Banning large watermark groups

Do you know why the Boston Tea Party happened? It occurred because the East India Company, was going to reduce their prices. Americans felt the need to provoke the citizens so a candle could be lit.

In a same sense here, you're the light asking watermarks to be gone. The conflict would be easy solved if people respected the scanalators more. Then batoto wouldn't be needed and neither would watermarks. (But needed doesn't mean it will be gone.)

By asking such a ridiculous action to be done, is just throwing oil on the fire.

PS: Not sure who named the post, but... I have to say it.
Not for those who anger easily.

Edited by Kalladin, 16 March 2012 - 11:48 PM.

TS, you're not getting much understanding on this forum. But you can fight back on your own. Open up your photoshop and then remove those nasty watermarks from evil scanlators who don't respect you. Once you clean a manga from the watermarks, post it on MangaFox. That will surely make the manga community more robust and earn you love and respect from numerous leechers and Jacky Yung personally.

OP, I sympathize with you. Really, I do. I hate watermarks and I hate putting them on our releases. But I hate something else more: getting spat at by people in a similar mindset such as yourself.

I do not need to be considered a god. I would be happy with just being a human being instead of some vending machine that can be kicked, punched, beaten, knocked around and spit on just because I happen to have run out of plain M&Ms and only have Peanut M&Ms available. Let's just put something here in perspective: I do not have to give you anything. There is no law or right that you have that requires me to give you anything against my will. So when people start biting the hand that feeds them, proverbially speaking, some people are going to either stop feeding them or reduce the quality of the food being given out.

I consider what I am doing a favor to people. And favors between humans and friends especially are usually reciprocated with another favor. You want me to remove the watermarks? I want you to wait 48 hours before uploading what I gave you to every site on the net. Is that really so tough? MF has a bot that goes around and rips manga from other sites. We were combating that with animated gifs. People started ripping the panels from those gifs and uploading the cleaned version to MF. Just because they did not want to wait 48 hours. Now we have permanent watermarks. We went from a no watermarks group to a permanent watermarks group simply because people at MF, and other Noez affiliated sites cannot wait 48 hours.

Oh, and lately it's cool to point fingers and say that we're participating in Ad Share here on Batoto. Ask Grumpy yourself if you don't want to believe me, but we have never been a part of it.

It is funny that Japanzai is still mentioned everytime as "they need to stop the huge watermark" while when we actually stop these watermarkj for already over a week and all our previous release are already replaced with the clean version, nobody cares...

Now, tell me how can such thread still be legit?

Btw, these watermark were to raise the awereness of your average reader that usually don't try to digg more into what he is reading. We consider that it played its role so we no longer need to use it... for now. If more people continue to bitch about more non existing issue it could really well restart even worse.

As for the rest, Souldrake tells it all.

It is funny that Japanzai is still mentioned everytime as "they need to stop the huge watermark" while when we actually stop these watermarkj for already over a week and all our previous release are already replaced with the clean version, nobody cares...

Now, tell me how can such thread still be legit?

Btw, these watermark were to raise the awereness of your average reader that usually don't try to digg more into what he is reading. We consider that it played its role so we no longer need to use it... for now. If more people continue to bitch about more non existing issue it could really well restart even worse.

As for the rest, Souldrake tells it all.

The watermarks are annoying, but I can live with them. What ticks me off is the language you use for us leechers. Puts me in mind of what Charlie Sheen was doing to his fans a while back, you know complaining about why he was fired instead of entertaining them.

Edited by ewhile, 17 March 2012 - 12:54 AM.

The watermarks are annoying, but I can live with them. What ticks me off is the language you use for us leechers. Puts me in mind of what Charlie Sheen was doing to his fans a while back, you know complaining about why he was fired instead of entertaining them.

what's needs to be done to make sure the message pass was done. You could call it a commercial technique, our goal wasn't ultimately for people to come on our site to "thank us" but simply to push those "leecher" to search for information about how these chapter are translated.
Because believe it or not but there are still people thinking those manga aggregator are the one translating or even making the manga itself.

on mangahere's Sun Ken Rock file and posted yesterday:

This is taking ages now ... 20 days for extra chapter whats wrong... Come on the stroy are getting boring if you keep it long ... however if its weekly like any other famous manga ... it will keep claiming to the top. Stop ruining this manga by slowing everything down ... if you want you can do like naruto and add extra un related topics to the story.. how ken been raised... the incident that killed his parents .. something like that !!

of course, those aggregator will never be the one to say otherwise.

The reason (at least from what I'm reading from rational /a/ posters) why watermarking is getting a lot of hate is that:

(1) by watermarking there is an assumption that groups wanted power over distribution (according to Daiz) which is in the first place hypocrisy because scanlating is in its core a breakage from this "power over distribution" which is originally from the publishers like Kadokawa, Shueisha. Fansubbing has this problem, and they don't give a fuck. Scanlators pirate the mangaka's work, mangaka aren't vocal against it, why would scanlators be vocal if another pirate steal their work?

(2) by watermarking, there is an assumption that groups are taking claim of the manga, which is problematic because this attracts publishers' hate. Publishers turn a blind eye over scanlations because there is no one is profiting off it. But if they see their manga being pirated and with your group name slapped onto it, that would incite the publisher's and the mangaka's rage, slowly killing scanlation. DMCA's would fly.

(3) Mangafox, Mangahere, etc. will never die. The casualties would include Mangafox readers, Batoto readers, Archivists, while the only thing that should be targeted would be Mangafox readers.

I hate watermarks for the very reason that I'm an archivist, I always DL from scanlator's website or IRC and it is annoying when you have to redownload everything. Though I have no problem with it if the groups are releasing clean version. Some groups (like Pinoymanga, DokoDemoDoa) don't release them.

/a/ has only 2 simple demands to scanlators:
(1) Use mediafire (I don't know why this is hard. I was able to upload to mediafire using shitty Philippine internet connection with absolutely 0 costs and there are no "wait x minutes"/"simultaneous downloads" BS, decent DL speeds, I don't know why others can't do it.)
(2) No watermarks ... or release clean version (at least for me, since majority of /a/ are impatient enough not to be able to wait at least a day or week)

EDIT: I'm aware that only a little portion of scanlators are actaully doing this. Majority of scanlators aren't giving a fuck (the smaller ones).

Edited by Dark_Pride, 17 March 2012 - 01:29 AM.

/a/ has only 2 simple demands to scanlators:
(1) Use mediafire (I don't know why this is hard. I was able to upload to mediafire using shitty Philippine internet connection with absolutely 0 costs and there are no "wait x minutes"/"simultaneous downloads" BS, decent DL speeds, I don't know why others can't do it.)
(2) No watermarks ... or release clean version (at least for me, since majority of /a/ are impatient enough not to be able to wait at least a day or week)

EDIT: I'm aware that only a little portion of scanlators are actaully doing this. Majority of scanlators aren't giving a fuck (the smaller ones).

/a/ is bullshit, they only see what they wish to see.
(1) we provide our own DL server with better speed, no wait time, no limit on parrallel DL and all our file in a single place
(2) we no longer use Huge watermark and even when we were, they usually were replaced for the clean version after 24hours or less.

so once more, all those plea with Japanzai as its center (I know that you mentioned pinoi, but the one attacked on /a/ are almost always Japanzai) are just useless and because /a/ doesn't have the balls to attack the real cancer that is mangafox/here. period.

these guys also needs to stop posting baseless assumption and making it pass for universal truth afterward, heck, I even saw /a/ cursing that scanlators were making thousands just yesterday. If I didn't had to spend that much on raw every month it could have made me laught

Edited by Weaper, 17 March 2012 - 01:39 AM.

Oh, and lately it's cool to point fingers and say that we're participating in Ad Share here on Batoto. Ask Grumpy yourself if you don't want to believe me, but we have never been a part of it.

This is true. Mangaheaven only wanted respect (no compression of their works, no watermarking that mangafox does, etc.) when they supported Batoto. They never were part of the ad program for money. Though it's not possible to verify now because our entire ad system is down now, all members of the ad share program had a little gray box on their comics, which Mangaheaven never had. (And, of course, you could have verified the adsense code on the page, which again, isn't possible any longer).

So, it's quite unfortunate that there was so much collateral damage / that groups got dragged into this without any basis by /a/ or whoever was behind it. (And we're not really sure if it was /a/, we probably never will be, because it seems like it was Google that made the call to pull everything)

Though I agree on the suggestion that scanlators should (at the very least) warn users if the chapter uploaded on Batoto is watermarked or not (if they're going to watermark the pages). That way, the readers who are annoyed by the watermarks would avoid it for now.

ok to cut this crappy discussion to the point a reader is sulking cause some groups put watermarks and their pages or use animated pages

possible solutions:

1. live with it

2. stop reading the series

3. join those groups and read them before watermarking

4. wait till the vol are released in your language/country

but stop flaming scanlators without those scanlators u wouldnt be able to read the series at all!!!
this is just a flaming thread and maybe should be closed by the mods (their choice)
each group has their own rules and lives by them dont attack them for it you have choices... and btw u still havent linked 1 large watermark the only one who named 1 watermark are myself and then for the same watermark another one again about a-team

(1) by watermarking there is an assumption that groups wanted power over distribution (according to Daiz) which is in the first place hypocrisy because scanlating is in its core a breakage from this "power over distribution" which is originally from the publishers like Kadokawa, Shueisha. Fansubbing has this problem, and they don't give a fuck. Scanlators pirate the mangaka's work, mangaka aren't vocal against it, why would scanlators be vocal if another pirate steal their work?

Hypocrisy? Most probably. But again, this goes back to my previous argument. Whether or not their argument is right or wrong, whether they even have the right to argue about it is actually irrelevant. Because this is THEIR opinion. And THEY'RE the ones working to bring you this. Take a bitch ass superstar for example. No one wants to live with them loud-mouthing all the time. But you still suck up to them, you still pay them, you make them happy because they bring you stuff that you want. It would be irrational to try to get the person to work for you without paying them, without listening to their demands, without supporting them or anything. But isn't that what's being demanded? Take away everything scanlator wants to do and still give the people stuff. Between their ability to make a hypocritical argument versus the readers ability to make demands, I think the scanlators win quite easily. Because like I said, if they stop, you lose. If you stop reading, they don't lose anything.

I'm sorry to scanlators for comparing you to a bitch ass superstar. ^^;;

(2) by watermarking, there is an assumption that groups are taking claim of the manga, which is problematic because this attracts publishers' hate. Publishers turn a blind eye over scanlations because there is no one is profiting off it. But if they see their manga being pirated and with your group name slapped onto it, that would incite the publisher's and the mangaka's rage, slowly killing scanlation. DMCA's would fly.

Well, after the 14th, all the profit argument just went out the door. But I see that the watermarks has not changed as we see on uploads today. The biggest DMCAs have been flown before when scanlation didn't make anything. The scanlators making money changed one thing as well. We've been buying more raws than ever before. Less dealing with crappy versions floating around. So, the money scanlators make is funneling straight into the publishers. That combined with increasing research where piracy in such form actually helps sales of the original, I personally wouldn't start any big legal actions anymore than the previous state. Lastly, I don't think any group is claiming that the author didn't do anything either. Virtually every location writes the "author" field, even on mangafox with the original author's name.

(3) Mangafox, Mangahere, etc. will never die. The casualties would include Mangafox readers, Batoto readers, Archivists, while the only thing that should be targeted would be Mangafox readers.

Indeed, it is very hard to near impossible to force an internet business to die as the continual expenses are usually minimal compares to their revenues unless there's a serious flaw in their business plan (like giving 100% revenue share is a serious flaw in the business plan). But, it doesn't mean we can't try to punish them, try to show people better (in a very general sense) alternatives. It doesn't mean we can't do what we want to do, because that is our freedom.
I think everyone finds it unfortunate that many people get caught in the middle of the war. But unless the method of fighting can evolve to be more precise, I think this will continue. Aiding to make the fight become more precise is something people could help with.

/a/ has only 2 simple demands to scanlators:
(1) Use mediafire (I don't know why this is hard. I was able to upload to mediafire using shitty Philippine internet connection with absolutely 0 costs and there are no "wait x minutes"/"simultaneous downloads" BS, decent DL speeds, I don't know why others can't do it.)

I quite agree. Though, not specifically mediafire as there are alternatives even better than mediafire like Weaper mentioned.
I've said this many times myself. The purpose to using paid download sites is stupid. Attempting to earn money with it for anime makes sense because they're big and these places pay more for big files. But few image files stuck inside an archive is a different story. They almost always get filed as the minimum pay category. Then combined with not that many downloads multiplied by worse possible pay, it's hard to find groups earning anymore than $15~20/month with these. It's so minuscule that I don't see why they would bother annoying their fans.

Though, a bit of insider info. Some people continue to use sites like deposit files because they get a free premium deposit files account as a reward so they can download from other ones without the wait. lol Lot of facepalm in a bigger sense of things.

(2) No watermarks ... or release clean version (at least for me, since majority of /a/ are impatient enough not to be able to wait at least a day or week)

I believe I've already addressed this via above 3 points and my previous post. Simply saying no to watermark isn't necessarily going to help you in the long run. We have to learn to see further than what's directly in front.

EDIT: I'm aware that only a little portion of scanlators are actaully doing this. Majority of scanlators aren't giving a fuck (the smaller ones).

As operators of this site, we actually see a lot of version 2's, 3's, etc. But it's rarely noticeable for obvious reasons without an announcement -- nor would an announcement as big as new release be appropriate. Must admit at that I'm at a cross road how to display this well. Of course there's the date uploaded, but who reads that?

I don't think it's wrong to give pointers to small or big groups, given that it's being said in a proper manner. Taking directly personal case as an example, some of my group's members got over zealous with watermarks. Someone alerted me of its distastefulness. Thanks to that, I found out and I told the others to stop and was stopped. This stuff happens. Scanlators aren't alienating themselves so much that they aren't willing to listen.

The watermarks are annoying, but I can live with them. What ticks me off is the language you use for us leechers. Puts me in mind of what Charlie Sheen was doing to his fans a while back, you know complaining about why he was fired instead of entertaining them.

do you know whats funny? we scanlators work for free, so even if we call you leecher or whatever, you still shoudn´t complain because its FREE, people shoudn´t complain about things that are FREE.
and I see what nice guys I have to deal with when I go to MF, all they post are something like "when is the next release" and complain about useless things.
so how can you compair us to Charlie Sheen? do you know how much he was getting for each episode? and don´t try and say you weren´t compairing scanlaters with Charlie Sheen. some people are always ungrateful, you give them money and they would ask, why don´t you give me more?

@Takyuki: LOL you really made the size bigger xD

Edited by hero, 17 March 2012 - 11:48 AM.

@Takyuki: LOL you really made the size bigger xD

yeah, cause i mean it

leechers should be thankful they get anything at all. scanlators have no obligation to do anything for anyone, but they still spend their free time on making manga easier to read for people who don't speak japanese/korean/chinese
i for my part am especially thankful to those who translate korean and chinese series, as i haven't learned those languages yet

and i'm actually more pissed at disrespectful leechers and manga readers than scanlators for those watermarks. people should appreciate the things they like or make money off, not make scanlators wanna stop scanlating

Excuse me,guys.
Erm....actually i visited this site quite frequently since last year since i know about the Mangafox/here and their illegal activites and came here to support the scanlators since most of the manga i read is not available in my country and the Mangafox/here profit out of their site illegally.Since i am new here,forgive me if i am being stupid/crazy/angry.If i say something wrong,please point it out for me.

When i read about all of this happened to Batoto(the DDoS attack,now the Google Ad),as a humble reader and visitor of this site,i am sad.Sad that some people who are so ignorant and selfish who thinks they own the internet 'terrorizing' this site,thinking they are doing a favor by being a 'vigilante',bringing so-called 'justice' to the 'readers'.Hah,right. 'Justice' my a**.

To all readers,including the one who are ignorant and selfish bast**** who whines about the watermarks..
Let me tell you something.Who made your favorite manga famous? Scanlators.Who translate them to your languange?Scanlators.Who own the work of the manga you like? Of course,the mangaka.But WITHOUT scanlators support,you will NEVER know about your favorite manga.Heck,i think without scanlators support,you guys will never know what 'manga' mean to you.Who started this war? A group of your 'favorite' you-know-who disobeying the rule of the scanlators who translate your favorite manga.Who's the victim?Scanlators,Batoto and the innocent readers(excluding the ignorant and selfish bast****).
Now connect the dots,and see who's at fault here.

So what's the point of telling you guys this?
What i am trying to say is,STOP WHINING about the watermarks.All of this watermarking incident happens because some of your 'favorite' you-know-who website disobey the rule that the scanlators put to their releases.
IF and ONLY IF YOUR 'favorite' you-know-who website obey the rule of the scanlators about their releases,i think the watermark will go away in no time.Heck,i think the watermark has ALREADY gone for some scanlator group,so that you can enjoy reading your manga.
None of us wished for this stupid 'crusade' war to occur.Thanks to some ignorant and selfish bast**** who thinks they are the 'God of Internet' waging war to wrong people,Batoto,scanlators and the innocent bystander(reader)got caught up in this idiotic 'Crusade' war.Such a stupidity started by your 'favorite' you-know-who website disobeying the rule and the scanlators tries to fight off with watermarks and Batoto become the victim.

Grumpy,bro.Hang in there.Although there are some people wished your site 'wiped out' from the face of the Internet,we readers(excluding the ignorant and selfish bast***) will support you all the way until the day this website dies.Same goes to the honest scanlators,who bring out your favorite manga to be known by people,and ask nothing in return(well,maybe donations,but heck).Thank you for bringing our favorite manga to light and translate them to our understandable languange.

And to readers(excluding the ignorant and selfish bast****),a great way to support your favorite mangaka is to buy the manga that you like once they are available in your country.Cannot wait for the official translations and want to support your mangaka in a legal way?Learn Japanese.It's not so hard.Buy them through any online market that are based in Japan(or anywhere) that supply your favorite manga volumes.Do not have the money? Earn money through a legal way(work at the restaurant,bar or anywhere that you prefer).It is relatively easy to support your favorite mangaka.It is just UP TO YOU on whether you want your favorite mangaka to continue their work or not.

That is all.Forgive me for this long ranting(lol).
P:S;To trolls,leechers and 'God Of Internet',u mad?

ok did not read all but here is my 2 penny thought,
Why not mark chapters that or watermarked (maybe groups even) with a "W" next to it so ragers can piss off and skip it,
Here's something else. WHY IS BATOTO SO SLOW!!! GRUMPY! HELP! I CAN'T LOAD A SINGLE PAGE!!! (Had to run to other sites)

@raenef, hero, Takayuki, others - there is 5th choice/solution:
Make your own scanlation group, or join another one, that will scanlate (or just clean/edit, using same translation) the same series but without irritating stamps & with providing download :/ (example - MangaStream, Kenichi - if it continues as with last 3 chapters+omake, i would do that myself). And don't you dare attack them if you take away pleasure of enjoying good story by releasing intentionally defective scanlation... What more can I say, when you just usurp original author work for yourself?

Edited by SBKch, 17 March 2012 - 03:20 PM.

@SKBch:
great idea! those who complain can just start their own scanlation groups and do the job themselves instead
(but note that trying to cheat by removing watermarks will only result in the watermarks getting increasingly difficult to remove, and stealing someone else's translation puts you in danger of the translator quitting. would be better to ask the translator if he wants to change groups)

i won't attack anyone for "stealing" a project, i wouldn't even if i i were a scanlator who got "his" project "stolen"
but i definitely won't respect leechers who can do nothing but complain either

@raenef, hero, Takayuki, others - there is 5th choice/solution:
Make your own scanlation group, or join another one, that will scanlate (or just clean/edit, using same translation) the same series but without irritating stamps & with providing download :/ (example - MangaStream, Kenichi - if it continues as with last 3 chapters+omake, i would do that myself). And don't you dare attack them if you take away pleasure of enjoying good story by releasing intentionally defective scanlation... What more can I say, when you just usurp original author work for yourself?

sry, but I don´t understand what you are saying.
I work for scanlation groups and we have download links, and the watermarks that we use are always put in places where it is just white.
and why should I attack MangaStream? I really don´t get your post.

@skbch the group i am in doesnt use watermarks and if I would attack them cause of stealing would be the next case about how they watermark, if they have a normal or animated watermark i would call it stealing but even as a scanlator i pull a line if i see watermarks with pornografic parts or like 1/3-2/3 of the page watermark (I guess some of u know which group i am reffering to) then it is for me another lvl

like i said those complaining here have not posted 1 example of a too big watermark -- I am still waiting for it
the only one who named 1 example was myself and another scanlator/proscanlator party