Because its apparently too hard for some people to follow our rule of not uploading our releases elsewhere for 72 hours we need to reconsider our hosting policy.
Something has to change. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but the actions of profiteering aggregators is going a little too far. More news when I’ve had some sleep.
I also want to remind everyone we have our own ONLINE READER and we’d love it if you went there rather than to MangaFox or anyone else! Not only is the quality superior, but you’re also not putting money in the hands of someone who is using it to line his own pockets rather than contribute to scanlation.
Please see also this informative post about the state of aggregator sites from our friends at FoOlRulez: Recent Scanlation Events
I think the bigger problem here is that while scanlator groups are trying to take matters into their own hands, the thing is, the traffic(ie. manga reading online community) is what needs to take a stance against MangaFox. To the scanlators, this may have been a prevalent problem since last year or whenever it surfaced or existed, but to me, I only discovered this issue a few weeks ago. I always thought the mangas licensed and popular that were removed were done so because they came to negotiable terms with the publishers.. Back on topic, I really think you guys need to spread this as much as possible. Not only with each other, but everywhere that manga readers have a community… I’ve tried to spread it in Mangafox, only to be banned. Get it bigger and bigger, and eventually, the manga community that actually cares about WHERE scanlations come from will deal with Mangafox and the dickheads NOEZ staff are.
That being said, thank you so much for your scans and know I and many others support you guys.
What about a digital watermark? you can embed the watermark into the jpeg file. Normal picture viewing software is perfectly fine, but you can track where it goes to.
Thats not really a deterrant though
Well, after reading all those posts,
1. Watermarks:
Look at sites like “mangastream” (before anybody claims I would make surreptitious advertising -> they have completly different projects as you guys anyway).
They put a watermark on each site and state clearly that they dont want their stuff anywhere else uploaded. Do you think people care? Well of course not (well most likely they are the fastest usually and keep their chapters only a limited time on their site to make the people buying the series). Very soon – under an hour maybe – the stuff can be found on other sites. Although people can report not allowed upload pages it seems that they can do anything about that. (I would say they know they are not in possession of the manga series – dont get angry now, I am about to explain what I mean with that – , however its an other story with the work of translations and other edits through photoshopping/gimping e.g.) I also agree for “collectors” those waterwarks are looking stupid and let a release looking cheap (mangastream has made some translation errors in the past, resulting in re-releases or “bugfixes” of single pages), although they make the translator and scanlator group clearly noticeable. Those are the two faces of the same coin.
I am a modder for an already older ego-shooter by Epic Games. Even if I create new content and state in the readme “my work, not allowed to use anything without my permission”, it does not matter anyway, since Epic holds the “super rights” of all in the game engine created content by community modders. Dont think wrong of me, I can imagine that a chapter needs a lot of work to get released – if it should done correctly. So its a common problem we all more or less share, if you get my point. We all have those problems, if we use any given base to create something. To put it in a nutshell: Its indeed pointless to do anything against that. Its a waste of your time and health. Moreoever, I also dont support those sites – specially NOT if they make money with that. You guys are making it somehow right, no waterwarks, good quality. Something like that needs to be noted as well. Actually I wanted to write that wall of text with the intention to tell you a possible idea, but I dont have any. You are just not alone there with that kind of problem. Kaizoku fansubs also get uploaded on youtube – although they clearly state they dont want to see it (although they have other reasons: big loose of quality). Well, if other subber groups are annoyed with that kind of problem as well, I think it would be the best if you come together to discuss this problem in a bigger round.
2. Your work as fan subber group
I dont have a clue how much work an average chapter needs. I would however say, a good translation is difficult. From what I e.g. know, the Japanese language seems to have several of those “equivocals” like this “I” (female, male, neutral). You also you stated (with chapter 23 release some time ago) more or less that you had to think a little bit “outside the box” what something could mean sometimes. (BTW: my english skill is not that great), like that “punch” thingy. So, I can understand that the translation factor is already a pile of work. What I also think it could be a pain is that some of those speeches are not in speechbubbles which makes an edit not that difficult. They are in smaller font size directly with dark shadows on the panels, if you know what I mean. For my part I would not know without a lot of hours, days and weeks what to do to edit out the original stuff to put the translation in it. And then there seems to be the problem to let it look “real” (without to see it got photoshopped). Since I work with PS CS 2 for some years as well, I know, even if you have a routine with certain work steps, some edits will remain a bunch of workhours.
Maybe I should use this chance to thank you for the translated series.
Just my 0.02 $.
hmc
just dont do DDLs anymore, upload everything to online reader is the way to go. making those reader sites do more work is the right way to solve problem, or better yet, each picture should be large enough so that even the largest window resolution would have to mouse down, that way they do more work to screen capture your work =)
people that wants DDLs are probably for their own collection and convienences, since they do no work, you should not worry about punishing them. its not their right to “collect” manga in the first place, it belongs to the artist anyway.
They can still right click, open the page and then save it^^
Thus doing it for each page and then upload it other places.
Don’t take away my direct dls. I don’t have an internet connection 90% of the time. So when i do have an internet connection i direct dl a whole bunch of manga and read when theres no internet.
How about tou put up the DL link up after 3 days the release so leechers can ony read it on your site’s reader.
I don’t want to punish those who prefer to DL a copy to read it.
I thought so too, but considering that mangastream does not provide download links for their scans, yet it still surfaces on mangafox …
They can still right click, open the page and then save it^^
Thus doing it for each page and then upload it other places.
To bypass this problem you need to have a transparent png page infront of your online reader so if they try to page the picture they will only get the png.
If they still can screenshot each and every page…respect xD
Well you aren’t really punishing them. If they want to read then the latest chapter they can do that, if they want a copy they can come back later to get it^^
Watermarking is always an option…
Absolutely not.
That’s gay…
If you aren’t going to send a message to the readers and the uploaders then it’s gay. After sending the message it’s only normal to release the watermark free version…if you don’t…then it’s gay, lol,
Please do not use gay as a derogatory term on our site… try “stupid” instead
i dont see any reason for not using this sites reader, its awesome
Thanks for being a cool fan :D
Oh I know that your online reader is better.
The advantage of mangafox is, of course, that it enables one to look for the updates of many scanlators at once.
But it’s true that, since you have so many worthwhile projects, you certainly deserve regularly visits.
This is what mangaupdates is for.
I think that some newbies/casual fans/ experienced but stubbornly ignorant fans don’t know the true glory of MangaUpdates–the Releases page:
http://www.mangaupdates.com/releases.html
Use that as your homepage and the world’s your reader! You can even customize the Releases page to filter out genres or display them in a certain color. But you all know all that.
I just wish there was some way of cluing people in on this faster. MangaUpdates does show up when you search for a manga title, but there’s so much info on each page and the Releases link isn’t prominent.
Whilst I understand the frustration, you must realize that aggregators have different audiences than most users of this site. I only come to this site for Freezing (patiently waiting 42 :) ), but have to look elsewhere for series you do not host.
Whilst your online reader is the best, it won’t be the motivating factor that keeps users coming to your site. Why not make your series available via your online reader only, for the first 3 days, then as a compressed file afterwards? I think it is more convenient to move one archive from one site to another, rather than saving 30 pages manually (but I don’t know what tools are used to share your scans).
You can research methods to protect your content. I’m sure you can monitor your server logs and determine whether robots or actual users are sharing your scans.
Do know that this argument sounds similar to the ones used by newspapers vs Google News, where they argue that their stories shouldn’t be made available on Google News. Their answer has been a pay-wall or lawsuits. How effective has those been?
I’ve watched anime on websites that has been downloaded from CrunchyRoll, and CrunchyRoll has a pay-wall! So obviously a paywall isn’t going to work. The most prudent action would be to email the administrators of the aggregators (poor man’s lawsuit), and hope that they comply. Raising your pressure isn’t going to help anyone.
it has been a while since I came to this site so what happened?
sighs…..
so pissed off…. dypathy and i working our asses off for free. while studying at college. and those people on mangafox getting money from all of the scanlator’s hard work….
and worst of all, there is very little that we can do…. >.<
wat the post said. we have our own online reader. better quality, and it wont help those bastards to fill their pocket with dirty money….
help us, by not helping “them” :/
Lots of online reader sites are annoying, especially after there’s a problem in Mangafox between the forum’s admins and admins from NOEZ.
Yes, these filthy bastards have no respect for what free work they’re stealing and making a profit out of. I’m not even proud of the fact that we need to take donations to subsidize our group, I’d much rather pay for it all out of pocket but I can’t afford the means to get things to you guys without your help. It’s what it means to be a broke college student living off of government loans, I guess.
Mmmm…
I’m not up to date with stuff that’s happening here, so forgive me if I’m saying something that’s been done / stupid.
But, what about posting the download link (MF) 72 hours after your release?
Even though technically they can still “download” it from the reader, it’ll be a bit more difficult and annoying. :o
Of course, disabling right click on the reader will make it even harder (but yeah, still not impossible).
:)
Thought about it, but it would just piss more people off.
Disabling right click or placing restrictions doesn´t work. You only need to monitor the http traffic to get the link to the image. It´s easy…
There is little you can do except ask people to stop using mangafox (or hack them).
…and we all know how much that helps when people actually thanks gayfox for the releases and ask if they can help with releasing more…or how the next chapter is going…
Something we all would want on our site…I mean really…since it’s our projects >.<
Hello, I believe you’re talking about watashi ni xx shinasai…
I think you should make a thread (sticky or something) in the forums about this policy. I had make a post about this policy of this group on the forums by the title of ‘Announcement’, but looks like little people pay attention to it, so I think it will be more effective if it comes directly from you, the representative of FTH-scans.
Sorry and thank you.
It’s not worth my time trying to fight with the online readers anymore.
I agree…we all got something better to do than using our time fighting them ;)
Though I have to admit that acting like a troll is worth your time sometimes. It was in my case….all the stress I had build up cuz of the them…I got relieved to go on for half a year more, heh.
I share your ire…
while I’m not the kind to do that, but I think I do understand that some sites provide their member to upload and so, without restriction. In the end, it’s up to the uploader point of view then, not the provider or the sites who’s accept it.
Mangatraders does but it also has a black list.