for simply hosting it. Not to mention they earned 3k /day not simply by hosting it, but compressing them, and making things like screentones look far worse than they did originally. The only reason I ever supported Batoto is because they show images in their full resolution, not just 1200 px. I actually didn’t support them at first because I didn’t believe in making money in any way, shape, or form. Donations or not. bark about it all you want, but as far as I see it, making money from donations is no different from making money any other way. As you said yourselves, it’s all piracy.
>So how does fansubbing remain alive? What motivates people to do it, if it isn’t money?
I call this not answered.
After my brief stint, this is the greatest damn mystery in fansubbing and scanlating to me, and I’ll never sleep soundly until I understand it.
D:
>They do this for the pride, for the enjoyment, and honestly, for the friends you can make while subbing cartoons
>That’s just crazy talk.
>So how does fansubbing remain alive? What motivates people to do it, if it isn’t money?
Bitches, coke, and giving haters rage-induced erections.
^professional speaking
That’s more like it.
What bitches? most are dudes, aren’t they? Yo the rest: HAHAHAHA
Yo=To . I is tard.
I run a subbing & scantalation group. and I don’t think anyone should make a profit. off of subbing and scantalating. it cost money to have a server and stuff, subbers should be stuck with the cost if people want to help them cover it. other things pop up as well. but you know this is supposed to be a hobby not a job. and guess what, you have no rights to the show anyway, so where do you get off making money off of it.
The donations we get go to paying for the server and shit.
@ Csiko
Yeah, right. I never justify anything as all of scanlation and fansubbing are illegal. It’s laughable to demand more when you get something illegally and for free. What right do outsiders have to demand more? If u can’t understand what I mean, then don’t talk back w/ ur cycnical sentence (therapist? ridiculous)
And beside, where did I say or indicate that I think scanlators efforts are worth more than the authors? I don’t even get how you could misinterpret my words sooo wrongly like that. C’mon man, scanlations DO need efforts, sources (internal / external), and spending ur PRECIOUS time. And even if it’s an illegal efforts, scanlators deserve and have the right to opt giving themselves a credit. What’s so hurt about that, seriously? It’s not like people need to read it or whatever. You can even delete the credit page if u don’t like it. Fussing about what others do when u don’t even play in the same game is laughable, man.
If I can’t understand what you mean, it’s because you’re an incompetent pinoy who is incapable of completing a single complex thought in the form of a sentence.
To think that any part of what you are trying to say isn’t some kind of twisted justification for being a faggot thief is laughable. As in, absolutely hilarious in all ways. It means I am laughing at you.
Now you know.
Your time is worth nothing to me, just like my time is worth nothing to the people who download our releases. Time is not precious, and if it was, I wouldn’t be sitting here honoring any half-assed gibberish of yours through responses.
Nothing screams “I’m important!” quite like screaming “I’m important!”
>Watermarks are retarded
I bet u like being marked by ur girlfriend
(¬‿¬)
i has always been a lurker but this time im posting to tell you that it is guys like you that motivate me to learn my jap properly to contribute to the society.
you guys rock!
>Funny, I was just talking over about ANN about copyright and people who agree with it even though they don’t follow it and here I see a post with stolen, etc. all over it
As debatable as it is whether the original purpose of copyright was a worthy cause, it seems rather clear cut that copyright, as it exists today, is nothing more than a legalized system for blackmail(send us money or we tell everyone about your donkey pr0n), extortion(send us money or we sue you for your donkey pr0n) and outright slavery(we just sued you for downloading donkey pr0n and you now owe us more money than you’ll ever own in your next 10 lifetimes making you our personal bitch). This doesn’t even count the various ways it is used to stomp competition (and prevent/impede innovation) as in the way copyright/patent trolls currently do. The patent system really isn’t any better and much of what is done wrong with copyright can be said for patents.
It really amazes me that after over a decade of seeing our rights systematically being stripped from us for the sake of the almighty dollar, that people are just now starting to act out against it and even then their efforts tend to be lackluster at best. People largely seem content to stand idly by and watch and others are so ignorant as to believe the propaganda being spewed by big business.
Even by current legal standards, copyright infringement by definition is not theft. Copying is not the same as taking something away. You can thank big media for tricking people into conflating copyright infringement with theft.
Fun fact: Copyright was done for protecting authors from EDITORS, not from readers
All I know is, I’m very grateful to you guys for releasing quality fansubs. I have no personal or emotional investment in any of the issues; I’m just happy for the free entertainment and the fact that you sacrifice your own free time to give that to me. Thanks again and keep up the good work!
“Commie has subsisted entirely on donations and Fileserve money. ”
The biggest problem is that the anime fan who has been around anime for longer then the past few years knows fansubs existed for a LONG time by groups that didn’t demand they “get payed” for their work..
Will always just look like greedy mother fuckers begging for money to most because there’s hundreds of groups that did it before you, and without a “need for MONEY” constantly..
We actually have to pay cash money for a server that we do most of our stuff on.
And they paid for it out of their own pockets.
Guess what? THAT’S THE REASON THEY’RE NOT AROUND ANYMORE.
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG?! I can not agree more with commie, DO what we have always done, Boycott the worse theifs. They’re making money on something you do not agree with, then get people to hate the site instead. they(the sites) are usually lazy people trying to make money easily, a bad site such that should not exist on anyone’s bookmarks.
Animefansubbing has ALWAYS been for anime lovers BY anime lovers. No one can argue against that. another human doing a favour for another because he wants to share his interest.
On the money problem, yes servers costs, end of discussion, donate to them if you want them to continue their hobby. Something has to pay for the costs.
Lemme end, I just skimmed though the posts after reading OP, THANKS FOR YOU AWESOME WORK COMMIE!
good job commie . . . good job
commie and GG and the best for a good reason: they produce good, and I mean that, good subs and are readable and dont contain extra crap or fluff. open one of there ep’s some time and all you will see is the video file, and a sub file. thats is. (note: this may have changed) no water marks, no info about them as the subers. just the vid and the words. AND the best part is that they actually know what is being said and know how to translate it.Correctly that is.
The credibility of your reply just went down the drain when you added the word gg alongside best. You my friend, are deluded into thinking that a group with bad tl can be anywhere near the best. Sure it might have been okay back in the day but now it’s a mere shell of it’s past glory. Commie has a bunch of errors in its tls and isn’t obviously the best but still is worth watching ( no offense).
Back to topic, I’ll add that if people have problems with watermarks then just read it raw or stfu. Any group does the stuff spending their time and it is their decision where to host it. If mangafaggots can’t adhere to group release policies and are insistent on downscaling good images into shitty resolutions then groups deserve a right to withhold giving their releases to said faggots. Since said faggots don’t care about it and their bots are obstinate, groups resort to such measures.
Users who don’t want to move their lazy asses from a single site have an option: gtfo and start scanlating or reading for yourself.
Just my $0.02.
The group deserves to downscale the quality? What did they do to deserve that right? They didn’t do anything to “deserve”, as you say, a right to do anything as the rights to that property aren’t theirs. So if they keep nagging about false morals they only look like hypocrites. In the end we’re all leechers so you might as well come out of the closet and saddle up some dignity while you’re at it.
butthurt much?
SO MUCH ANAL!!!!!! – not quite sure i understand the trolls on here’s butthurt? It’s awkward that they’ll pirate anime and manga but still feel that they’re at a higher moral standard. That’s a turn off bros. Love my Commie fags though, nice words of wisdom.
welcome to the world
@_@
Man, u guys @ Commie are really crazy… I mean, 17 episodes a week? Boy, I really have to salute and bow to you guys for doing crazy things for the sake of fansubbing and anime enthusiast like me. Thanks and keep up the crazy work, guys!
You guys are my heroes. I wish I spoke Japanese so I could join you.
>The average team of people that sees an episode from start to finish consists of at least five people, each putting in a couple of hours.
Didn’t know it was that hard to demux a HS script and add fonts to it.
u mad?
yea, he mad.
It was an easy and cheap dig. Couldn’t resist~
You guys QC, re-time, edit, TLC, typeset, transcribe, and style the scripts depending on the show. I’m not going to denigrate the efforts of your staff in that regard — clearly, people are doing their best (presumably) to put out a quality product. I wouldn’t be archiving your work if I thought differently.
But let’s take it from the leadership’s perspective. jdp thinks karaoke is meaningless and RHE thinks editing is useless (that was a fun IRC conversation). That really just leaves styling and typesetting that the two leaders of Commie both think are important for each show. But even that’s in question since not all shows even require typesetting. So what’s the one thing that both leaders think is important and is in every show? Styling. Or, as the article put it, LTFinnegan’ing.
>RHE thinks editing is useless
You can stop putting words in my mouth now. Nothing gets released without first passing through a an editor who’s taken the editing test, which, incidentally, is the hardest test we offer.
And johnny doesn’t think karaoke styling is entirely meaningless or else he would stop bitching at me to make it bigger.
Prior comment, fixed for formatting.
[Dark_Sage] I’ll go into why it’s still bad in a second, but have you thought of having Aethon edit with video and audio?
[RHExcelion] He chooses how he edits
[RHExcelion] Editing is only a small part of fansubbing yo
[RHExcelion] Editors were never meant to be of significant value
[RHExcelion] If one is then that just means your translator sucks at english
[Dark_Sage] You’re a group based around editing
[Dark_Sage] That’s… all you do.
[Dark_Sage] I’m a bit confused.
[RHExcelion] lol I don’t think you have much expereince with the internal working of a fansub group
[Dark_Sage] Clearly not.
You do realize he was pulling your leg, right?
Considering the entire log, RHE must have the dullest sense of humor ever.
For someone so experienced at trolling, you have a hard time recognising when other people are doing it to you :P
>So what’s the one thing that both leaders think is important and is in every show?
Making your ass hurt.
nah, editing is definitely the most important thing we do here. i could watch our stuff with just editing and not any of that other shit but not the other way around
Well posted! I always thought that the scan-lators were always a bit hypocritical by basically saying, “Don’t go to MangaFox/MangaReader because that gives them ad money! That’s because making money off of a mangaka’s works is wrong! Instead, come to our site and give US the ad money!” The way I see it is exactly the same as you do: you guys work at a[n] [in]humanly possible rate given both the quantity and the quality of your works and you don’t complain about people hosting your fan-subbed works on their streaming sites.
Also, for all of those people who think ad-revenue is better than asking for donations, it’s all about the mindset in my opinion.
*[] denotes my opinions on matters that RHE has posted otherwise*