tazmo must be a rich man. millions of dollars worth of profit per month. hmm.

@lemon: so you're saying i'm not allowed to voice my opinion against others? considering it does pertain to the topic, go away and quit trolling. spam your post count elsewhere, if it means so much to your ego. p00k has every right to say what he wants, and i have as much right to counter it. don't like? GTFO.

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did I say that? I said by arguing we accomplish nothing, I never said people can't have their own say. and I'm sure being an internet tough guy makes you feel big, so I won't step in the way of that., carry on.

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Starter of Controversy.

oh, i'm so offended by your clear witty superiority. it's so obvious that i'm the one trying to be an internet ass by telling you my standpoint while you sing godly words of beautiful wisdom into our undeserving ears. please forgive me.

i will argue and discuss to my content, and i'm pretty sure it's been proven that doing nothing also accomplishes nothing. but please, don't stop replying, you appear to enjoy taking a 'holier than thou' position among us. i'm sure that tazmo's modest reap of millions of dollars per month from selling scans is nothing of concern among the manga community.

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Watch the flaming!

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

At least if we counter points we prove to idiots that can't form their own opinion that we're clearly the correct side to be on. =P

have the "stop tazmo operation" gotten anywhere or is it just arguements on if he's makin' lots or little money?

I'll go 'n' send the stopnf pic to a few more people, maybe i'll even add some catchy slogan, like, "stop narutofan get everything free here you can, when ya say it to yaself, do it with yoda in mind

I remember, back in the early days when the only manga I knew that you could find online was Naruto, seeing Narutofan, and later sometimes finding that website when looking for anime. Considering that I didn't have any money, I never really bothered to delay a second longer on that site, and promptly forgot about it when I found places where I could them for free, or Netflix (which although you have to pay for, you can get actual anime, besides a whole bunch of other great stuff), or through IRC.

But making someone pay to dl something, when they have no idea how much work it takes, and work that doesn't get a profit in the first place--it's really infuriating. I edited for a group once, and even though I wasn't really good and never had enough time to quite finish a chapter, it gave me more than enough experience into the hours of work it takes to prepare twenty plus pages (especially if the scans are bad, like many fresh-off the press Naruto scans inevitably are), much less release them every week. But then again, there are always stupid people.. and I'm sure there are many other sites that encourage you to pay to download things, so though while I fully encourage the effort, I think it would be something that would require a lot of time and work. XD;; But don't let me discourage you-- it's a good cause. ^^ *cheers on the sidelines*

@iPirate
Absolutely nothing. There was a similar movement a few years back, but nothing came of that either. Just gave a bunch of people a cause to turn into a crusade.

@Tmoo
Are you really so arrogant as to believe that NF subscribers have never heard of Google? If they wanted to know, it would only take a few minutes if not less to find out.

As far as donations vs fees, believe it or not they are the same. Here's why. As you say, donations are voluntary. Likewise, those fees are voluntary as well; if you don't want to pay it, you don't have to, you just don't get the extra benefits. With donations, some sites (more common with anime than manga) give special benefits to donators as well, be it distro access or whatever. Maybe with donations, there's no strict reward, but you're helping the scanslator, and thus helping ensure you get more of what you want. It's not by "protocol" but neither is membership required.

@Digital-Eon
Yes, Tazmo can afford it. Why should they have to though. Plenty of times, groups themselves violate the "sanctity" of their own release by releasing ver2's or individual correction pages meant to replace errors in the original release.

As far as not liking something being no excuse for blatant disrespect, I can't help but wonder how much respect you think scanslators get or should get. I'm certainly not the most prolific scanslator here, but I've been editing since before Mangaupdates even existed, and I can promise you, if it's respect you want, you're in for a disappointment. It's been my experience, both in scanslation and real life volunteer work, that if you were doing it for the recognition or if you would feel cheated if you don't get recognition, you shouldn't be volunteering in the first place. And while it's great that you prefer the distraction, it's not you running the site, is it?

As far as telling it to scanslation groups, I have. I've even released chapters with no credits at all, not in margins or credit pages or anything, provided no egos are stepped on.

And you think credits in the margin are a bigger distraction? Seriously? http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/9800/inumimi01158kf7.png That little bit of text is more distracting than a whole separate page? (yes, gari put in a credits page as well, but there's no vital information on it)

@Scyfon
Yes, there is profit. But how much, I don't know, and I don't claim to know either. It's my understanding that only the plus members have to pay, while the regular members have access to a more limited selection of downloads (just naruto I believe), and I'd be surprised if anywhere near a quarter of those two million were paying members. And again, yes, donations are given of their own free will. So are membership fees; no one is forcing you to be a member. So NF subscribers are getting something extra in return; donators elsewhere often receive benefits as well. I've already mentioned that above.

Edit: And running a site with 2 million members takes a lot more work than most scanslation efforts, to be honest, especially one that needs constant updating. With a competent staff, a 25pg chapter takes <5 hrs split between several people, from scanning to release (a good TL can do 25 pgs in about half an hour, a competent editor can proofread and clean and typeset 25 pages in <3-4 hours, maybe more if there's lots to redraw, spreads to join, and so on, and scanners usually scan volumes at a time, but 20 pages takes only a few minutes). Meanwhile, to fetch a bunch of releases, update the site, etc, takes arguably more time, and assuming Tazmo has people doing it for them, they probably want compensation for their time as well.

As far as tilting your head, you *do* realize that there are top and bottom margins to a page too, right? Follow that imageshack link above for an example.

@celinae
Do you think leechers that leech from the group's own irc channel have any clue how much work it takes? Have you ever compared the number of DL's on an editing test to the number of completed tests? Most people have no clue; even some of the people who actually try to do it, and end up doing a horrible job of it, have no clue.


Anyway, my stance on the issue is that I really don't care what Tazmo does. No one I know is being harmed by it, and even if all his downloads were free and kept the credits pages, it's not like I'd be getting any recognition from the people that download from his site, nor do I want any. And frankly, if the people who are paying Tazmo don't mind doing so, I'm not so arrogant as to believe they need me to mind for them. If they wanted a free alternative, it takes mere moments to find them, so if they're satisfied paying for what they get, that's their business.

Last edited by p00k at 6:23 pm, Jul 12 2007

The reason that I am against Tazmo is because he runs narutofan.com as a business to make money. And I believe that is immoral because he does not own the intellectual properties that he sells. Some of you have said that his requiring a subscription is the same as scanlators asking for donations. It is not. This is because scanlators ask for donations to offset the bandwidth expenses required for hosting a website and downloads, as well as miscellaneous expenses. Most of them have goals so that people know how much donations they require to break even. I even know know of one fansub group (Dattebayo) that got more donations than they needed and donated the extra money to Doctors Without Borders.

Let's look at just how much money Narutofan.com is making. While I do not know exactly what percentage of people have PLUS! accounts, I think it is probably much higher than 1% each for NarutoFan PLUS! and Manga PLUS! accounts. However to be on the safe side I will assume that that it is that. 1,906,683 people are members of narutofan.com and 1% of that is 19,067 people. A NarutoFan PLUS! account costs $4.98 a month so 19,067 x $4.98 = $94,953.66 a month. A Manga PLUS! account costs $8.00 a month so, assuming that at least 1% of members have a Manga PLUS! account, that is 19,067 x $8.00 or $152,536. This gives Tazmo $247,489.66 am month and $2,969,875.92 a year before you account for the amount of money he gets from advertisements. I do not know how much his bandwidth cost is, but I doubt it is anywhere near 3 million dollars per year when 99% of the people can only download one 4mb Naruto manga chapter per week.

Another thing that shows that Narutofan.com is entirely for profit is the way that Tazmo handles promotions and pricings. If the money made through membership costs is meant only to pay for the cost of running Narutofan.com, then what reason would Tazmo have to offer giveaways of iPods to paying members only? The only reason he would do this is to increase paying members and thereby his profits. Also, why would Tazmo sell NarutoFan PLUS! accounts for only $4.98 per month while charging $8.00 for Manga PLUS! accounts, even though it uses much more bandwidth to download anime than manga? The answer is that Tazmo bases the prices not on what it requires to support these accounts, but on what is the most he can milk out of people without hurting the number of people who choose to pay for the accounts. (Although there are many factors affecting what people are willing to pay, my personal idea [not a theory, a theory needs needs to be supported by facts] is that anime fans are more casual and therefore not willing to pay as much as manga readers)

In conclusion, this proves that Narutofan.com is a commercial website set up by Tazmo to sell pirated anime and manga against the wishes of both the owners of the intellectual property and the people who translated it.


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You're unique, just like everyone else.

My only complaint is that the people who should be getting the money are the ones not getting it. He is getting paid for other people's work, which sub/scan can be said to do similar with the original work but they are not asking for money, they do it because they like to? or have a desire to improve skills in one area or another. I just think its crap that the only effort he is putting into it is leeching really. I think the money should go to the groups who put forth the effort, they usually offer same download speeds as well, I know because unfortunately i am an ex narutofan member.

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"Let's put a smile on that face."

Let's use your 1% then. Even still, all 100% of them are using bandwidth, so that's 1,906,683 people using bandwidth. Now, a good ballpark figure is about 1MBit/user, considering many people have multiple MBit connections, though they're not all using it at once. That means you need about 19,066 100mbit unmetered servers, which run roughly $150-200/mo each, or ~$2,100/yr (using $175/mo). $2,100x19,066=$40,038,600.

Ok, so 19,000 servers seems a bit ludicrous. How about a tenth of that, a mere 0.1mbit/user? that's still $4million/yr. For argument's sake, let's say it's half that, 0.05mbit/user (note: I have an 8mbit home connection, a far cry from 0.05). Then that's only $2million/yr, leaving 1.5 as "profit." Now consider the other costs - assuming he can't do all the updating work himself, he probably has to pay a staff to help run the site. And as much time as it takes, that's time that could otherwise be spent at a job ("opportunity cost" in economics-speak). All that profit doesn't seem so impressive now, does it?

Now, people only downloading 1x 4MB chapter per week? It seems you've never hosted stuff before, since people go through bandwidth a lot faster than new releases. I've seen 10GB of traffic be used up in a few days, which is why you need unmetered. People will go through and download eeeeeverything, delete it, dl it again, etc. if it's not costing them any more (if they pay the same regardless of how much they use, they'll use a ton). Also, as you said, there's not just naruto manga on the site, there's also a plethora of other mangas, as well as anime episodes at ~175mb ea. And that's just downloads, not pageviews, forum traffic, etc, which actually does add up quite a bit.



You're right, it is a commercial website. So what? Scanslation is against the wishes of the owners of the intellectual property, yet there seems to be a sort of consensus that while illegal, it's morally acceptable. And because it technically is illegal, scanslators hold absolutely no copyright over their releases, and thus have no right to insist that their releases be remain as is. So without the hard and fast rule of law, morality is at best a blurry canyon-wide "line" by which to judge what should and shouldn't be done.

@cano435
You think scanslation groups should get money? So you think the money rapidshare collects from its membership fees should go to the original owners of the uploaded content? Hardly. A key point that people seem to be missing is that those fees aren't being paid for the scanslation itself, but rather to have those scanslations all in one place for convenient download without the complexities of IRC or whatnot. The other issue is that, why should it be the scanslation groups? Remember, the ones who actually hold legal rights to the content are original mangakas/publishers, but that's a whole different story.

Like I said, if people didn't like paying for what they're getting, they'll find free alternatives on their own. Hell, many of us find free alternatives for things that clearly should cost money (ever downloaded a music mp3? or guess how many editors actually bought photoshop. or how many people actually paid the $129 for wildwords, not to mention the dozens of other pirated fonts). There's no need to be internet missionaries, totally convinced that NF subscribers need us to show them the light and save their immortal souls from e-damnation.

It all boils to down to free scanlations being the lesser of two evils when compared to NarutoFan.

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Operator of Freelance-Manga

pook,. you have no idea wat you're talking about. You don't know how server works and the cost, and here you are talking trash.

Anyways, I think the problem can be solved with a polite but firm letter to Tazmo.



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Starter of Controversy.

oh hi Stark ^_^ Thanks for Answering my question, on "What's CRC"
Anyway, its great to know that you are a Scanlator ^^"

Back to the Topic.. There's no RIGHT or WRONG.... or should i say... WE ARE ALL IN THE WRONG~ Simple. We scanlate, and distribute them in the first place. So we are the real culprit. T.T Sad eh, but its true.

You clearly missed the point. Obviously if you need that kind of bandwidth, you're not going to pay for that many separate servers, but because rate plans start to vary a lot more, the math isn't quite as convenient. The point simply was that you can arbitrarily choose seemingly sensible numbers to say pretty much whatever you want, and that as outsiders, none of us really know how much bandwidth or money actually is involved. I'll try to remember to be more explicit in the future, as the lines admittedly are thin and narrow, and thus difficult to read between.