I would suggest that scans which are watermarked be clearly labeled as such. Depending on how badly the scans are disfigured, they should also be treated as either joke or troll releases.

I am guessing you made this thread as a response to what A-team did. I agree with what you suggest. It sucks that I was reading that on my family's computer and my 9 year old sister saw what I was reading with watermark. They should have at least warned us that they added something not to be seen by children.

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A-Team does things like this all the time. I think you shouldn't be surprised...

Personally, I have no idea why they are doing all this, but I can't do anything about it. Just as I could put any watermark on my teams releases if I wanted to, they can put anything they want on theirs too. The difference is, that I won't do anything like this. There's no meaning in any of the watermarks... The only ones they annoy are the readers, the online viewers don't even notice them.

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"Thus is our treaty written, thus is agreement made
Thought is the arrow of time, memory never fades
What was asked is given, the price is paid"

If it was only the watermarks, then I wouldn't have said anything. I have only seen two pages of their latest release,The Breaker New Waves chapter 54 before deleting it, thanks to the image they pasted on each page.

Watermarks don't bother me that much if they are small and non-obtrusive. But what they did is simple horrible. It takes some seriously fucked up jerk to do something like this.
So what if people want to read stuff online? I personally don't do that but it's everyone right to choose. With that being said they also have the right to fuck up the scans but it just goes to show you for an asshole.

Hi guys

decided to register just for this topic, even though I read this place for years
I'm gonna agree 100% with what blake77 and coa88 say...

I happened to read the last of Unbalancex2 from A-team
and the first page was a big "F*** YOU blablabla" and that went on till the last page
Needless to say that the end of the series was completely ruined.

In my book the guy who thought of that is 5 years old.

So please Bakaupdates, consider adding "watermarked" next to groups who do that, help me (and maybe others?) avoid them, these groups don't do it for love of the series, but only for e-peen.

p.s: With a little photoshop I cleaned up their watermarks and now I have a totally clean version, you can't tell if anything was there



Last edited by m3tal at 7:22 am, Dec 30 2011

So...

do scanlation sites have a right to not get their releases up on every online reader site on the internets in less than 2 hours after their release?

If A-Team doesn't want that to happen, should they
1. Just not scanlate it
2. Use watermarks.
3. Other solution.

A-Team of course does not have any sort of right to the manga they scanlate. But they can always just walk away from whatever series they are doing.

As for the 5-year old comment, its Unbalance x Unbalance. no sympathy on that route.

I could go either way with the outrage. I personally feel,
1. If it bothers them they should stop scanlating altogether
2. A public derision of online reader sites should be implemented on the interwebs.

Watermarks do not appear to serve the purpose they were intended for, and so an other solution should be drummed up sure.

but simply stating no watermarks is not helpful as it ignores the point.

The fact that you didn't manage to absorb the point speaks either to your idiocy or the fact watermarks are really poor in serving for their purpose.

I vote 50/50 on that.

That's not why they're doing it, nor are they doing it for "e-peen". Scanlation groups have moral objections to many online reader sites, particularly ad-supported ones like Mangafox which earn a ridiculous profit from taking scanlator's work and hosting it, driving scanlation into an even more legally ambiguous territory and attracting legal attention. Note there are no watermarks complaining about Batoto. The watermarks serve to spread the word that Mangafox shouldn't be supported by manga fans and to deter MF and similar sites from posting their work.



Perhaps not, but you can clearly tell you've just copied and pasted parts of the A-team page to a raw without bothering to match it properly. Regardless, it's not going to be an adequate solution when the watermark goes over text (which will take more time to extract sans watermark) or when a raw is not widely available. There's a certain point where the hassle of correcting the watermark is not worth it. Anyway, I don't know about A-team but other groups I know of who do watermarks usually offer a clean version later.

In any case, I really don't see any point in labelling scans as watermarked on MU. MU is not really concerned with what scanlation group policies are, beyond what is relevant to the database. It'd be like listing the scan quality and the translation policies of a group I don't really see what you have to complain about. You wanted to read the manga and you got to, didn't you? If you have a personal objection to reading scans with watermarks, why don't you just remember the groups that do excessively intrusive watermarks (there aren't that many, so it shouldn't be hard) and avoid them, and save the MU staff the hassle?

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世界のどこかに 必ず
キミの居場所が ある筈

I quite frankly suggest just using their translations and putting them on a cleaner raw.
They use pay per click sites on most links, ask for donations use another author's IP and dare say that online readers are using their stuff. lol.

They beginning to act like some of the publishers (Ubisoft) act over piracy.

hi mogiks
well, it's just for me so didn't really bother with detail
over text? np I'll grab my brush

Well, check out the latest release from them (TBNW) and then tell me what you think

And yeah, I guess you're right about labeling as watermarked
extra trouble for MU and not really worth it
people will know what to look for in the end

it's just that I've never seen such extreme watermarking before (lol)

Do you know how much extra work is going to go into checking that every single release is watermarked? You're asking for a lot out of us for something you can check for yourself.
You should have known A-Team were going to have a watermarked chapter. It's so obvious with what was written in the post. They said themselves that it was a "dick move" and even mentioned they might release a clean version later.
Agreed that this certain chapter was taking it to the next level and may be considered a troll release, but still. I do not fancy downloading every release I approve to see whether they're watermarked or not for you :/

You know these groups watermark their scans - so why act like it's a surprise?

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

Do you think everyone gets their raws from online sources? No, the groups that care about quality BUY their own raws. And are raws cheap? Hell no. One volume can easily cost $15 USD including shipping. Do you know how much money those pay per click links make? A few cents per click. How much does MF make? Thousands of dollars daily. The difference is that online readers are doing it to make a profit, while most groups ask for donations to just not be in the red.

I also think that MU shouldn't have to implement such a thing because it is way too much work when you can just remember it yourself. For instance, if you find out that one group is using watermarks, just block the group on the releases page on their page, simple as that.

I don't mind watermarks as long as it's still readable. Small watermarks that don't get in the way are fine, but when watermarks do get in the way of me enjoying the manga, I just drop it and hope that they'll come out with a clean version or somebody else releases one.

Last edited by StarlightDreams at 1:53 pm, Dec 30 2011

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ

That doesn't even matter if the manga in question in OP's post IS New Waves, since A-team just jacks it straight off the leading korean online reader themselves. It's absolutely hilarious how they tell people not to post it to an online reader, when that's exactly where they're getting their raws from.

In this case, OP, you might as well use Ghastly Scans instead of a-team. The quality is a little worse, but it's much better than having an annoying watermark on 3/4ths of every page, along with an image of boobs, which I guess they thought was funny.

What's even more funny than that is I checked the main offenders when it comes to crappy online readers, and they're both using Ghastly Scans' version, so the only person that the watermark is hurting is those that go straight to the source for the download, the scanlator's site, like I do.

I wasn't really replying to the OP but rather to Nashnir, who's talking about A-Team in general.

And obviously the online readers are not going to put A-Team's scans since it literally says f-u on them when there's another source. xD

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ