Regading Watermarking

[firemagnet]

to the staff of Japanzai and XscansX;

i for one, appreciate the work you do in scanning, translating and uploading the various works that you happen to pick up, including Nozoki Ana and Btooom among others, many of which would never otherwise see the light of day inside the United States due to culture values and norms dissonance, as is the case with works such as Nozoki Ana, To-Love-Ru and TLR: Darkness.

However, this does not warrant, i feel, the watermarking on the recent scans of Btoom. I'm not quite sure about the nature of the complaints and the whole feud (if someone wouldn't mind explaining this to me), but it seems like you're doing something wrong.  rather than making a decent, well thought-out protest against a site that--according to the nature of what i have heard--makes money off of manga scans that are otherwise free, much as Narutofan did with anime, you sound all too much like Cato the Elder of Rome, who ended every speech with "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam" or "Furthermore, i think Carthage should be destroyed". Furthermore, the watermarks are annoying, and make you sound, frankly, like juvenile, whiny brats who've never known proper discipline. Put more plainly: just because you scanlate various works and our often our only source of said works does not mean that we, the readers, or various sites must bow down and prostrate ourselves before you as though you were gods. if you think that you receive too little love for what you do, then note that every single download of a chapter that someone follows comes with his or her unsaid thanks. if people didn't like you or didn't appreciate what you did, then they would not download your work.  

[admin]

your point is not valid, if you don't understand the nature of why we did this, then don't file any complaint to us because we will disregard it the moment we read it.
One question: you think we like watermarking our releases (so people like you come complain like this?). Before the mangafox and mangahere bastards broke our policy, we have never done it before. Now you think we like watermarking and you come here saying that we are doing wrong (but you don't understand the situation at the same time?). Don't you see that there's something totally wrong with us watermarking our release now but not in the past?
You said it's wrong and you didn't even bother doing your little hw before writing this? I would go raging right away if it's not for this is a free forum for speech. I will give you a chance to do your damn hw first before i kick your stupid thread out to nowhere and ban your account forever.

P/s: i f**king care about you bowing or not to us, i have never even thought about that (bowing? via the net? lol?), people like you were never anything to us to begin with. Now my mood for the day is fucking ruin being called "juvenile, whiny brats who've never known proper discipline"
(should i mentione that i got a master in law? who's the fucking brat who doesn't have enough discipline here, huh?) , thanks for nothing, ungrateful leech. I'm delaying btooom more and will add more watermark on it if your answer is not satisfying, mark my words.

[Koro]

Put more plainly: just because you scanlate various works and our often our only source of said works does not mean that we, the readers, or various sites must bow down and prostrate ourselves before you as though you were gods.  

Nor is that our intention. We simply want our policy to be respected, and since it's been blatantly disregarded, we resorted to watermarking. If you hate the watermarks that much, wait for clean releases or learn to read Japanese.

if you think that you receive too little love for what you do, then note that every single download of a chapter that someone follows comes with his or her unsaid thanks. if people didn't like you or didn't appreciate what you did, then they would not download your work.

This isn't about being loved or thanked by fans, it's about others profiting from our work while refusing to abide by a simple 24 hour policy. Put yourself in our position for a second; we spend innumerable hours scanlating manga only to have our work ripped from our reader, compressed, resized and hosted elsewhere. NOEZ make thousands of dollars a day through stealing the work of others (and don't bother bringing up the "pirates stealing from pirates" argument) while we can barely afford raws and server costs.

Before you wonder why Tran is so angry;
1. This argument has been had too many times already.
2. He's had to pay money out of his own pocket to bring manga to the masses only to be criticized in return.
3. We hate watermarking. It takes longer each release, eats space, and results in arguments like these.
4. While we're trying to wean people away from sites like MangaFox and give them earlier, HQ releases, more often than not we're thanked by being accused wrongfully (eg. the MangaFox thread you posted on previously).


Anyway, to reiterate upon the answer to your original question, this whole ordeal started because of our opposition to and dealings with MangaHere/MangaFox. NOEZ, an actual company, turns out thousands a day from the work of scanlators while doing shit themselves. We've tried to reason with them, and I've had several discussions with mods and staff from Mangafox, but ultimately they simply want to gain as much profit as possible.
A little side reference: http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?page=1&tid=28000

They use smoke and mirror tactics to play the good guy while lying through their teeth, DDoS sites that oppose them heavily enough ( http://foolrulez.org found this out the hard way) and make enough money from the work of others that they could actually buy their own licensing for some of the series they host (not that they ever will).
They also remove credits pages and scanlator info. MH is more notorious for this, but check the latest releases of Btooom! on MF and you'll see what I mean; 35 and 36 are bereft of their credits pages and 36 currently has the scanlator listed as N/A.


Our problem is with groups like NOEZ. Readers who believe sites like MH scanlate manga and spam their boards asking when the new release will be are a pain, but our goal is to wean readers away from such sites, not hinder them. If they can't read watermarked releases, they can either wait for the clean versions or learn to read Japanese and buy the raws themselves. They can complain about the watermarks all they want, but if half as many readers wondered what was going on instead of complaining we probably wouldn't have had to start watermarking in the first place.

[Supersaiyandoyle]

Why watermark though? Why not let other people enjoy your scanslation unmarked by putting a small line at the bottom of each page showing where it came from? People wouldn't go through the effort of removing your hideous watermarks and people who were interested in who scanned and translated it could see at the bottom of each page.

[Supersaiyandoyle]

And if what you want is to get more people to go to your site to get ad revenue, why not make it so you don't release a chapter until your site has been viewed a certain number of times since the last release?

[griffon]

Why watermark though? Why not let other people enjoy your scanslation unmarked by putting a small line at the bottom of each page showing where it came from? People wouldn't go through the effort of removing your hideous watermarks and people who were interested in who scanned and translated it could see at the bottom of each page.

And if what you want is to get more people to go to your site to get ad revenue, why not make it so you don't release a chapter until your site has been viewed a certain number of times since the last release?

Really, I have enough of hearing that kind of bs... I'll be patient and reply one more time, even if it's Captain Obvious-level.

If we put watermarks on the bottom, they'd just get chopped off with crop, or filled with white. Too easy. Also they wouldn't get the required attention, cause the average person doesn't care anyway. So they are ON the middle, so you see them, liking it or not.

Secondly, we don't have ads on our 'main' site. The only ads are on the online reader (the part that actually costs us most money), so you see them only if you use the extra bandwidth. You don't see annoying banners everywhere if you just browse the site and use DL links.

Thirdly, we release the cleans after a month, when NOEZ and the other great guys can't profit from them anymore.



Meh, more time wasted to repeat for the 1,000,001st time the same stuff, I guess.

[Vile]

I love your watermarks. Keep it up. I completely understand your reason for doing so and support you 100%. I especially find it humorous when you bad mouth offending sites and they still decide to leech it. All of those other sites like MangaFucks, Mangahere, and mangareader all watermark everything they have on their readers ANYWAYS! Especially Mangafox where they have a tl;dr statement at the bottom of every single page. (That really pisses me the fuck off.) I'd rather have a cleverly placed watermark for a relevant cause than have a script of "DIS IMAGE IS HOSTED BY US BUT DOES R NOT BELONG TO US!" (btw no shit sherlock) or "WWW.FAGGOTMANGA.COM!!" (as if I didn't already know what fucking site I'm reading this manga on) at the bottom of every fucking page.

It's hilarious when you go to read a manga and you see mangafox's watermark tl;dr shitty logo, mangahere's logo, and like three others including their own all on one fucking page throughout the entire chapter. HAHAAHAHAAH! It just screams irony.

[just asking]

Sorry, I'm a bit lazy to browse around this forum, but what's the clean means? Simply a clean chapter or same chapter without watermarks?

Well, surely the group who scanlate a manga have the right to watermark their scanlation, and no complain, really, as long as it doesn't collide with texts within or without the bubbles. I'd rather say mangafox and the kinds who watermarks manga in their sites are ridiculous and laughable, since there's no real point in their watermarks, at least unlike a group whom scanlate a manga. In the first place, scanlation is illegal. Buy a copy of physical (and official) books if you seriously want to keep manga without watermarks, damnit.

[Koro]

Exactly; by the "clean" version we mean the chapter without watermarks.

[Unknown]

Even though I don't like the watermakers, mainly when they are placed into the nipples, I don't think we can really complain about anything, since it's all free. :D

[PROzess]

People are getting too used to my all-over-the-page-watermark-.-
I should exaggerate it a bit more...

[Dutch]

People are getting too used to my all-over-the-page-watermark-.-
I should exaggerate it a bit more...

It's true I forgot all about them to be honest. Now that I remember they will stick out like a sore thumb though.

[justice]

I was cool with the watermarks till you guys started threatening hedgehogs... I'm a big sonic fan =(

[justice]

But you gotta do what you gotta do i guess, so you have my support

[PROzess]

The cruel treatment of the lil poor hedgehogs by no means reflects the consensus of the whole team.
The more than cruel act of killing hedgehogs can't be tolerated and is done by a staff member, who everyone hates already anyway.
Please stop reading on Mangafox, so we can stop him!