It's actually a pretty famous sociological experiment in which most choose "no" time and again.

I guess you and the other guy lack a certain sense that most people have because you view this as "shiratori gets $10, or nothing". This is not in fact the choice here, which most people will instinctively realize.

Although I can't discount the possibility that the amount is clouding your judgment. I don't know where you guys live, maybe 10 USD is a lot of money in your country... If I change the breakdown to 999 to 1 or even 999.99 to 0.01, is that going to change your opinion? Or are you still involved in bizarre "pragmatic thinking"?

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-shiratori-

You've had numerous chances to provide some backup to your claim that online aggregators contribute to popularity of manga. You have used various pretexts to weasel out every time. I think that conclusively demonstrates that you were simply ranting without regard for facts or logic. Now that that is settled, here's what I promised: https://bato.to/forums/topic/23023-online-aggregators-and-popula rity-of-manga/#entry1617950 I moved it to a different site because the moderation on this subject here has been somewhat iffy in the past.

"Are ad hominems all you have to offer?" -- please don't try to play the victim. There wasn't a single ad hominem there. If you took any statement of mine personally, maybe that's your conscience trying to hint at something? I also answered all your relevant questions. If you feel like I didn't answer something that would add value to the present discussion, you may enumerate those questions again.

"Besides, it's funny that you basically simultaneously accuse me of being greedy for taking money for translating, and not greedy enough for not getting mad at someone else receiving more money than me in your thought experiment. So which is it?"
Out of the two choices provided, I will go with the third: your English isn't up to the level required in this discussion. The definition of the word "greedy" involves excessive desire for monetary profit. It does not include desire to deny someone else unjustified profit. Therefore, you are greedy because you hustle for money. Getting mad at someone for making more than you would also be greedy if your sole motivation is to get that money yourself. So I suppose in your case both options would mean that you are greedy simply because you are motivated by profit. In the case of people not motivated by profit, the second option would not imply that they are greedy. I hope I made the difference clear to you.

I suspect that because you are avaricious, you immediately assume that other people are the same. That actually might be true, but you also must realize that the amounts involved in scanaltion are so measly that most scanlators wouldn't stoop that low. So given these amounts, no, most others aren't motivated by money in their dislike of mangafox et al. Yeah yeah, first world problem, I know.


Last edited by cmertb at 3:08 pm, Jul 11 2015

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Well, I don't think they are accusing it. I think, they are just stating the facts about you. Not that they need any help but here's another example: https://bato.to/forums/topic/20912-offering-digital-manga-raws/

Why do you need compensation for ordering digital raws when you are already taking the costs to buy the manga? Not to mention it's digital, you aren't even scanning it!

I think you are misunderstanding the idea of being a rawprovider in the scanlation community. I know rawsproviders
- who buy their own raws and scan them for free to let scanlators scanlate those titles.
- who take money for raws but scan them for free
- who take money for the raw and for scanning them

But I have never seen anyone taking money for compensation to get digital manga raws.
No logic there...except the idea of making money. Now it makes sense why you want 10$ and wouldn't reject the offer in the experiment. You want to take whatever you can get and however you can.

Taking money for something like this in the name of promoting manga to others is wrong. That is not the free scanlation we love and hold dear. Instead it's running a business by using scanlation.

What boggles my mind is how he/she can do it for such a pittance on top of that...

If I were to hustle others, at least I'd do it for amounts I wouldn't be ashamed of. Like Bernie Madoff.

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I'm not seeing it. Got a link to this famous sociological experiment? There are two reasons I can think of for why someone wouldn't take it:

A. They suspect strings are attached. Normally, this would be my response, and I'd say no.
B. They consider it incredibly unfair, and thus, say no.

Frankly, in my opinion, B, is foolish. You would be turning down cash for no reason other than "It isn't a fair split." Option A on the other hand, is sensible.

In short, I'm not understanding your reasoning.

For the record, I do agree that one should not demand money in exchange for scanlating. My disagreement is purely with the scenario you posed, and I'm trying to understand why anyone would turn down the free money.

Seeing as there are quite a few arguments going on at the same time with a ton of different people, forgive me if this goes on too long. First off, Aggregate sites are generally not favored by the people who actually scanlate manga for several reasons. As previously stated they're profiting off of your work and the original publishers work and no one else sees a dime of the thousands of dollars they make in add revenue every day. secondly (again as already stated) they really compress the image quality and sometimes post watermarks. But one of the worst things is they can sometimes get publishers/license holders to go after the scanlation groups. Most groups don't generate the traffic needed to attract attention from most company's but mangafox does and when they see their scans they can easily find the scanlation groups behind it to send their C & D letters to.

Now for the Mangalator situation, I personally don't like counting their releases and they certainly are not a scanlation group. I think scanlation falls into a grey area in the law but posting raws is plain stealing from the Japanese publishers. The accompanying translations aren't enough to make it count as an actual release in my book, its different with light novels where there is just text but there's much more to manga than translating the text bubbles, there's the cleaning, redraws, typesetting and teamwork aspects that just get lost when you just have raws and translations side by side.

Lastly, Raw providers are essential for scanlation. High quality scans are hard to get, if you don't think the raw providers should be compensated for their work in finding and acquiring the scans whether they be digital or otherwise feel free in finding them yourself. Its not easy, believe me I have tried and had to do it in the past. If paying someone 5-10$ for their work in getting you good quality scans so your cleaners don't need to spend an extra 10+ minutes per page is too much for you then try cleaning lq and tiny image sized scans. If you get a free raw provider great but don't begrudge someone wanting to supplement their income.

The correct answer is B.

Frankly, I fail to get people who would do anything for chump change, and then call those who refuse to do so "foolish", same as you fail to get me. There are certain instincts that people have that make their society function, which developed through evolution. Society needs to put up a pretense of fairness to be stable, that's why most people, unlike animals, *feel* the need punish those who take advantage of others (per usual disclaimer, depending on the cost to themselves -- to me, 10 bucks would be a very cheap price to pay; you, otoh, claim you'd begrudge even 1 cent). Naturally, there are always mutations and aberrations. E.g. how are you supposed to explain to a psychopath who lacks empathy that it is wrong to hurt others? It just isn't something they *feel*. So in the end, you either feel it, or you don't. I'm not condemning you or the other guy, I'm just explaining your beliefs to myself.

Of course, I should also consider the possibility that you would react differently if this were not a thought experiment, but a real situation. Here you're trying to be all logical and rational, but in reality humans are driven by emotions more than anything else. If you see the money in front of you, if you look the people you're dealing with in the eyes, if you see their attitude toward you, your decision might easily be very different. The pretense at rationality can come off rather easily, as my experience tells me.

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thevampirate
I don't think you realize the full situation. Anyone can buy digital raws online. If you are taking those same digital raws and reselling them above cost, you are basically profiting off misinformed (i.e. suckers), instead of simply telling them where to get the raws themselves. What do we call people who take advantage of suckers? Umm, "pragmatic thinkers"? Or there is another term for that?

And in general, are you basically justifying scanlation for money with that logic? If it's okay to pay raw providers, then it's okay to pay everyone else, and to extort money from leechers?

Last edited by cmertb at 5:59 pm, Jul 11 2015

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Citation needed.



I wouldn't bother opening my mouth to reply for 1 cent, but I doubt that's what you're referring to. So no, the amount is not the problem. It's your irrational reasoning.




Lol XD

You promised to prove your claim, and this is what you come up with? A discussion thread on batoto? Moreover, where's the evidence you spoke of? Ridiculous.

This is exactly why I refused earlier. Your argument lacks any kind of substance, so I'd just waste my time.





^Describes you perfectly.



You still haven't answered my questions. I even quoted them again in the post you replied to. So are you saying you can't read?



I guess they could also just be stupid.



So if it doesn't matter which answer I choose, why did you even ask me this question?



I like how you assume that scamming people gets more respectable the more profit you make. It's kinda like the $2000 whore who looks down on the $100 whore for being cheap. Top kek dude.



Cry me a river, really.



Don't you understand that there's no victim in your scenario? Sure the other guy rips you off, but you still get money for free. Or in other words, money you don't even deserve. Refusing because you feel you are entitled to the same amount of free gibs the other guy gets is utterly pathetic. And here you are, lecturing other people about morality. Get real, seriously.

Last edited by -shiratori- at 7:25 pm, Jul 11 2015

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Please take this discussion to pm. I'm locking this thread for now.