ahh what a sad comment. i realize you may be angry at the lack of support scanlators get these days but wow, dont be so condescending. Yes, only a few people go to the actual scanlators' sites now but that doesnt make people blind when they read haha. There is a credits page after all... although there are definitely a few idiots who do think mangafox scanlated the manga, but the same goes for sites that provide collections of anime or asian dramas and movies who think the site's admin subbed the videos. Besides, even before online readers came out, its not like every leecher out there visited scanlators' sites. they used site like mangatraders to download everything from one place and other similar sites.

Anyways back on topic here, its just as woxxy mentioned, those few clicks make a big difference. Personally, i've never understood how people can be so lazy about a few extra clicks when theyre just sitting there basically doing nothing. Netizens are lazy bastards who feel that one extra click is like walking an extra mile, they'd rather not do it.

The real issue here is scanlators still acting like they're gods or something. THIS IS THE INTERNET. We're all pirates here and we're all doing wrong in the eyes of the publishers and authors and yet when somebody makes a profit or doesn't follow release policies, they take some bullsh*t higher moral ground. We all know scanlators arent stupid and yet they can be so naive. The internet is basically capitalism given a body, and that body covers the world and guess what, there will always be douchebags who will make money off of crap they shouldn't be. And seriously, this is the internet and yet you expect people to respect things like release policies dictated by pirates who have no legal say in the matter. These are the same people that download licensed movies and tv shows which can actually get them in trouble in their country and yet you expect them to follow your rules? LMAO.

What scanlators need to do is evolve. this is no longer the 90s where people were actually nice and thanked fansubbers and scanlators all the time. the internet has evolved, people have discovered easier and faster ways to get what they want. So what scanlators need to do is find a new way to distribute and increase their site visitors or find a way to get rid of the need for their own site and still distribute to the masses. Maybe something like MU but run by scanlators and clicking on a title in the release section will take you the site's attached online reader.

Also, i have issues with the quality of scanlations. The motto of fansubbing and scanlation is "by the fans, for the fans" which is good and all but for some reason, its grown to the point where groups have a sort or professionalism in their work. This is the reason why i quit scanlating. That professionalism leads to groups trying to be "better" than other groups or just trying to release in a quality that could be , without a better way to describe it, used by publishers.; Groups these days put too much effort towards HQ releases. I say we forget the whole LQ, MQ, and HQ business and go for RQ, readable quality!

i think any group will agree with me that the series it considers hardest are either series that need a lot of translating work (seinen for noob TLers and historical stuff due to the need for TL notes and research) and the most common, the excessive amounts of redrawing that some series need. Thats what needs to be reduced, the redraws. imo, crap like double pages shouldnt have to be redrawn, just leave the damn blank space in the middle, its not like text is missing there and whatever's missing can easily be filled by your imagination. For me, the original purpose of redrawing was meant for crowded panels with text that had no room for the english text unless you were to typeset it over the original text. These redraws are fine with me, These days however, it doesnt matter how much room there is on the page, you could have one word on a double page and groups would still redraw it...why?! just make a small sub-text or something below the original line if theres room for it. The purpose of scanlations is to allow non-japanese readers to read manga / manhwa / manhua and then buy it in their region if it ever gets licensed. With these HQ scans though that take way too much extra effort, people just back it up and dont even think about ever buying the licensed versions since they already have it in such awesome quality. Scanlators need to stop trying so hard to turn a hobby into a damn job. just level it properly and it looks good already (unless its a magazine scan obviously). Do what you only need to do, stop trying to go for that extra mile to make your scans stand out

Turn the job back into a hobby and you wont be as pissed about somebody making money off your efforts...i mean you'll still be pissed but not as much haha. Anyways, if it wasnt mangafox, it'd be some other douchebag like tazmo making money. there will always be somebody to replace the money grubbing whore...just like how there will always be poverty in the world, there will also always be a mangafox and a tazmo out there T_T

holy wall of text...damn that was long. copying part of my post for a different thread...

P.S. i also think Batoto would get shut down before Mangafox ever did. Why? Because at least with MF its pretty obvious that scanlators hate the site and only 1 person is making major cash out of the site but with Batoto, their site slogan is basically "we make money for scanlators". it turns the argument of scanlators MIGHT make money from donations, but only enough for site fees and raws into scanlators WILL make money, and not just a few groups, but ALL groups that host their scans on Batoto. If i was a publisher my reaction would be "hmm Batoto? 20 groups making money or MF where 1 person is making money? BRING DOWN THE HAMMER ON THE 20 GROUPS!!" lol

Last edited by dianoetic_otoko at 1:09 am, Sep 28 2011

No offense mate, but I'm going to be that asshole whose RQ is HQ. I scanlate because I can't read the nonsense that most groups spit out. Oh, and let's be clear: I'm not scanlating for fans. I'm not scanlating to help out other readers. I scanlate a manga because I want to read the damn thing myself and nobody else is doing a half-decent job on it.

"Scanlators aren't our fanbase, they just steal our material. They don't buy our Mangas, buy our merchandise, or support our living. They just copy our hard work and hand it out to all the greedy pirates who want stuff for free."

Oh the irony of copyright infringers acting like copyright enforcers.

I use MangaFox and their ilk plenty, because it's far more convenient than searching through dozens of Scanlators' websites for dozens of series that I'm mildly interested in. I've also directly downloaded dozens of series from numerous sites directly, because there are numerous series that I want stored on my machine.

But keep believing in this mythical "They" to rant against.

manga reading sites:
pros:
-frequent updating
-no downloading (convenient if you take into account internet speed and downloading policies in public places, like my university CS Lab or library)
-lots of titles (seriously, links on scanlators' sites die really quick- well, Megaupload links live a little longer, but you still have to wait, and if not for download accelerators like JDownloader, no multidownloading as well! and while there are sites for downloading like Mangatraders or the IRC, they are slow and not accessible in certain regions// let's not talk about Foolrulez and groups who host their own releases, cuz they are AWESOME!!)

cons:
-high resolution images are resized, (and put marks on- this varies with reading sites)
-they make money off scanlation? they dont respect uploading policies? (wait, have these issues ever been raised against sites like Manga Toshokan and One Manga before? or do they just spawn up since the discovery of Mangfox and Mangahere having the same origin recently?)

i myself am an uploader of sites like Mangatraders, and i feel really inconvenient whenever i have to download sth. until recently, each time i want to look up which chapter belongs to which volume, i still go Mangafox to re-read the first chapter of that volume.

i wont say who is right or wrong. i just state the fact. if anyone wants to beat mangafox and other online reading sites, try to do a better job than them.

Last edited by MewMan at 10:47 pm, Sep 28 2011

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its cold down here fam ~

Suing 20 people is 20x harder than suing 1 person. I don't see how your logic works.
It's also 20x harder to collect the actual money. And it's also 20x more likely that they don't have that much money to actually collect which is divided. At the end of it, suing a class can very easily put you in the red rather than earning. Look at RIAA, they blow tens~hundred mill every year suing people just to stake a false sense of threat in people. That's more than manga publisher's revenue!

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The Company
[b]Batoto

You assume that you need to be sued to bring down these sites. I can almost guarantee you that everyone scanlator site, every reader, and even MangaUpdates itself would fold in a heartbeat if enough DMCA take-downs were issued against them.

You also assume a lawsuit would be about making money. Plenty of lawsuits are about getting things shutdown...which every site would also fold to, because absolutely none of them can afford to, or would spend the time, defending a lost cause for several years in court.

People will flock to whatever is easiest and available. That is why people use mangafox. Even if mangafox was closed down people would flock to another available online reader. There was this other online reader (I think onemanga) that was closed down and the readers from that one ended up pouring over into mangafox. The same thing will happen again if mangafox is closed. If you do a search you will find TONS of online readers. Mangafox is just a small drop in the ocean.

You, my friend, need to crack open that dictionary and look up the definition of irony. Scanlators don't ask for any love or respect from the publishing industry. It's you, the leecher, who seem to be all butthurt over my implied lack of respect for you. Well, if you want respect, you have to do something to earn it back. Or just whine more. It's your choice. I'll be amused either way.

On a separate subject, it seems that some posters here are debating the issue of whether online readers are good or bad. I don't think this particular issue is in dispute. It's just that if you want to read manga online, please use readers run by decent people, not a bunch of crooks. Just go to http://www.batoto.com/ Or you can try groups' own readers.

Last edited by cmertb at 11:45 am, Sep 29 2011

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Active translations list
Completed translations list
Dropped translations

no offense taken, this is a discussion so anybody getting offended here is taking things way too seriously haha. Question though, when you say "nonsense", are you talking about translation quality? Cuz i've never said anything about decreasing the quality of that and its not like im saying people should release speed scans. I was talking about making people do unnecessary redraws which in my opinion should be stopped. Like I said, if you level a tank scan properly it looks real good already. things like "checking for dust" that cant be seen unless you zoom in to the point where you see pixels is completely stupid since readers would never zoom in that much and see that.



ahh valid points, but you my friend, you only know about crap like the RIAA because they're stupid and they make headlines. You've probably never had friends that have been subpoenaed so you don't know what they go through emotionally. What the american porn industry has mastered is this, hit people with a subpoena and they WILL be scared cuz they know that they did pirate their product. Then, they call people directly and tell them that they will settle for an agreed upon sum of money and they will drop the lawsuit. Most people would gladly settle instead of fighting it out in court which would probably cost more money. My friend's lawyer that he called for consultation told him there are companies that subpoena 5,000 people here in just California alone every month and there still hasnt been anybody that's gone to the lawsuit stage, they all choose to settle...thats a good money making scheme right there. Imagine what would happen if anime/manga companies did that? They don't sue people cuz they're butt-hurt about copyright infringement, they sure cuz they're losing money.

Anyways, thats beside the point. My main point for the 20 groups VS 1 person argument is this, imagine the scanlation business was a cartel (i know...LOL). Originally, it was 20 groups hired as mules to bring the "goods" to the rest of the world but then 1 person (MF) intercepted the 20 groups, stole the goods and then proceeded to sell them herself. Thats one badass chick right there but its only 1 person. Now with Batoto, the 20 mules are no longer mules, instead they're their own cartel and smuggle AND sell the goods themselves. Get it? if you dont thats fine cuz even i think that its confusing hehe. But yea, if you take out the one chick, that group's over. But with batoto, you take out one out of 20 and they can still keep going so what you wanna do is take them all out before the group grows even more, which they will eventually. Its not about whats easier, its about priorites and which one of the 2 will eventually cause more damage.

Have a read:
http://foolrulez.org/blog/2011/09/this-is-the-internet/

Also, about subpoena:
MangaFox makes millions, scanlators are likely to have not even a cent. There's no point in asking money from scanlators, as they're likely not to be able to pay in any case. The largest majority is students, and only one third of the scanlators are in USA or Japan. MangaFox is a registered USA company.

Suing scanlators would be an international thing. Furthermore, it would be really difficult, because only copyright holders can do any kind of action towards the infringer. If a copyright holder doesn't have the license in USA, they can only appeal to the Berne Convention, which gets partly overridden by the "fair use".

Even worse, the cost to hire lawyers to proceed would be higher than the money one could earn from this. These companies aren't in for few thousands of dollars either.

Last edited by woxxy at 3:54 pm, Sep 29 2011

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Member of FoOlRulez and head coder of the FoOlSlide project.

My understanding is Batoto actually pays groups that put me in a interesting moral dilemma, that is the profiting from someone else works.

That also means to me that some groups are fine with aggregate online readers as long they get payed and I dont think this is a good thing because if there is a for profit situation then the rise of purely speed scans will happen as groups are incentivated to get the chapter out before anyone else to the site that pays then, also there will be a push to "pick up" series that are getting a lot of hits and leave the series that are less popular.

To me its a cure that will do more harm that the illness, at least MangaFox do not dictate what series are being worked on or their release priority, Batoto will do exactly that.

Edit:

Woxxy, you know that Shogakukan and Shueisha are the owners of Viz Media as Kodansha have Kodansha Comics USA (and Del Rey before that).

Sure its not everyone but Square Enix also have a presence as their Video Game publisher that kinda leave us with Houbunsha, Futabasha and a few other publishers without a "presence" but that is not really true as they can talk with each other and represent them.

I would say the reason they dont bother is because as thing are currently groups bring attention to their series, shutting down groups would actually reduce their sales and also being Japanese companies they might have a problem with going against fan groups due to how the Doujin functions back home.


Last edited by Drakron at 4:14 pm, Sep 29 2011

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What part of "Please do not put in huge images!" did you fail to understand?

Batoto doesn't pay the groups. They allow groups to put on batoto their own ads, so they earn money directly.

Yes, groups allowing only Batoto are hypocrites. That's the groups' fault though. Otherwise, some money flowing in are useful to keep up our servers and buy some volume.
Still, looking back in the years, I think now groups are more open. It's getting rare to get sites who actually have strict policies, or ask you to register and have posts to direct download.


There's a bunch of possible reasons, or, rather, many small reasons that could make scanlation positive, against one large reason, that would be loss of sales.

I think it's actually the fact that basically every person reading manga has read scanlation. I remember studies with like 80%. This means that if they attack directly the "scanlation benefactors", they'd end up with bad publicity, while spending money for lawyers that probably would be more costly than leaving things as they are.

In other words, scanlation is widespread, but the volumes not sold because of it matter only for manga that are largely popular.

Last edited by woxxy at 4:23 pm, Sep 29 2011

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Member of FoOlRulez and head coder of the FoOlSlide project.

sadly, it seems you've failed to comprehend any of my posts

concerning the "this is the internet" comment: i read the post on the foolrulez page and i got what it was about. Well, i agree. However, i feel like i should slap you if i were to ever meet you in real life. Posting that link for me is just plain insulting. You reason that people should contribute more of their opinions instead of just saying "this is the internet". WHICH I DID. there was a proper explanation following that statement so why did you feel that you needed to make me read that? completely pointless.

And in response to that article, did i tell scanlators to just roll over and let everyone step on them? NO. i told them to evolve. it seems you failed to see my point

and regarding the subpoena, ahh so naive. they have hardly any money? theyre high school students? it doesnt matter if they only 100 dollars in their savings account if all you want to do is send a message. Besides, dont high school students have parents? thats a perfectly good source of money. There is no "being nice" in court, if they have to, they will take every penny that you have even if you had both parents dying from cancer.

there are publishers here with licenses and like i said in my post, if the only thing they were to do was to go for settlements, then it would be much cheaper than filing an actual lawsuit and fighting it out in court and they can still make money. Besides, hiring a lawyer just to write some paperwork for a subpoena is actually not that expensive.

Last edited by dianoetic_otoko at 9:58 pm, Sep 29 2011

Guess what: People don't care about getting respect from you either. They want to read Manga. Goes for me too, I couldn't care less what you think of me. You won't even remember me a week from now, and for my part I honestly don't even know what Scanlator group you're a part of...and I've probably never read any of your releases.

But I suggest taking your own advice. If you want to whine about Online readers that "don't respect" the Scanlation community, then don't turn around and do the exact same for the people whose livelihood is actually dependent on the material you distribute. They don't want you "stealing" their work anymore than you want the "bunch of crooks" profiting from yours. If your hobby involves blatantly disregarding copyright, don't be surprised when someone does the same to you.

And just to get this out there, I couldn't care less about the copyright issues behind Scanlation. However, in the eyes of the law, and the court, what you're doing is legally no different than what MangaFox does.

Even a C&D is too pricey to send, and you need just a group contact to send that.

Imagine calling lawyers for hundreds of American scanlators who might not have money and that are anyway hard to track down, considering people are using nicknames. Even by having IPs or any info, they'd either have to call court to get the owners of IPs, or any chance to track you down. Mix this to the fact that tracking people down might be considered breaking privacy. It gets to be mainly a technical problem.

At that point, any idea to involve scanlators sounds insane in front of going for aggregators. Aggregators get like 95%+ of the traffic from this community, and the largest quantity of releases on these sites is by groups that died. Even if one kills scanlation, aggregators would go strong with the content they accumulated – which is what kills the publishers.

In the end, publishers could just call Google to get mangafox off the search list, and call SoftLayer to get them to remove their servers. Before that happens, any action won't be as improbable as going down to scanlators.

About my link:
sorry then, I probably misjudged your position. Too much text.

Last edited by woxxy at 5:06 am, Sep 30 2011

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Member of FoOlRulez and head coder of the FoOlSlide project.