Take on file uploaders
It’s sad that there’s so much original and “modified content”, like scanlated releases, that is going to be lost forever with the closure of services like MegaUpload and FileSonic.
There is, of course, the overarching truth, which is that we always knew these services weren’t for permanent storage. Whoever uploaded files there did it with the knowledge the download would expire eventually. Surely they also knew there were better alternatives (or DDL from their servers when possible).
Realization
Yesterday I was, as usual, playing with entertaining myself on 4chan, when someone pointed out that “on the Internet, when something goes down, someone will replace it”. I answered “You must be new to the Internet”, as it hardly ever happens that an equivalent service is born immediately or at all after the old service is killed, leaving us moaning about the old days forever and ever.
Then I realized how there’s no need for alternatives yet, as there are plenty of file uploading services.
Moeney
The upload sites gave money to uploaders. Why would they do that when they can keep everything to themselves?
Fact is, there’s just so much competition, and pleasing the Downloaders gets very difficult. When everyone is driving the same car, the only solution is to steal the fuel of the other websites – the Uploaders.
It doesn’t matter if they put more ads or if they request money for faster and/or consecutive downloads. If they grab all the Uploaders, they will be getting all the Downloaders onboard anyway.
Greed wins over Quality again
I love when people upload to sites like MediaFire. There’s no wait times, there’s no bandwidth limits, no simultaneous download limits, the download button is green and very visible and it starts the download without a hassle. The ads are irritating and everywhere, but we can’t exactly ask them to give us their time and bandwidth for free.
Moreover, the people who have to pay for the accounts are Uploaders, not the Downloaders.
One negative thing about MediaFire – it’s a little harder to keep content online… what have you been uploading again?
The other popular sites on their download pages beside captcha and wait times, will instead give a list of options to get subsequent, simultaneous and wait-time-free downloads. This is how these sites are able to multiply their income: disregarding the Downloader in order to attract the Uploaders.
This is a well-wrought cycle that will kill the more honest upload services.
Uploader’s fault
Choosing a service to get money from pirated content is pretty despicable.
I believe the recession, financial crisis and number of jobless young people is making this a more widespread problem than it should be. The full-time job of many is to upload pirated content on these sites to make money through the downloads. The earnings that can be made through uploading for few hours a day are comparable to the wages of a proper job – minus the taxes of course.
The issue isn’t that pirated content doesn’t give royalties to the copyright holders, the issue is that it is now used to increase downloads and money.
This is making pirated content more widespread thanis requested or required, and the easier it is to reach, the more “normal” it will be considered by the Internet population. My “real life” friends wouldn’t know how to use torrent or p2p services (poor fools), but they know all about the direct download sites like… what MegaUpload was.
Final thoughts
I haven’t uploaded to services like these for 2 odd years. I download off them a lot though, stuff from SaHa and circles like that, doujins basically. Sometimes I happen to download MineCraft stuff, but that’s it.
I believe the ones who don’t distribute money or try too hard at getting Uploaders onboard will be the sites that will stay up… the longest. I seriously hope so.
Every time I have to use FileServe or HotFile or DepositFiles, I kill a kitten. Those sites are so impossibly difficult to navigate I often just give up because waiting and downloading is such a waste of time. I pretty much always look for another alternative or just don’t support the group at all if the only services they offer to get their stuff are those annoying, paywalled, inconvenient download sites.
Indeed, I can get to download raws from Chinese sites more easily.
mediafire + adblockplus = doing it right
All I understood was “ALL HAIL MEDIAFIRE”, and I totally agree.
“One negative thing on MediaFire, it’s a little easier to see your content removed… what have you been uploading again?”
In the case of the scanlation scene you mean the “insert mangaka / publisher content here” not mine not yours … theirs, so dont forget that son, because at the end they can remove anything that is not yours by law, regardless if they paying you or not, mediafire and any kind of filehosting service need to pay their bandwidth costs so i dont care if they put ads while i download from them, but the fact sites like DF, FS and many others, pay money for every download its what really put the last nail on the coffin for them; I mean i hope they not surprised for beign closed, im actually surprised that this didnt happen like 1 year ago.
And not only the “uploaders” pay for accounts, a lot of people (and I mean A LOT) from the US and many other countries who usually get their stuff from those sites pay for the month/year accounts because (depending on their plan) their ISP’s dont give them unique IP’s, most of them are under NAT so its pretty much impossible for them to download stuff whitout getting IP blocked, the “premium” accounts fixes that limitation. So sites reselling premium accounts flourished like grasss too … and will die too of course.
Well, maybeeeee everything will go back to their roots, when the effort was not concerned with results, because the quality and self satisfaction was above anything and usually the final result was pretty decent hahaha, at least that was my case.
P.S. I really hope to see manga agregator sites getting closed down too, and i mean EVERY one of them.
“P.S. I really hope to see manga agregator sites getting closed down too, and i mean EVERY one of them.”
I hope this happens, because sites like Mangafox that operate by stealing people’s work and making money off of it really piss me off. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this ever happening is slim. Mainly because the way the parent company of Mangafox operates, enables them to get away with alot of it.
lol using online storage sites to get content :D Torrents for the win!
Yeah! SaHa, doujins, etc. lol
we should start our own file sharing site woxxy
woxxy, i’m not blaming you for not knowing stuff. But you need to get your facts straight before you accuse scanlators of profiting from file hosting.
I will chip in my honest opinion about file uploaders. No trick, no lie.
If you think scanlators can make hundred of bucks a month uploading their releases, then you have never tried out uploading to those filesonic link before. You need to get to the core of file uploader business.
Uploading business is profitable with (i) mass upload (ii) unique file (iii) Pay per Sale plan. Why pay per sale, you ask? Simple math, in pay-per-download, 1000 dls = $5. While in pay-per-sale, 1 sale can range from $5-$126(!) with filesonic. Alright, if your file is unique and people want to download it asap, then you are guaranteed to have “sale” if you play some tricks like “dividing the file into 5-6 parts” (after one download, a person needs to wait 10 mins to download the second one, so if they don’t want to wait, they buy premium account on filesonic). That’s how people make $$$ a month with filesonic (warez, games, movies), oron (sex)…
As i mentioned above, it’s a profiting business if your file qualify those perquisites. However, in scanlation, of all the 3 criterias, in fact, scanlators got only (ii) which is “unique file” that people want to download. But then, i can barely name even 1 scanlator who has ever tried “pay per sale” plan because our scanlation, even though it’s “unique”, it exists in a different form called “online reader”…in fact, most people don’t even download anymore, they go to manga online reader to read…then what about mass release? Can you name me some groups that have mass releases every day? If you can’t make daily (mass) releases, then forget about sales. On top of that, most manga readers are school kids who can’t even afford paying their own games, do you really think a chapter of manga can get them to purchase a premium account online (to read manga? lol?).
Furthermore, if you had been into the business of file uploading, there’s one rule you should know, every file hosting business cheat with pay-per-download plan., filesonic doesn’t say it, but if you have followed them enough on digitalpoint forum, then at some point, the admin there Hish admitted that, they cheated, counting only 5 downloads per IP a day (while they claimed on their site that they counts every download), and that’s one of the biggest (and most trusted) site in the trade got caught red-handed. And in my own experience, they not only cheated with that, for pay per download, they cheated counting the right number of downloads as well, it’s a fact everyone in the trade know, they just don’t speak it out. My first try-out with the pay per download plan was with Bitshare.com and it counts 2 downloads for each 5 unique downloads. You see the problem here? The file hosting business is not profitable for anyone but the owner.
Final note, i will need to ask you to take a look at file hosting business’s trick with pay-per-download. Everyone is saying “$30-40 for 1000 downloads”, big number, right? in fact, for small file (1-10mb) like of scanlators’, they pay a tiny amount of $0.5-5 for 1000 dls. No, it doesn’t stop there, in that 1000 dls, they divides into “regional download”. For this regional download, you should know that, only countries in “top tier” like the US, UK, CA, is counted as the highest 5$/1000 dls (because these countries generates the most premium purchase). The rest of the world is terrible, from a tiny $0.5 to $2-3 for 1000 dls (and let’s not forget about the host’s dls counts cheating). So is scanlator using filesonic a profiting business? Hell no…and there are 2 personal reasons why i use filesonic:
1. It’s because i got a premium account in it and used to store file unlimited time. The money earned each month (about $15-25) i again re-subcribe to filesonic monthly premium plan (for unlimited upload speed, download speed and storage), sometimes it does bring in some spare $10-20 for me but then those money would go to scanlation as well. (most of our projects are private raw and I have to purchase from japan, my cost is probably some of the biggest out there if you know my list of purchase)
2. My workplace (a university) bans all the popular file hosters like megaupload, mediafire, rapidshare (and even torrent and FTP access! fyi, IRC as well…) so i don’t have much choice when i’m at work and need to release something. If i’m home i can upload to megaupload or mediafire easily (i did some in the past actually) But then, it’s too much trouble for me to upload consistently to both mirrors…(e.g i release a chapter of manga on filesonic while i’m at work, then when i go back home dead tired after a hard day, are you telling me to upload it again to another mirror? That might seem trivial to you or many people, but to be honest, i value every second of my life and in fact, the time i need to reupload those chapter to another mirror (which has some chances that mediafire might delete it without any notice), i prefer to do some other work like translating or just worrying about my real life stuff. In fact, the only reason i could afford the pleasure of writing this is that we are on Saturday.
Well, if you need more information or proof, you can ask me directly, i can explain it to you in details. It hurts me quite a bit when you accuse scanlators like us using filesonic to profit from scanlation. Again, this is personal opinion and it applies in my case only, i’m not sure about other scanlation group but if there’s one capble to profit from hosting their releases on filesonic and stuff like that, it has to be some damn big H groups xD
This post was directed at 4channers crying over the upload services, not scanlators. It was about people uploading any kind of content to upload services to make revenue as it was black labour, eventually killing more modest services like MediaFire is.
My level of knowledge on the matter is a bit broader than I show, but making a good and readable post for the lazy visitors is more important than showing how much did my peers teach me about the art.
What I said in the past post about some scanlators earning from their hobby, which hardly had any content about upload services (FileSonic being named and then given for dead), stands true because I am not just making suppositions.
[spoiler]it’s not simple. but you monetize and legalize the batoto.[/spoiler]
You equated cahwshore thieves with my linking to a post you made on a public forum discussing the sale of PornBB. That’s just about as good an example of false equivalency as I think our little conversation could ever hope to produce.I’m well aware of how the piracy trade was started, since I was a part of it as far back as 1997-1998. I distinctly remember that the concept of profiting from piracy was one that would deem you to be a pariah. However, these days, those that identify with the old way of thinking are few and far between.As far as what we are putting our efforts into, well I think our record speaks for itself. In just the last few months we’ve seen the death of PureTNA and Empornium (if you think the hackers’ story was the reason they folded you are naive), most of the big adult tube sites have been successfully sued and convinced’ to join our digital fingerprinting program, and we’ve seen the all but death of Hotfile, the #1 cash whore cyberlocker. What makes you think things aren’t already in the works regarding FS, FSV and Oron? Just because you haven’t heard about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. We aren’t obligated to let Frosty know what’s going down.At the end of the day here, I don’t even know what we’re debating.
we can’t travel back in time, and who would bring a dohcue like said here owner. but my point is that if we can concentrate technological knowledge in the hands of the better the more moral at least people who hav e a litle decency in them ot leave the candystore and not have bought or stoled anything at all but they might have listen to the candy on the radio. but cassette tapes are a mutherfawk the transfer from one person to the next diane did it anillhy. but it’s still privracy aither way. ok gorge you were great last nirte and spaghetti will soon be here. love, mhannama
they were contemplating mkniag manga viewing a paid service but remember all the buzz about Narutofan and some guy named Tazmo doing that? Plus it seems to be way too complicated/time-consuming to divide all the revenue to the right people, the publishers and scanlators Bah, sorry for the start of a ramble. I can’t really think of anything other than extension to what you are talking about. :([]
Hey guys! I thought the ariletcs provided some very interesting and valid points. I normally have a policy to stay the hell away from internet debates, but as an art student who is aspiring to go in to comics well, this one hits home for me. Anyways, since I still think this might offer an interesting viewpoint to the discussion I figured I should post what I posted on the facebook discussion. If this is at all inappropriate for this part of the website, please let me know and I will try to delete it.What I wrote was: I’m not going to lie, I do read scans, but that doesn’t mean I don’t go out and support the official release and not support Alpha. When people read it for free and then don’t go out and support it, it doesn’t only hurt our chances of getting more frequent releases and more content, but it also affects all kinds of comics. This may be a personal opinion, but I can’t really see how anyone could say they are a fan when they have stolen from the creators that have given us awesome stories. I still stand by it at this point, especially the part about it affecting comics as a whole. Thanks for the information, and I am looking forward to seeing the views of everyone on the podcast!
I agree with most of the other complaints (lousy vewier, no Android support, etc.), but what I’m most sour about is that this means Viz now has, in essence, a monopoly on the translated manga industry. By eliminating the competition and becoming the sole providers, they no longer have any incentive to make their product the better alternative’ to the other’s. The reason computer technology has advanced at such a fast rate is because companies like Microsoft and Apple are waging a quality war against each other. Without Mangastream, We now have to go to Viz for our One Piece fixes and they know it. Who’s to say they won’t jack up the price as a result? Or, seeing as how most of the world’s population cannot nor has a desire to read it in Japanese, cease caring about the accuracy of the translation?I am in no way, shape, or form an advocate of piracy. But as someone who feels the deserve the best for their money, I think this is a move that will come back to bite everyone in the butt sometime down the road.
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