[X] My Assistant

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.

Doujin-moe has absolutely tried to get their paywalled content removed from EH, but EH ignores them completely because DM does not own any rights to the content on their site as they're just as much of a pirate site as EH is, except that they also have a paywall on top of that.

And it's a lot easier to "keep a business going" when you're not paying the original creators anything to properly license their content.

Also, hi all. It's certainly been a while since posting here, so for anyone unfamiliar with me, I'm Daiz and I also do work for Fakku. More specifically, I'm the person in charge of digital distribution quality (I've built the image processing pipeline) as well as the comic reader and video player used on the site. I figured I'd chime in here to comment on some things that have come up.

On Fakku's reputation

The flip side of that though is you do little to stop or dispel [the fakku hate train]

I certainly agree that more of an effort could be made in this regard rather than just having some involved people posting on the matter on their own free time... but at the same time, I do have to say that it's probably almost impossible to extinguish all the misinformation completely. As long as you address one thing, the rapid conspiracy theorists have come up with more. Like just the other day I saw a post where someone claimed that "fakku shills get paid in discount coupons!" - naturally, the poster had no proof whatsoever both for a) the existence of "fakku shills" B) that they get "paid in discount coupons". Like, Fakku doesn't even have a single dedicated PR person, so the whole idea of there being an army of shills (ie. people being paid to promote Fakku without disclosing the fact) is just ridiculous. But of course, in the eyes of haters, there couldn't possibly be people out there that actually like Fakku as a company, so any such person must thus obviously be a "shill". Also, being "paid" in discount coupons alone would be a rather miserly pay if you ask me...

Anyway, some other person replied back to this outlandish claim with "fakku doesn't even have coupons". Now, said person was wrong - Fakku does in fact have the capability for discount coupons, though it's certainly something that's easy to miss as it doesn't come up until you reach the checkout page for buying something. Regardless, it's not something that's particularly hard to verify, though it was pretty funny how the the original poster fired back with a tweet from 2018 featuring a discount code rather than just, y'know, taking a screenshot of the checkout page. Regardless, they certainly proved that Fakku does have discount codes, but then they also act like the mere existence of coupons is sufficient proof for the original claim even though in reality that's obviously not the case at all and they still have exactly zero evidence for their original claim.

And the sad truth is that this case isn't even unique. That's pretty much the vast majority of shit that gets thrown around regarding Fakku. Somebody just makes shit up with zero evidence and everyone else takes it as fact because as everybody knows actual facts only get in the way of a good hate session. Like, not long after someone literally wrote "I can confirm that Daiz hates e-hentai" which, like, dude, what are you smoking? If you want my actual opinion on EH, it's not like I'm that hard to reach on eg. Twitter to actually ask about it? And why would I hate one of the few scanlation aggregators that actually respects DMCA takedowns? Not to mention that as far as English audiences are concerned, even with the decently sized legal market today, there is still a metric ton of content out there that's not licensed and a lot that will most likely never be licensed for an official English release. I would hate to see all that just disappear. Though I do understand artists also being upset about JP raws being shared considering the site's large Japanese audience. As YQII said, it's complicated.

Anyway, I could go on with examples on this all day, but for this specific section I'll end with an often-brought-up point regarding HentaiHaven and how Fakku supposedly "fucked them over", when [twitter.com] the whole situation was a misunderstanding, as per the HH admin himself. But rarely does the actual resolution of the situation get brought up, so misinformation continues to spread far and wide.

On 2014 mass takedowns

A lot of people in this thread already seems more aware than you usually see about the situation, but to reiterate here: the 2014 mass takedowns that led to the removal of a lot of content on EH and other sites came about as a result of sole action by the Japanese publisher Wanimagazine. A ton of people claim that what made them act was signing a publishing deal with Fakku, but it was in fact the exact opposite - Fakku was also on the receiving end of those takedowns that started in April 2014. EH and Fakku were both offered a deal by Wani to go legit (Maximum_Joe brought up EH getting the offer in an earlier thread here) but EH decided not to pursue that route while Fakku ended up going for it, leading to the Fakku deal being announced over two months later [www.animenewsnetwork.com] in late June 2014. Part of what plays into this misconception is that while most sites removed Wani's content back in April already, EH tried to hide it instead, and only actually started removing the content around July 2014 after continued pressure from Wani (who continued to send takedowns for years and still do, I think?)

Now, faced with the inarguable factuality of the timeline, some people argue that it was Fakku that "tipped" Wani about EH's attempts at hiding the content, but this claim really doesn't stand up to scrutiny either. As mentioned earlier, EH has a sizable Japanese audience and Wani isn't dumb. It's frankly silly to claim that they wouldn't be able to see through it, especially considering how the situation (and the fact that the content wasn't actually removed) was also being widely discussed on the internet in the open. And that discussion being in English wouldn't have been any obstacle either considering Wani employed a native English speaker (called Elliott) who was dealing with the matter in the first place. Wani would have needed exactly zero assistance from Fakku on the subject of finding pirates sharing their content.

Another thing that conspiracy theorists like to claim is that Wani and Fakku had already made a deal in secret before the takedowns and had Wani also send Fakku takedowns as a "smokescreen", but hopefully I don't have to tell you how deep into conspiracy nuttery that line of thinking already goes. Not to mention, why would Wani be offering a possible deal to EH too if there was already a done deal with Fakku on the cards? But alas, it's in the nature of the conspiracy theorist to argue against any facts that go against their theory til we get to the point where it's really impossible to provide any concrete evidence against their claims, at which point they claim they "win" and how their theory must be "totally real", completely ignoring how their own story kept constantly changing as facts proved their claims wrong.

Also, this all is not to say that Fakku wouldn't send takedowns on its own - it most certainly does, but the fact is that Fakku's takedown efforts are concentrated on its own releases. Much like how Wani's takedowns were concentrated on their own releases. Regardless of how inconvenienced you might be as a pirate by these takedowns, fact is that the rightsholders are, well, in the right when it comes to asking their content to be taken down, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why they would be upset about their paid commercial products being widely shared without permission on pirate sites.

On Irodori Comics

So, Irodori Comics. Yeah, I've heard the rumors and accusations about them myself, and if true then that does certainly come off as pretty hypocritical of the person in question, but as far as Fakku goes, Irodori Comics is literally just a 3rd party vendor among others and all this is drama internal to them that has no relation to Fakku. Like, from a Fakku's point of view, Irodori was basically like another name change for Enshodo, who had already done one name change in the past (they used to go by Shikimaya initially) and I don't see why it would be Fakku's job to "police" what their staff has been up to. In my books, that'd be similar to what Patreon has been doing recently where they go around telling artists to remove "offensive" artwork [www.dailydot.com] outside Patreon itself with the threat of disabling their Patreon accounts if they don't comply, and yeah, I'd rather not Fakku get into something like that in any way imaginable.

Not to mention that the main reason why people are mad at Irodori in the first place really just boils down to "how dare they take down my pirated porn", so excuse me for not exactly being all that sympathetic to any justifications they might try to come up with after the fact (and even if there is truth to some of the claims made about Irodori, the whole situation sure has also involved slinging around a lot of shit with absolutely zero evidence, much like how it goes with Fakku). Like yeah, sure, you can think whatever you want about their aggressive stance on takedowns, but at the end of the day they're still fully within their rights to do so. You're not entitled to get shit for free, and as a pirate you should be cognizant of the fact that sometimes having to jump through hoops to get the content you want without paying for it is just the alternative price you have to pay. Complaining about that is entitled as hell, to put it bluntly. And it's especially pathetic if you can't even admit the fact that you just want stuff for free and try to come up with all kinds of excuses to "justify" your piracy. At least have the guts to own up to the fact that you're a pirate, a freeloader who is only enabled thanks to the existence of actual paying customers. And have some respect to those paying customers for enabling your piracy while you're at it. (This common lack of respect is really doubly stupid in the case of eromanga considering how much even the piracy scene is driven by commissions...)

There's one more thing on my mind that I want to touch on, but I'll have to make another post for it because it'd be going over the post character limit otherwise.

This post has been edited by Daiz: Jul 30 2020, 22:33

Continuing from the last post, the final section:

On eromanga and piracy in general

There's two things I see come up in relation to the "benefits" of piracy in relation to eromanga quite often. One: "these artists wouldn't be known if it wasn't for piracy in the first place", and two: that one EU study about piracy. Let's talk about both of them.

First, it's certainly true that a lot of artists have gotten known in the west through piracy, but really, that's only natural when piracy was the only option out there for the longest time. And the fact is, now that there's proper legal options out there, people are also discovering new artists through them. There are several artists out there who were getting basically no English scanlations at all until Fakku started translating their works for its subscription service, and many of these have gone on to have their tankoubons licensed by Fakku based solely on the exposure to paying, legal customers. Catalog rental subscription services driving legal discovery is a proven thing, so this should really come as no surprise. Piracy is by no means "necessary" for artists to get exposure.

Second, while that one EU study talks about books, it certainly does not talk about eromanga specifically, and in that regard is certainly not directly applicable as the eromanga market has some very real issues to deal with in regards to piracy. One is the fact that it's porn, and I'm sure all of you have heard more than once in your life someone (perhaps even you yourself) claim how they'd "never pay for porn" or even make fun of someone else for "can you believe this guy actually paid for porn?!". People tend to have a much higher barrier when it comes to paying for adult content and seeing people actively made fun of for actually paying for adult content sure doesn't help either. This alone already makes things challenging, but then there's the far bigger issue of piracy being so entrenched in the western eromanga scene that a lot of people don't even realize they're pirating. There's tons of people out there saying stuff along the lines of "why would I pay for Fakku when I can read hentai for free on [pirate site]?" without realizing at all that the only reason why stuff on [pirate site] is free is because it's a pirate site where the artists aren't getting anything whereas with Fakku everything is 100% licensed and artists are actually being paid for their work.

So in conclusion, piracy is very much a real issue for eromanga, because a lot of people don't even know the difference between what's legit and what's not (which also leads to additional grief like people claiming Fakku only costs money because they're "greedy"), and among the people who do, you have a ton of people who are actively hostile to the very concept of actually paying for it. Certain people like to bang on about how piracy is "good exposure" for artists, but the fact is that the only way that exposure is worth anything is if it leads to people actually paying for content legitimately. And considering how often pirate exposure is paired with sentiments like "lol imagine actually paying for porn!", the chances of actually getting paying customers out of it obviously isn't very good. In fact, it could easily be actively harmful, wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, that's all from me for now. If there's something you'd want my input on, feel free to ask.

This post has been edited by Daiz: Jul 30 2020, 19:10

So in conclusion, piracy is very much a real issue for eromanga, because a lot of people don't even know the difference between what's legit and what's not (which also leads to additional grief like people claiming Fakku only costs money because they're "greedy"), and among the people who do, you have a ton of people who are actively hostile to the very concept of actually paying for it. Certain people like to bang on about how piracy is "good exposure" for artists, but the fact is that the only way that exposure is worth anything is if it leads to people actually paying for content legitimately. And considering how often pirate exposure is paired with sentiments like "lol imagine actually paying for porn!", the chances of actually getting paying customers out of it obviously isn't very good. In fact, it could easily be actively harmful, wouldn't you agree?

Ekhm... not really. This sounds pretty much like:

1 - I have a problem
2 - Society should solve that problem for me
3 - Therefore society has a problem, hence the problem in harmful to society

It is your job to encourage things done differently, towards the way you believe they should be. It is not your job to argue that people doing things differently from you are doing bad things. e.g. paywalling content you worked on is a very fair business model, paywalling related content is not.

This is not a discussion on piracy though. That is a much bigger discussion, and one not settled at all in the digital world. The concept that one can ( 1 ) have something, ( 2 ) give that something to someone else and ( 3 ) still have that something; is so new that the discussion on piracy will probably not settle during our lifetimes.

This is not a discussion on piracy though. That is a much bigger discussion, and one not settled at all in the digital world. The concept that one can ( 1 ) have something, ( 2 ) give that something to someone else and ( 3 ) still have that something; is so new that the discussion on piracy will probably not settle during our lifetimes.

It's not really a new discussion at all - copyright has been around for quite a while. Now, personally I do think copyright laws have also gotten wildly out of control and go against the original purpose of it. Rights lasting for lifetime and several decades after is plain and simply wack. Personally I'd think the length of copyright would be more appropriate at somewhere along the lines of 5-15 years, after which the work would fall into public domain.

But even though I would advocate for far shorter copyright length, I do very much still think that people should be able to make money with said rights, especially as long as we live in a capitalistic society where you need money to put food on the table. Because if you can't make money with your art, then you'll have to turn to something else instead, which in turn means that there is less art being made in the world. And while there might be more art out there than any single person could ever consume in their lifetime nowadays, it still really sucks if someone that's catering to a niche interest of yours that you really like ends up quitting. Which is a very real possibility with eromanga artists that can't make money with their work.

I would say that it falls on anyone who wants to see artists prosper in this niche of ours to help change the damaging attitudes I talked about.

This post has been edited by Daiz: Jul 30 2020, 20:03

Sigh... You really can't have good things... Someone will ruin it for you at some point.
The share from FAKKU was a good thing. They did it by themselves.
Too many of e-hentai community complained.
We lost the privilege...

This post has been edited by Jay Low: Jul 30 2020, 23:01

We lost the privilege...

Dude we never had the privilege, and it wasn't "the community" that wrecked it.

It was a bunch of autistic screaming 4channers that wouldn't shut up.

I might add that pulling those galleries after getting some rage was pretty weak considering the amount of hatred fakku has generated here in the past.

From the actual community.

so.....kill 4chan?

so.....kill 4chan?

Not at all.

Also I have no problem with fakku posting galleries here, in fact I'm in favor of it. However the idea that backlash from anyone stopped them from doing something is laughable.

It's never stopped them from doing stuff that rustled jimmies in the past.

So why is it an issue now?

I thought FAKKU stuff was already soft-blacklisted from E-H, precisely to avoid conflicts likes this?

I thought FAKKU stuff was already soft-blacklisted from E-H, precisely to avoid conflicts likes this?

Since they are the holders of the licence for the works, they can post them where they please. Of course an exception would be made in a case like this.

I thought FAKKU stuff was already soft-blacklisted from E-H, precisely to avoid conflicts likes this?

Literally yes.

It was attempted, it failed, move on.

FAKKU doesn't want to move on, though, which is why these tool factories keep posting in this digital asshole of a thread.

Thread moved over to general chat.

"fakku shills get paid in discount coupons!"

"Give that man a new!"

...

...

Some thoughts in response to your (generally) interesting arguments.

Yes, you (and Iridori and others) are within your legal rights to do stuff like takedowns. Whether it is best for you, the artists, and the community, is another question (and the answer is hardly a simple yes or no).

It is quite right that artists should be compensated, and intermediaries and helpers should be as well.

But the current system is quite unfair - and if it wasn't, you wouldn't be bothering to talk to us here and trying to find some middle ground with banners or whatever, instead of denouncing us. Things are not white and black.

No, there is no 'right for free porn', nor should there be one. But few issues in no particular order as food for thought.

A lot of doujins are themselves copyright violations of original parodies (and in rare cases, they violate Western franchises like Marvel/DC whatever). So while there is a lot of original content out there, and that's different, I have zero respect for anyone who claims that let's say a Sword Art Online or Naruto or whatever scanlation is wrong but their original doujin art or cg set or whatever is all good. That's pure, 100% hypocrisy. "A bad deed is if you steal my cow. A good deed is I steal your cow."

Copyright duration is ridiculous (you know, till artist's death + 80 years?). And even fair use is not internationally standardized. Even resharing samples shared by artists is a gray zone. So legally, most of us here will die out of old age before the first hentai work is legally free.

Which is why I always thought that the good copyright duration for hentai is a year or so. It would be best for everyone if new work was not shared here outside samples linking to 'buy digital/book here'. If you want newest stuff, pay for it. But after a year stuff should be free (ok, mayke it two, or five... heck, even fifteen if you insist). This is how doujin-moe operates as far as their translations, I think (and no, I don't approve of them paywalling stuff from other groups). But yeah, I like their policy of sharing their own staff after few months/years and not causing a fuss if it is leaked occasionally.

From the 'consumer/collector/hobbyist' perspective, I appreciate this site for having the most complete repository of doujins and like, which is also well searchable, and very well tagged. I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks each month for such a service if it was legal, but it is not. Licensed stuff is a tiny fraction of what's out there, and there is of course no comparable service offered in Japanese either (don't get me started on how bad tags and such are at dlsite pr pixiv or such). Also, as many of you are aware, there is no manga (not hentai, just manga) library/museum in Japan. Some digital copies of older and obscure stuff hosted here may be the only copies in existence. Heck, I know I bought some stuff on dlsite that is now deleted from it (no refund for me, of course). And if I haven't shared those works here they'd be possibly lost forever. You can call me a pirate. I like to think of myself as a partisan librarian preserving cultural artifacts for posterity (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You know, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, etc.

As someone who paid easily for four if not five digits porn (99% hentai, as in, supporting several artists on patreon and like, dlsite, scanning commissions + few rare books I bought myself here and there), I will reiterate I fully support artists and intermediaries. But remember the [en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_sales fallacy. Speaking for myself, if there wasn't so much free porn, I expect I would pay much less for what I did, because my exposure to 'samples' would be much smaller. I think that the 'rampant piracy' isn't a problem for eromanga, it is what allows it to flourish as much as it does. Case in point, again, FAKKU's origin. You started as part of the rampant piracy and eventually as the market keeps growing bigger and bigger, you went legit, and good for you. But you did it not despite piracy, but because of it - it is how you found out about this world, and the growth of it is how you found that despite a lot of leechers there is now enough of people in the West, like myself, who are willing to pay for it (despite the fact that there is so much of it free). If rampant piracy was a threat, eromanga, manga, anime, movie and music industries would be dead - so why are they reporting record profits year after a year? Because pirates help to promote stuff, making people consume it instead of spending money on booze, whores and sport. IMHO the very existence of Patreon and like shows that the paywall/takedown model is obsolete. I think you'd get more profits from donations and 'early release' content, as in - keep new stuff paywalled for a year, with a sample here, then upload it here, so it can be categorized and archived for posterity, with a nice banner on top directing people to your site for the most recent works of that artist. Which you could price like Baen Books does their eARCs [www.baen.com] https://www.baen.com/faq (think, hard covers for a while, then down to more reasonable price - milk the market for all that it is worth for the NEW stuff, give away old stuff for free as samples, make people love you not hate you. Consider this: most hits/sales are for new stuff, people want new, new, new. This is visible from gallery views/hits on e-h, and I expect your metrics will confirm this - bulk of your sales should be from new stuff, not your archives - I would very much like to see what your data says on this and I am right nor not, actually).

Oh. We are now in general chat? Let me rephrase.

Anyway. Take your licks, restore the galleries, keep posting, and you'll see the hate die down and your sales increase.

Seriously, you are letting a few flames ruin your experiment after just a few weeks? Out of all stuff discussed here this is the one thing that is really... in even more genral chsat LOLzy terms, ROFTFLOL, you got PWNed? Srlsy? Stop crying and man up.

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Jul 31 2020, 14:23

...

In my case, I do want to pay for porn stuff. I dunno if I'm niche or not but I want to pay for the stuff I like.
With Fakku, I never know where the money goes. There's a monthly subscription but does the money go to the artists' stories I like? Who knows? I don't want to pay for what I don't like.

It's been quite some times I see manga here, I read, I like, I go and buy the Japanese version in digital. But, more often than not, I either buy the whole book (of which I only liked 1 or 2 stories) or nothing. Sometimes I think I spend too long to find the story on pixiv's booth or sth with a bad translation but, at least, it gives most of the money to the one who made the art and story.
I wish being able to buy what one likes and not being forced to also deal with what one dislikes wouldn't be an option.

For example, I wish I could buy individual stories from COMIC Unreal and then just buy a pair of ones I like and not pay for the whole book. Even when it's the same artist I can like some stories and not like others... For whatever reason. If I pay for something I sure want to like it.
If I buy a car, it was because I liked it. Most likely there will be lots of features I can tune or cheap up on feature packages.
If I buy a PC, I knew well what features it has. Many times I can even tailor to my likes.

Even if those have things I'm not interested (Let's say... Chrome wheels for the car (which I saw) and RGB keyboard for the PC), I knew I was dealing with those conditions.
When I am going to buy these ero manga, I have only a bare idea of what I'm getting into and what fetiches and "features" a story will contain. That's part of the problem of buying these.

If I buy it's because I like. If I like, I buy. If I buy I want the money to go to whoever is responsible for my privilege to be able to read. A small fraction to the platform (they need to pay for the servers) and a lot for whoever made what I liked.

For Wani, buy all or buy nothing. For many of the COMIC marked on this website, when I try to buy due to a story I liked, buy ALL or nothing. Ofc I end up with "nothing". I liked 1 story and I pay equivalent to that story even if not well devided (let's say, 20 stories I pay 1/15th of the original price).

I hope that shines some light on why, from my POV, things are like they are. When corporations come to make a business, usually they screw up trying to go for profits. Whether FAKKU does that or not, I don't know, there's no proof and that's OK. Wani, however, has made it too hard for people like me to just buy what they like. To just promote what we like and not being forced to pay for what I dislike.

It's never stopped them from doing stuff that rustled jimmies in the past.

So why is it an issue now?

Fakku is victim playing. [en.wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_playing

So, Irodori Comics. Yeah, I've heard the rumors and accusations about them myself, and if true then that does certainly come off as pretty hypocritical of the person in question

I've heard the rumors and accusations about them

if true

have exactly zero evidence for their original claim.

What's up with staff members from Fakku dismissing facts all the time? Rumors/accusations? If true? You've seen the proof of Takahashi's scandal and he admitted to it when a publication reached out to him over it, and you still want to feign ignorance and pretend it's all fake? There's no way you haven't seen it because everybody knows that you've your eyes and ears everywhere. Are you feigning ignorance because Fakku takes a cut from each sold item on its store and everyone at Fakku wants to keep selling his company's products since it's easy money?
You guys love to shout "support the artists". How about you support the industry and act like an ethical leader instead of trying to sweep every scandal under the rug, you money-grubbing hypocrites. It looks really sketchy when the largest English publisher on the planet is lying about factual matters. This is a large part of the reason why Fakku and its staff are known to be liars and disrespectful.

Takahashi was the commissioned translator for a pirate group with a paywall and he provided them with illegal translations for popular light novels without authorization from the owners and he did it for nearly 3 years (Dec 2017 to May 2020) while running a legitimate translation business since 2019. He's also been making unsubstantiated claims about online piracy being "theft", and he once claimed to have never read scanlations or pirated media of any kind. He's a shameless liar and he's no sense of decency. His name was all over one of those piracy group's public websites and he's very active in their public Discord servers. He was using the same name for both his legal and illegal activities and someone found out about it and brought it up on a certain forum on 26/05/2020, and a few hours later, him and the owner to one of those pirate groups saw their discussion about his hypocrisy and he got so terrified that he hit the panic button and him & the owner of that piracy group tried to intentionally suppress all of the evidence against him by removing his name from their website and they banned nearly everyone from their public Discord server. They failed to get rid of all of the evidence because some of it got added to the Wayback Machine and some of their messages from their Discord server got logged. Why is he always monitoring that forum? He's that insecure?
A week later, TorrentFreak reached out to him regarding his scandal and he gave them a deceitful response by saying "oh, I only did one translation for that piracy group". He's lying and pretending it was just one translation because only one page with his name from that website made it to the Wayback Machine. He would've lied and denied any involvement with those pirate groups if nothing got saved, and if two pages got saved, he would've said "two translations" and so on and so forth.
He also told TorrentFreak that "it's fair game to illegally translate someone's work when there are no official translations", which is a very fucking ironic thing for him to say because he's been issuing copyright takedown notices against this site to remove thousands of raws and English fantranslations when official English translations from his company are never available for purchase until many months later. He got caught, he tried to get rid of the evidence, he failed to do it and then he tried to weasel his out of way it and downplay the severity of his crime and scandal with pitiful lies and it made him a bigger hypocrite.

Can you explain to us how something on the Wayback Machine and his terrible confession and mendacious response is a rumor/accusation?
If you're going to say anything ridiculous about the Wayback Machine, let me just remind you that it's used as a legitimate source for evidence in Australian and American courtrooms.

I suspect that he's using a different pseudonym and still working for pirate groups to make extra money because seeing an increase of digits in his bank balance is the only thing he cares about and that's a proven fact now.

On a side note, after his scandal, he immediately restricted access to his company's site, locked it with a password and there's a link to Shopify's site. Shopify is a company that allows anyone to use their software to set up an online store and sell their products on it. It seems he's been preparing for a plan B for months if Fakku decides to stop selling his items. And don't bother with saying "but he's been talking about having his own store for a while" because that doesn't change anything that I just said.

Irodori was basically like another name change for Enshodo

"Basically another name change" is a very bizarre way to describe how Takahashi staged a coup and secretly ran a smearing campaign against Enshodo's owner and stole his business away from him.
Don't even try to lie and deny that part because Takahashi never denied it when TorrentFreak asked him about a thread that brought it up in its first paragraph. Even Jacob admitted that there was a split in his AMA thread on May 03 2020, and that was several weeks before somebody revealed the truth behind the "split".

Not to mention that the main reason why people are mad at Irodori in the first place really just boils down to "how dare they take down my pirated porn"

What an awful strawman argument. This kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate. Fakku... dishonety... match made in heaven.

I don't see why it would be Fakku's job to "police" what their staff has been up to. In my books, that'd be similar to what Patreon has been doing recently where they go around telling artists to remove "offensive" artwork [www.dailydot.com] outside Patreon itself with the threat of disabling their Patreon accounts if they don't comply, and yeah, I'd rather not Fakku get into something like that in any way imaginable.

What are you talking about? Takahashi's scandal and your example are as different as chalk and cheese. I know you dislike crowdfunding sites because Fakku would make less money if more artists started using crowdfunding sites but this has nothing to do with it. Stop performing mental gymnastics.
As much as I disagree with some of Patreon's actions, it's well within Patreon's rights to do whatever they want with someone's account on their platform. You don't get it but many of the genres for those artworks are banned in many developed countries and Patreon wants to continue running their business in those countries.

You, Jacob, everyone else at Fakku and Takahashi has been saying this for years: "Piracy is illegal". Takahashi's scandal is about that and it's a criminal offense in countries with copyright laws and it comes with a fine that is very pricey too. Tampering with evidence is also illegal in many countries and he did that as well. Ironically, his crusade against this site is also only possible because of those copyright laws. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

You've been whining about piracy for so many years and this is the perfect opportunity for you (as in Fakku) to prove to people that you actually mean it. Instead, you're trying to sweep his criminal misconduct under the rug and pretend everything is fine because you want to continue selling his company's items on your store because you take a cut from each sold item from and not that many people know about the scandal which gives you zero incentive to do anything. It's only convenient for Fakku, especially Jacob's wallet, when the money is pouring in until people find out about Fakku's rampant corruption and it can no longer be kept under wraps.

What will it take for Fakku to remove a company's items from its store? What type of crime must a hypocritical douchebag carry out for it to happen? Robbery? Human trafficking? Murder? At what point will Fakku say "enough" and close its doors to a company like that?

Piracy is by no means "necessary" for artists to get exposure.

No one's said that it's necessary.
But tell me, in a world without piracy, would Fakku exist at all? No.

Second, while that one EU study talks about books, it certainly does not talk about eromanga specifically

That made me laugh irl.
Nerds have argued that comics are books since 1933, and I completely agree with them because it quite literally is a book. Now that the study doesn't fit your narrative, you're going to pretend that comics aren't books. Hahahaha, just wow. There are studies from Japanese universities saying, more or less, the same thing as that study but with a focus on ongoing and completed manga.

Jacob and you have whined about piracy for 6 years now, and neither of you have proven anything so far. It's like we're playing a RPG game and both of you're the most obnoxious NPCs ever.

One is the fact that it's porn, and I'm sure all of you have heard more than once in your life someone (perhaps even you yourself) claim how they'd "never pay for porn"

"Fact"? No.
So what if it's porn? What does that have to do with your ramblings against piracy? I've seen some people say the exact same thing about video games, songs and many other things too. Those aren't going under, in fact, those are thriving. The same thing applies to porn.
If you're trying to argue that porn makes less money because of piracy, then prove it.

People tend to have a much higher barrier when it comes to paying for adult content.

Again, this is not caused by piracy. If porn could be purchased anonymously, it would generate more money for store owners and content creators.

there's the far bigger issue of piracy being so entrenched in the western eromanga scene that a lot of people don't even realize they're pirating. There's tons of people out there saying stuff along the lines of "why would I pay for Fakku when I can read hentai for free on [pirate site]?" without realizing at all that the only reason why stuff on [pirate site] is free is because it's a pirate site where the artists aren't getting anything

Fakku has been making positive financial gains since 2014. If what you said is true and if piracy was an issue, then technically speaking, Fakku would've closed down a long time ago. I remember when Fakku announced its subscription model in 2014, people were ripping from it since day one and yet the company has been thriving with profits.

whereas with Fakku everything is 100% licensed and artists are actually being paid for their work.

Wow, that sounds too good to be true, Daiz! You're telling me if I go to FAKKU™ and pay $155.40 for a year's subscription to read all of those translated magazine chapters, you'll support and pay all of those artists with my subscription? Yeah right. The truth is that you pay the PUBLISHERS who own their works and who knows how much of that money in the publisher's pocket will go to the artists. Only some artists at Fakku are treated well and get paid extra but only if their works are popular.

How much did Fakku pay for all of this in the video, and why didn't any of the money go directly to the artists in Fakku's subscription?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzwdls0eFdE

leads to additional grief like people claiming Fakku only costs money because they're "greedy"

People do say that Fakku is greedy but it's not because "Fakku costs money". I personally find Fakku to be greedy because you expect me to buy a comic with 25~ pages for the same price as a book with 300~ pages. LOL not happening. Your business model is a double edged sword. Why would I pay for a comic with 25~ pages when for the same price I can get access to thousands of chapters or a book with 200-350 pages?

I don't trust anyone that takes down a 5 year old gallery because they think they own the rights to it. No one's going to pay for something that old when they have it saved on a hard drive somewhere, and no one's going to look for it. It's severe autism at that point.

With Fakku, I never know where the money goes. There's a monthly subscription but does the money go to the artists' stories I like?

Artists are paid a commission, and the rates and frequency (i.e., how often they appear in a magazine) depends on reader reception. It's practically identical to how it works in Japan, only better since it's fully digital and doesn't rely on physical surveys sent in by readers. Reading a chapter on FAKKU directly contributes to their popularity (unlike reading it on a piracy site), which in turn translates to higher commission rates.

I wish I could buy individual stories from COMIC Unreal and then just buy a pair of ones I like and not pay for the whole book.

I've heard this argument before, and while I see where you're coming from, there are issues with this reasoning.

First, I don't think this system would be fair to the artists. One of the main benefits of a magazine is the discoverability of new artists. You buy it for the big names plastered on the front cover, but it also introduces you to new names that can grow on you over time. If people only support artists they like (read: know of), we're not giving new artists a chance. This is unfortunately something you often see on donation sites like Patreon and Japanese equivalents, where big-name artists make a ton of money, but smaller/newer artists end up forgotten. Again, good intent, but an ecosystem that allows for artists to grow and build a fan base over time (like our subscription or the original magazines) seems a lot more fair.

Secondly, it makes little sense from a financial perspective. Based on what I know and what I've seen on platforms like DLsite, you're probably looking at paying something in the range of $2-4 per chapter. You have the option of buying a handful of chapters at most, after which a subscription would be cheaper and give access to thousands of chapters. Let's say you want to buy everything from BeNantoka (I just picked an artist on the front page), that's gonna cost you $40-70 to get all 19 chapters we have. For a more extreme example, let's say you want to buy everything on the site right now (ignoring future releases; only counting chapters, excluding illustrations, etc.) at the most likely unrealistically low price of $2 a pop, you're paying the equivalent of a lifetime subscription to FAKKU:

CODE

~5300 chapters × $2 / $13 sub fee / 12 months = 68 years; +18 minimum age = active subscription until the age of 86

Now I understand your main concern is about supporting the artists you like and less about the money, but I hope the stuff I wrote before that last paragraph helped shed some light upon that aspect. Reading their chapters on FAKKU is supporting the artists you like, while exposing you to to (and supporting) artists would might come to like in the future. And if you absolutely hate an artists and don't want to support them in any way, don't read any of their content. It's a pretty straightforward system once explained, and I'm starting to realize that's probably an area where we've failed the most.

My quote from another thread:

FAKKU, as uploaders on e-h, do deserve all the hate they get.

And I think removing/hiding of recently uploaded galleries as a way of reacting on that hate actually makes it even worse for their image. Good job?

My personal opinion:
If someone is selling digital products worldwide for years, expects things to go from good to great fast, then blames piracy and trying out arguably strange tactics from time to time, I'd say they are not doing a very good job.

Do I have problems with Fakku? Except emotional reaction to all the stuff they are involved in - just 3:
1. Their website frequently says it's "under maintenance", which is a lie.
2. Some things just stop being available or getting removed from sale. Apparently with no explanation.
3. No regional pricing.

If a portal does these things - I conclude it doesn't want my money. It feels like they never even tried to learn about their (potential) userbase. Whenever I end up on Fakku website, my overall reaction is either "meh" or "nah".
Even DLsite (which blocked most traffic from my country at some point) gets some sales from me because of somewhat adequate seasonal discounts and useful UI.
And yes, regional pricing is important. I consider its absence a single serious enough reason why Japanese portals are never going to get worldwide audience they deserve.

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.

You've just described the reason for Steam to be a "DRM in itself". Anyway, that's wrong. There are DRM-free games on Steam that you can download and play or transfer anywhere. Already installed games with DRM will work in offline mode. Steam's DRM is a joke, strictly speaking. It's unable to protect against piracy, it's just there to confirm stuff about user's account.

This post has been edited by genl: Aug 4 2020, 20:19

Artists are paid a commission, and the rates and frequency (i.e., how often they appear in a magazine) depends on reader reception. It's practically identical to how it works in Japan, only better since it's fully digital and doesn't rely on physical surveys sent in by readers. Reading a chapter on FAKKU directly contributes to their popularity (unlike reading it on a piracy site), which in turn translates to higher commission rates.
I've heard this argument before, and while I see where you're coming from, there are issues with this reasoning.

First, I don't think this system would be fair to the artists. One of the main benefits of a magazine is the discoverability of new artists. You buy it for the big names plastered on the front cover, but it also introduces you to new names that can grow on you over time. If people only support artists they like (read: know of), we're not giving new artists a chance. This is unfortunately something you often see on donation sites like Patreon and Japanese equivalents, where big-name artists make a ton of money, but smaller/newer artists end up forgotten. Again, good intent, but an ecosystem that allows for artists to grow and build a fan base over time (like our subscription or the original magazines) seems a lot more fair.

There's one solution for that. Ready? It's called "SAMPLES". It's standard practice throughout many industries to gather attention. For example, show 1600x900p samples (maybe even censored on that matter) of what the user may like and get the user to buy for more and larger size! Got it? Good.

There are two crucial elements here you are failing hard.

1. Just because a manga is read once, doesn't mean the reader liked it at all.
2. When all is digital, showing samples is nearly free. (Fakku samples are very small and they seem randomly picked)
3. Just because an artist has something you like, doesn't mean you like all from that artist.
4. Tags in Fakku are lackluster. I've seen the requirements. How can I find 5 stories that are already in FAKKU that display a certain trait?!?!

For 1. It just takes common sense. How can you know you like something if you didn't see it?
For 2. If the website sees me reading manga with certain traits, show me samples of others I may like and request pay to get more of what I like. It also needs to understand that artists like to go through other things. If high doubt, samples. Show samples of the key elements and ask for pay to get the full experience! Oh, you mean the resized ones that show? Many times I can't even understand what is shown in the images that are most important to know if I care!
For 3. For the majority of artists, I only pick up 2-4 of their large selection. It's very few I go and grab more. For those I do buy their full book compilations or long stories but they are a minority.

Secondly, it makes little sense from a financial perspective. Based on what I know and what I've seen on platforms like DLsite, you're probably looking at paying something in the range of $2-4 per chapter. You have the option of buying a handful of chapters at most, after which a subscription would be cheaper and give access to thousands of chapters. Let's say you want to buy everything from BeNantoka (I just picked an artist on the front page), that's gonna cost you $40-70 to get all 19 chapters we have. For a more extreme example, let's say you want to buy everything on the site right now (ignoring future releases; only counting chapters, excluding illustrations, etc.) at the most likely unrealistically low price of $2 a pop, you're paying the equivalent of a lifetime subscription to FAKKU:

CODE

~5300 chapters × $2 / $13 sub fee / 12 months = 68 years; +18 minimum age = active subscription until the age of 86

If you assume I even care for the cover artists, though... Let's see... BeNantoka... There's 4 stories I like from him (which ones doesn't matter).
With that fact, from my money, I only want him to be paid for those 4 stories. I vote with my wallet. I don't pay because it's the "buddy artist", this is business, I pay for those specific stories I like regardless if they were experiments that, by chance, hit my tastes. Which appears to be the case, even if his art is definitely good.
As for the other stories he made, people who like them will vote with their wallets.
As for the money costs you mention, the subscription is only covering a subset of the stories FAKKU has... BTW, none of those 19 are the ones I like. So... What now? For all I know right now, there's no legal way to read those stories from him I like in english.

As for the completely unrealistic "buy everything on the website", let's get down to earth. I've sincerely bet that ~90% of the subscribers only care of, at most ~10% of the content subscribable... Even then, I'd consider taking my chances that 50% don't even read 1% of the content available. Given that, it's, at most, ~8 years of content they care for 90% of the subscribed people. Never forget that the value is not on the full content list, it's on the content each individual reader cares.
Just because a reader read a story doesn't mean he cares. He needs to read to care. If a story is read more than once, he clearly cares. If he reads once... The only way is to ask.

More about reading:
Did you know that many of the the higher renewed artists are not part of the subscription roster? For those, the subscription feels more like the actual sampling system I mention. For example, NaPaTa has very few chapters included with the subscription. After that, it's 10$ per short story... and you know the best part? The compilation books also cost 10$! Yeah..... Throw fairness out of the window.
Is that fair? I don't think so. I like about half of NaPaTa's works and don't care about the other half. Do you think I'd be satisfied in being forced to buy full books where I don't care about half of it? Feels like a rip off, you know? Who likes all NaPaTa makes will get much better value out of their purchase!

More about subscription:
What about stories/chapters just disappearing without warning? In the subscription model, the user owns nothing so any work can be removed at any time without repercussions. Either because FAKKU wants it or because licenses expire, the work is removed. Who cares it was your favorite hentai, right? "Your access was revoked because the license expired" because you never owned anything there in the first place.
Yeah... It looks cheaper to just subscribe but you better not get too attached a any work, it can be gone in the next day.
When you start living that reality.. For a consumer.... It starts to feel like the subscription is the sampling system after all... The sampling system to buy the 10$ (reasonably priced; if you care of all) multi-story 200-300 page books or the excessively overpriced 10-30 page 10$ stories. I'm fine with the bundle being cheaper than the individual stories. 10% maybe 20% is fine. 90% isn't fine.

Now I understand your main concern is about supporting the artists you like and less about the money, but I hope the stuff I wrote before that last paragraph helped shed some light upon that aspect. Reading their chapters on FAKKU is supporting the artists you like, while exposing you to to (and supporting) artists would might come to like in the future. And if you absolutely hate an artists and don't want to support them in any way, don't read any of their content. It's a pretty straightforward system once explained, and I'm starting to realize that's probably an area where we've failed the most.

If only that was how it works. If I just look at a work to know if I like, that artist gets a slice of the money, right? Then it's already an act of paying for something I may not care at all.

And here comes discoverability (again!) in FAKKU which, for a paid service it is, is a joke. It's only artist, or tags. Difference with this website? It's money on the noise. As for the tags, I thought e-hentai tags were not good. Looking at Fakku's tagging, it's... Something but doesn't really do much.
Tagging for story, for characters, for fetishes... It could go so far but it stays even lower than this website. Why is the paid service worse than pirate service?

I wrote once and I'll keep repeating: I want to pay for what I like and I want not to pay what I don't care for. If that means what I like will disappear, then I also stop paying. It is what it is and this is part of my dislike for bundles with "extras" or "value added" attached for a "small fee".

2. Some things just stop being available or getting removed from sale. Apparently with no explanation.

Just leaving here the fact that in USA and EU, licensing is shitshow on itself and that occurrence can be caused by licenses expiring. As Tenboro once wrote:

Money instantly makes everything complicated

. I sincerely believe he was not joking when he wrote that.

This post has been edited by Jay Low: Aug 5 2020, 08:26