[X] My Assistant

I do think FAKKU in general are slightly out of touch. In particular that would have been acknowledging both

They're not out of touch. They're feigning ignorance. This is something they planned from the start. [en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_playing

I suggest you read the third paragraph from here: https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?s=&am...t&p=5726131

Piracy is not a uniform force for good like some people here have represented it as.

It really is, for a million reasons. It's not a uniform force of evil like you and some sketchy companies are trying to represent it as. You'd think shameless people like you would stop forcing this lie when observations and studies has disproven your nonsense but you're still doing it. You lot remind me about those modern flat earth societies with this persistent repeat of lies and delusions.
How are those restrictions and decreases of property rights and privacy rights to combat piracy working out for you? Must not be going so well when it's pissing people off and generating much less sales. What a shocker.

Do you know how Fakku started? Or Crunchyroll? Or any other legal streamer site? Do I need to draw black lines on a white page and let you fill it in with crayons to make it easier for you to understand? I'm all for it if it'll make things easier for you to understand.

The fact of the matter is that in a world without online piracy, you and everyone else would've never been able to explore and discover any of those artists from Japan. Guess what happens when an artist is irrelevant and nobody knows who they are? They don't make any money. That's how reality works. The person who made this thread wouldn't even be able to work in this industry if it weren't for piracy. Would this industry even exist in a world without piracy, or be as large as it is today? Nah. Do you have any idea how important businesses and employment rates are to the economy of a country? Actually, don't answer the last question because you clearly don't know the answer.

If you want to claim that online piracy is bad because it's causing companies to lose money in the current year, go ahead and prove it. I'll be waiting. I've actually been waiting for nearly three decades for one of you to prove it because that's how long your lies has been going on for and I've yet to see a single shred of evidence from any of you.
It's so damn tiring because people like you are suggesting that the liberty, property and privacy rights of others are less valued than your ego and lies.

The proportion of people who illegally downloaded or streamed creative content while they are willing to pay the market price, is the lowest for films and TV-series, and the highest for books

If I'm not mistaken, that's the study which the EU paid $428000 for and they suppressed it for years and tried to keep it a secret because the study's conclusion went against their narrative since they thought it could've been used to push for stricter copyright laws?

It's low for TV series because it's slightly too expensive for the average person which is precisely why Netflix is thriving because their prices are somewhat decent in developed countries.

From the same study: Overall, the analysis indicates that for films and TV-series current prices are higher than 80 per cent of the illegal downloaders and streamers are willing to pay.

For films? I assume the study is talking about theater films. I personally avoid theater films because I can't bring my own drink or snacks and I'm forced to buy their expensive products which is a huge turn off and it's not right to blame piracy for it.

Yep, it's that study. It's not the "EU" which doesn't make sense i.e. the Parliament (at least some) was quite surprised and angry to not have seen that. But yeah, that's the one some didn't want out.

Nope, film is what you'd call movie. Majority of professional call that film. I didn't quote that because it's different from what we have here. In the report you can see that a first illegal view can slightly improve a second legal view. Meaning that some people watch the film at home by streaming, and then buy it to watch it again.

Your quote however summarize the problem with film and TV-series, it's too expensive meaning the quality has decreased if we suppose people purchasing power didn't decrease. You can see however how Netflix & shit like that has changed the situation, people have mean of a cheaper service and thus went there.

It really is, for a million reasons. It's not a uniform force of evil like you and some sketchy companies are trying to represent it as. You'd think shameless people like you would stop forcing this lie when observations and studies has disproven your nonsense but you're still doing it. You lot remind me about those modern flat earth societies with this persistent repeat of lies and delusions.
How are those restrictions and decreases of property rights and privacy rights to combat piracy working out for you? Must not be going so well when it's pissing people off and generating much less sales. What a shocker.

Where did I say it was a uniform force for evil? Piracy in a historical context, and in a more limited modern context, are a quintessential source of anime/doujin popularity and exposure in the west.
If you mistakenly interpreted from my posting that I am anti-privacy, I can't really say anything to convince you otherwise. Let's just say I've done hundreds of pages of legal reading on important privacy court cases.

Do you know how Fakku started? Or Crunchyroll? Or any other legal streamer site? Do I need to draw black lines on a white page and let you fill it in with crayons to make it easier for you to understand? I'm all for it if it'll make things easier for you to understand.

I do. I haven't logged in or posted in at least five years, but I have a Fakku forum account under a different name. I've actually contributed releases as either an editor, proofreader, QC, or even a translator in one instance. I'm a member of the community, not some imaginary shill for you to strawman.

If I'm not mistaken, that's the study which the EU paid $428000 for and they suppressed it for years and tried to keep it a secret because the study's conclusion went against their narrative since they thought it could've been used to push for stricter copyright laws?

You are correct there was a study with suppressed results commissioned by the EU. The principal conclusion of the study was that there wasn't significant across the board statistical evidence to support the idea that piracy hurt sales, but in some cases it showed that it definitely did. In their study roundup they found negative correlation in 23 of 25 studies.


Overall, piracy can drive sales. It would be delusional to completely reject that as a concept. However, piracy driving sales is dependent on the community's engagement with the avenues of support available. Look at F95- creators regularly engage with pirates without condoning their conduct and they create a mutually beneficial relationship where they garner support from people they otherwise wouldn't. That's what piracy that drives sales and helps creators looks like.
It doesn't look like the comments sections on the releases Fakku posted. With the reception they got it just doesn't make sense to continue to enable piracy in any capacity.

On the works I have translated and uploaded, I always leave links for where to purchase it legitimately. I believe this is the honest way to send appreciation to the creators, even if very few people end up doing so. However, those creators have sent me a lot of hate and anger because they believe I am only harming their market and stealing sales, even though they do not even have English copies of their work. Official translation groups like Fakku and Irodori are constantly telling Japanese creators this hurtful story about us, while also touting how friendly they are with artists they are fans of.

Artists don't need us to tell them what to think, believe me. It's a completely natural feeling for an artist to not want their work stolen (not getting into the steal/copy debate; that's what it feels like to the artists). Just because you put love and care into replace the Japanese text with your own doesn't change the fact that their content is being distributed online for free, and the distinction between scanner and scanlator is not very relevant to the average artist. It's something I've had to grapple with myself. Out of the hundreds of translations I did, I can only remember one artist who embraced it and acknowledge what we were doing over here in the West. I'm very fortunate I now get to work on their content and do official releases, so that story had a happy ending. However, I wouldn't be surprised if many artists harbor resentment against me and the community as a whole, and I'd say that's understandable and justifiable.

We've been met with this kind of skepticism ourselves, and had several artists turn us down at first, given our history and because they believe everyone outside of Japan is a pirate—which to be fair, probably isn't too far off since the legal market is still very new. Most of them come around after hearing what we do now, or when word of mouth goes around and they hear good things about us from other artists. As en example, our planned guest for this year's Anime Expo (which sadly got cancelled due to the pandemic) started out as a friend of a friend who wanted us to release their doujinshi as well. In my experience, most artists are thrilled to work with you on official releases. They don't hate the West; they hate piracy.

In fact, I would encourage you to reach out to an artist you like and offer to do exactly that. That's basically what we do, and while we have a successful company behind us that adds a lot of legitimacy to it, we have partners on the site that are just a single guy or a small group working with or or two artists to put up a handful of releases. If you don't want to complicate things by turning it into a business, I imagine we could possibly handle that part of it and just send the revenue share to the artist directly—if you want to sell it on our site. And before anyone comes in calling me greedy: go ahead and take your share, but then you have to set up a proper company on your end first. If you do, you can sell it on whatever platform you want. Hell, as long as you get the artist's blessing, you could even post your releases on here with a link to the storefront if you think that's a good approach. I can't speak for other platforms, but I'm pretty sure we don't ask for any store exclusivity for third party vendors.

I should add a final disclaimer that I'm just spitballing here, and if you (or anyone else) wants to go through with this, you should contact us in a more formal capacity to get some proper confirmation on these ideas.

Piracy is not a uniform force for good like some people here have represented it as. Piracy only breeds sales when the community is receptive and supportive of those involved. And the people in the comments, the people with uploads, they made it very clear they had no interest in approaching that topic through F!. If the community isn't going to be supportive, it no longer makes sense for F! to enable pirates in any capacity.

This sums it up the current situation nicely. I only answered what I thought was a one-off question about piracy, and I didn't intend for this to turn into a discussion on whether or not it's good or bad. In my opinion, the most honest stance is to call it a double-edged sword. I don't feel this debate is relevant to the topic, so I won't reply to any comments trying to argue one way or another.

Like other users have said, I think pulling the plug so soon was premature

I do think the vast majority of community concerns fall under three categories: misconceptions about who's issuing DMCA takedowns, Jacob's statements on Twitter about piracy, and sentiments about the honesty of FAKKU's intentions.

I'd say the premature act was putting up the galleries. Until those other concerns are addressed, it doesn't come off as genuine. Putting up some galleries and hoping people will like us eventually feels like a lazy approach. As I've already mentioned, I've thought about doing something for several years, and I've gotten some decent suggestions from this topic that I might try. I think after a few other initiatives, and depending on how they are received, I'd be willing to give putting galleries on here another go.

...

We have been keeping this thread because it was more-or-less civil. If you start to place more wood on the fire then this is pointless. Either try again or just remove this post - no sensible group of people will accept "we will change our approach once you change your approach".

Overall, piracy can drive sales. It would be delusional to completely reject that as a concept. However, piracy driving sales is dependent on the community's engagement with the avenues of support available. Look at F95- creators regularly engage with pirates without condoning their conduct and they create a mutually beneficial relationship where they garner support from people they otherwise wouldn't. That's what piracy that drives sales and helps creators looks like.
It doesn't look like the comments sections on the releases Fakku posted. With the reception they got it just doesn't make sense to continue to enable piracy in any capacity.

Just something about that case, and I do think it's related to Fakku, if people aren't supportive of the legal release, it's not piracy fault. It's maybe because the legal release are not something people see value in.

The common counterargument is 'they don't like it, because it's not free. We can't compete'. The study has found that this is mostly false. Some people are willing to pay more (particularly in book, hence why I said it's related to Fakku), some others found that the current situation is too expensive (film/tv-series) for customers.
Are those people just living in an utopia where everything is cheap? I doubt. People are willing to pay money for what they think is worth it (I won't dwell more in that area, it's pure economy).

Maybe the real problem isn't the piracy, but what do we propose and why some people don't want it. I don't know if that's the case for Fakku, I don't know if you've got enough customers to not care about piracy, if you're not greedy, or if there is a piracy vedetta against you. I'm only saying this because we went into piracy 'philosophy'. I've no opinion in the current Fakku topic.

As a brief aside, thanks for restoring the old gallery that was well received until just now. Not my cup of tea, but the community at large seemed to like that gallery.

In my deepest part, we all know and hope that one day we'll just can go back to our glory day, when all of this have not happen yet. When we still unite as one. I just still hope....

WE (the all of us "we") also need some form of legitimate "hentai" business enterprise to flourish in order to protect free speech rights. In this day and age, our rights to express ourselves keeps on declining and being reduced. SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) decades ago in a precedent-setting ruling made it clear that there is more protection to preserve something that is being successfully utilized than something which is and remains unused and of no real impact for prior decades. With legitimate hentai businesses utilizing the full range of free speech, this helps set up a legal bulwark to defend those rights against the day that anti-hentai try once again.

Seeing lots of piracy debate. I recall this study. [archive.is] http://archive.is/0tlWK The one the EU withheld because it found piracy boosted sales of all media except for blockbuster movies. I'd imagine the explanation for the discrepancy is that blockbuster movies already have the biggest advertising there is. This of course, doesn't cover cartoon porno, but it would be weird for this particular industry to differ when all other media got a boost, save for that which was already having millions of dollars poured into advertising.

The thread has been good so far!

What have you been releasing anyway?
The content already available at hentai cafe? In an attempt to cut the grass beneath the feet of those who share your releases against all odds?

I may be wrong, but all I see there is a calculated attempt to use e-hentai against the websites that actually share the things for free, as you did a long time ago.

This post has been edited by JnTo: Jul 28 2020, 01:13

I know I'm a 0 post nobody that's late to the party, but I still want to throw my two cents in.

If you want someone to pay for this type of thing(porn), it's more about the service/platform and less about the product(at least for me personally. I know there's people out there that worship pornstars and porn artists lol). There's such a massive amount of easily accessible porn on the internet that I could jack off 24/7 for the rest of my life and not even make a dent in how much porn there is.

The way you get me to pay for something so readily available is providing a better experience than what I'm used to. Uncensored content is great, but it's not a deal maker. The Fakku website is honestly awful. I don't know if I'm just spoiled by e-hentai's robust tagging system, but trying to find anything more specific on the Fakku website is a challenge. There's also no download option, so even though I'm paying for something I'm still beholden to my ISP and your servers. Even Steam has an offline mode.

I'm also just more likely to pay for physical objects I can hold and smell(weird I know, but nothing beats that new magazine/book smell), and not merely access to digital copies. I know Fakku does physical releases from time to time, but the premium cost and limited runs while understandable, are usually too much for me to justify unless I REALLY like the artist.

As things stand, I'm more than content pirating porn. I'm not acting like Robin hood or whatever, but I just think there's a gap in what I'm willing to pay and what you/artists are willing/able to sell for. For example, if I paid even just $5 for every Doujin/manja I've jacked off to in my life, I'd be in like $30,000 of debt lol. I'm barely willing to pay that for a car I'll use daily for 5-10 years, I'm definitely not paying that much for porn.

I will end with noting that I was firmly in the "F##K FAKKU!" group, but reading your posts in this thread swayed me towards the middle. I'm not ready to pay you(in fact, I wish most artists just had a tip jar I could directly drop a $5 or a $10 into after a good jack lol) but I don't hate you or think you're the boegyman. You're just a little inept when it comes to PR and website design.


P.S. I wrote this as a stream of consciousness, so please forgive me if it's not the clearest or most concise thing you've read before lol. Now back to years of lurking I shall go.

P.P.S.
I will try to be more vocal in the future if I see something that's obvious bullshit though, us super lurkers shouldn't let the 1% of users that type the loudest think they speak for all of us.

This post has been edited by Foojack100: Jul 28 2020, 02:47

For what it is worth, my opinion of FAKKU has deteriorated over the past few years due to the takedowns. The recent events have improved somewhat, even though the galleries are gone. But it is encouraging that FAKKU is willing to engage us here in discussion rather than sending takedowns.

Hopefully, things will get better rather than worse.

The Fakku website is honestly awful. I don't know if I'm just spoiled by e-hentai's robust tagging system, but trying to find anything more specific on the Fakku website is a challenge.

We're currently working on the design and expanding our IT team. To give context, during our first 6 years our focus was on the product itself, and expanding the production team to meet the demand. Right now we're localizing more content than we get in, to the point where we're working on backlog issues on the side. This has allowed us to turn our attention to other aspects of the business, and I imagine once we get a proper overhaul of the website foundation, you'll see new features roll out more frequently.

There's also no download option, so even though I'm paying for something I'm still beholden to my ISP and your servers. Even Steam has an offline mode.

There is for anything you purchase. Also our downloads are completely DRM-free, unlike Steam which in itself is DRM. Library services rarely offer downloads, since they need to confirm that you're an active member before giving you access to the product.

I know Fakku does physical releases from time to time, but the premium cost and limited runs while understandable, are usually too much for me to justify unless I REALLY like the artist.

Are you talking about the doujinshi boxes we do once a year for Anime Expo? Because otherwise we don't really do limited runs for our books. As for the cost, it is a premium product. Twice the size as your typical non-h manga release, and among the highest print quality in the industry. We mimicked the quality of the most premium publisher in Japan, so many of our releases are better quality than the Japanese counterparts from other publishers.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of hidden fees and sometimes downright penalties we have to pay for working with adult content, so a hentai book is never going to be as cheap as a volume of Naruto. There are things we could do to press down the price, but that would result in an inferior product. Regular manga is priced the way it is so that kids can convince their mom to buy them a volume, but our audience is strictly adults. It'd be an interesting experiment, but I don't know how many people would pick a budget release when they can get something much nicer for just a few extra dollars.

in fact, I wish most artists just had a tip jar I could directly drop a $5 or a $10 into after a good jack lol

If you're willing to do that, I'd suggest buying a book or doujin so that everyone involved is compensated. The content is a collaborative effort between the artist, publisher, and—in the case of an English release—the localizer. You can buy the Japanese release if you want to cut us out, but note that the artist gets a bigger slice of the pie from our book sales. Even more so with doujinshi releases, where most of the profit goes directly to the artist. That way you also get a digital copy that is yours to keep (and can be downloaded) to go with your tip.

P.P.S. I will try to be more vocal in the future if I see something that's obvious bullshit though, us super lurkers shouldn't let the 1% of users that type the loudest think they speak for all of us.

I appreciate it. And I hope you see my reply for what it is (me addressing your concerns), and not some kinda attack. You seem reasonable, but I have to clarify as I'm used to dealing with people who are less so.

For what it is worth, my opinion of FAKKU has deteriorated over the past few years due to the takedowns.

We haven't changed anything in regards to our stance on takedowns (we remove direct rips of our content), so I'm not sure what this is referring to.

We haven't changed anything in regards to our stance on takedowns (we remove direct rips of our content), so I'm not sure what this is referring to.

Fakku is pretty much the hentai boegeyman, so whenever Wani, Irodori, enshodo etc DMCA something everyone believes fakku had something to do with it lol. I hope they’re at least appreciative that fakku takes almost all of the flak for them.

And I do appreciate you taking the time to reply to me. I didn’t know Fakku had a download option, it has been quite a long time since I’ve seriously used the site. And I know physical releases are a pipe dream, and might always be a pipe dream. It’s really a rough situation as anime and hentai in general become more mainstream.

I do think something that could keep everyone happy is artists moving to a patreon type system where you get early access, discord features, concept art, voting on ideas etc, but the core content(doujins/manga) gets released for free eventually. The people that actually pay for porn and want to support the artists get to do so(and get special perks and privileges) and the trolls and pirates that flat out refuse to pay no matter what still get the core content eventually(well, they still get it now, it’s just not on e-hentai because e-hentai is an easy target).

This system works very well in the fledgling hentai game market. This is very anecdotal, but I actually know someone making a choose your own adventure porn visual novel type thing on patreon. He uploads old builds of his game to pirate sites because the horniest dudes always end up paying the $5-10 a month for early access and his discord so they can try to sway development in the direction they want. And pirates seem happy enough waiting a week or two for him to upload a new out of date build lol, I guess if they get the content eventually they don’t go out of their way to hate you and make complete site rips.

And I think another thing you should let people know is how anal Japanese people can be about things like piracy and even just modding their own electronics. They REALLY dislike doing things in ways you’re not supposed to, I got to know some cool Japanese dudes while playing Monster Hunter World and they definitely think about some things differently than Americans do.

P.s. I am going to be on the lookout for upgrades to the Fakku site now, the e-hentai tagging system is a pretty high bar but I think it could be exceeded if you keep the netori and netorase tags separate instead of lumping everything under netorare like they do here lol

This post has been edited by Foojack100: Jul 28 2020, 11:56

In fact, I would encourage you to reach out to an artist you like and offer to do exactly that. That's basically what we do, and while we have a successful company behind us that adds a lot of legitimacy to it, we have partners on the site that are just a single guy or a small group working with or or two artists to put up a handful of releases. If you don't want to complicate things by turning it into a business, I imagine we could possibly handle that part of it and just send the revenue share to the artist directly—if you want to sell it on our site. And before anyone comes in calling me greedy: go ahead and take your share, but then you have to set up a proper company on your end first. If you do, you can sell it on whatever platform you want. Hell, as long as you get the artist's blessing, you could even post your releases on here with a link to the storefront if you think that's a good approach. I can't speak for other platforms, but I'm pretty sure we don't ask for any store exclusivity for third party vendors.

I've actually thought a lot about doing this, but given that I don't know Japanese, have a business, or even good will from the artists, I don't feel that this is a solution I can do. I'd much rather that the artists just go to Fakku and sell on there so I don't even have to make illicit versions. I just want them to be accessible and uncensored. Sometimes the creators get really awful translations made and published on Fakku (I'm looking at you, F_TSF) and I'm frustrated about this prisoner's dilemma situation between translators and artists.

We haven't changed anything in regards to our stance on takedowns (we remove direct rips of our content), so I'm not sure what this is referring to.

I understand your position but for example, doujin-moe doesn't issue takedowns, and they have been uploading their content here for a long time. I'd rather support their business model than yours.

And the fact that they are still in business despite a lot of their stuff being mirrored here suggests it works...

Fakku is pretty much the hentai boegeyman, so whenever Wani, Irodori, enshodo etc DMCA something everyone believes fakku had something to do with it lol. I hope they’re at least appreciative that fakku takes almost all of the flak for them.

Good point, I don't think FAKKU ever issued takedowns for fan translations or raws (correct me if I am wrong).

It's hard to measure, particularly since those others are not part of the discussion. I think they'd get even more flames if they posted here. And as I said, the fact that FAKKU has tried to mellow their approach recently should get them a bunch of brownie points, even if they are a bit hard to see due to some above-average level of trolling in the comments.

I understand your position but for example, doujin-moe doesn't issue takedowns, and they have been uploading their content here for a long time. I'd rather support their business model than yours.

Probably because DM is an overglorified scan group that paywalls translations of other scan groups.
I'm sure they wish they could issue takedowns.

And I know physical releases are a pipe dream, and might always be a pipe dream.

What do you mean? We release a new book every two weeks, all of which have physical releases. The FAKKU and KUMA titles [www.fakku.net] listed here have physical releases.

If you're talking about magazines, that's sadly not feasible; here's what I've said on the topic in the past:

Magazines in Japan are printed on very low quality paper, which is why they can get away with selling something with twice the page count for 40-80% of the prize of a regular book. They're meant to be easily used and then disposed of. We don't really have this option since our printing situation is very different than in Japan. Our books match some of the highest quality prints in Japan, so keeping it the same would likely balloon the cost of a single magazine to ~$50. A lot of changes would need to be made in order to make physical magazines financially viable (for us and our customers).

I do think something that could keep everyone happy is artists moving to a patreon type system where you get early access, discord features, concept art, voting on ideas etc, but the core content(doujins/manga) gets released for free eventually.

The people who actually pay for porn and want to support the artists already get this by buying the product, and a few perks/timed exclusivity is a poor trade off. I think you're mainly appealing to pirates with this system, and that's a pretty poor business strategy.

I've actually thought a lot about doing this, but given that I don't know Japanese, have a business, or even good will from the artists, I don't feel that this is a solution I can do.

If you're doing scanlations in some capacity, you clearly have the means to do it. Yes, it requires work to put together an official release, but that's the way to garner good will from the artists. Show that you respect them enough to where you think they deserve compensation for their work, and you'll get plenty of respect in return.

I understand your position but for example, doujin-moe doesn't issue takedowns, and they have been uploading their content here for a long time. I'd rather support their business model than yours.

I might be mistaken here, but I'm pretty sure they've tried in the past, so I think they would if they could. The reason they can't issue takedowns is because their entire business is based around selling scanlations. I've had to contact them on several occasions in the past, asking them to remove my freely available scanlations from their paywall section. While they commission some stuff on their own (content they still don't have any rights to, obviously), they have a history of also taking other groups' works and charging a premium for them. All while pocketing all the profits and not paying the content creators in Japan.

I'd say half the scummy things people incorrectly accuse FAKKU of doing, DM actually does, so I hope that statement is based in ignorance and you wouldn't actually support a site selling pirated content.