512 replies to this topic

[Zaji970]

I for one am happy that measures are taken to protect the hard work of the scanlators. As stated, the conflict is real; websites can make real money off of the selfless work people do for us. 

 

As for going private, I for one would not mind as long as the system efficiently works the way we want it, yknow? 

 

 

But what I'm afraid of is a repeat of what happened on a scanlator site I used to frequent. The admin was tired of having uploads instantly appear elsewhere with someone else's name on it despite his public pleas to the contrary, so he decided to make it members-only. I and a few others expressed worry that it was a good idea in theory, but unless he locked out everyone other than a handful of oldbies, leaks would be inevitable.

 

The admin went ahead with his plan, allowing anyone to sign up. Almost immediately, the guy who had been putting his name on the releases and uploading them elsewhere was doing the same thing. To boot, he began publicly taunting the admin about being unable to stop him. The admin was furious and mistakenly felt the community as a whole was somehow betraying him, so he shut down releases altogether.

 

This was on a relatively small site, with dozens of fans. I can't even imagine how to secure a site with a thousandfold that number of fans. Unless someone has technical skills I'm unaware of, I'm worried that I'm about to watch history repeat itself.

 

 What we would want is to please ourselves, our future readers, and filter out profiteers. If restricting access will help, than I wouldn't mind. I love it here at Batoto, and I really want to see this done right, and would support it any way I could.  

[KaiKinE]

i see... maybe i'll stick to my "partial private" one...
like a few days delay in non members...
and also, make some sort of ads to make non-members becomes members... more like encouraging banner to sign up and its perks in becoming a member...

agree a week delay for non member would be the best instead not letting them read anything, also a page to encourage people to read it at batoto for every manga(for non members only), because 3 years ago I'm a former reader from leecher website but this page made me visit batoto and it took me a year to become a member.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

So why not try it again and make it more direct 

Edited by KaiKinE, 20 October 2015 - 04:26 PM.

[kira-sama]

Truth is:  Batoto go private >> new "batoto" appear >> batoto became the e-penis status" " I use batoto".

 

believe me i had a fansub. when re encode was a thing.. those infamous mp4 80mb.

 

i did something similar. 

 

result : before i had 2000 downloads + episode.  time my episode take to get ripped to rencode site 45 minutes.

 

after : 350 dls - 60 minutes.

 

batoto will die and noone will remember it in a few months

[maffa]

It makes them more easily trackable through simple heuristics. If someone makes an account than immediately opens hundreds or thousands of manga instantly, it is probably not a person. It is easy then to block that member. Potentially you could also limit their throughput. It's not invincible, it is something.

 

are there any tools at batoto's disposal that can track and stop anyone by doing that? how is the leeching done? do the other sites just deeplink the images or download them on their own harddrives and host them themselves? if it's the second case, all they have to do is to open a few dozen fake accounts and get the job done.

 

The purpose of the game DRMs are actually not to prevent you from getting it. The purpose is to delay you. The DRM makers of the somewhat recent game, Dragon Age Inquisition, boasted that their crack took like 2 weeks to crack. To them, this was a job well done as people who couldn't wait 2 weeks ended up buying it.

 

It's not about making it impossible. It's about making it harder. And the question of if it is worthwhile trade.

 

I am afraid that there's a tiny fraction of potential pirating people that gave up waiting and forked 60$ to buy the game at launch. But i dont want to go out of topic. 

 

If you want to make it harder with the minimum of fuss, knowing that it's just a matter of time, i understand and agree with you. I'd just hate seeing you frustrated after those two weeks because everything is just like before, the only thing changed being a lower traffic for yourself. Sounds like the tale of that guy that chopped his balls off to spite his wife.

 

And truth be told id be VERY surprised if batoto's leechers didnt already have a registered account here, if only for just in case. 

Edited by maffa, 20 October 2015 - 04:30 PM.

[Argent Witch]

That's very worrying...

Spoiler

(To the point that this topic has actually caused me to sign into my account for the first time in a couple years just to offer my opinion here)

 

I'll be honest... I trust you, Grumpy. You've run Batoto extraordinarily well, stuck close to your stated ideals, kept ads minimal/generally unobtrusive, and made the site the best it can be. So when you say that this move is "most likely inevitable", I believe you and think your intentions are good.

 

But I do think this will "kill" the site as we all know and love it. Only a small fraction of those nonmembers will register an account to continue using Batoto; the rest will simply shrug and move on to some other aggregator.

 

I don't know if this is necessarily good or bad... I've never run a big website, so I just don't know how such a huge loss of traffic will affect you and the site's future ad revenue. I'm also worried about the possibility that even if the revenue system is fine, the loss of traffic will have other effects... maybe some scanlators won't feel like hosting their projects here anymore, either because they oppose the move or simply don't think uploading releases to a much smaller Batoto is worthwhile? I can imagine the situation potentially snowballing from there... Of course, it's hard to say what will truly happen, and this could just be me overthinking/overreacting (and everything will turn out ok).

 

If this move could allow you to more easily track and crack down on the aggregator bots who rip chapters from Batoto, then that's a major plus. I'd love to see that work out.

 

But I agree with ku4eto; if you're going to move forward with this plan, it's imperative to start promoting registrations on the main page.The sooner, the better.

[arimareiji]

What we would want is to please ourselves, our future readers, and filter out profiteers. If restricting access will help, than I wouldn't mind. I love it here at Batoto, and I really want to see this done right, and would support it any way I could.  

 

Neither would I, as I've already said.

 

My concern is that it won't help, and that at the very best it will drive some traffic elsewhere. It's very likely it'll turn into an arms race that Batoto can't win, and I worry that it'll get so bad that it leads to driving even dedicated members elsewhere. At the worst, Batoto may wind up being a fond memory like the scanlator site I mentioned.

[kira-sama]

the big winners will be others sites

 

i myselft dont read mangas here like 90% of the time ?

 

i use it more like a scanssub linking.

 

90% of the scans have the own download links. and i like to download my mangas and read and save.

 

batoto for me is like mangaupdates.

 

so what is the point ? they can just do and download mangas from the scans directly

[Bloodwork]

If you take this step and lose some of the ad revenue, I have no problems donating at least 5 euros a month for server costs.

[Luxor]

I honestly don't think any measure will stop reuploading. I've seen sites break up images, add watermarks, prevent right-clicking (I'm looking at you, Naver), etc. It rarely works and someone finds a way around it. Partial or some other benefit for signing up would only slow it down slightly, just like publishers are only taking down a small few titles on most aggregator sites without being able to take massive action.

 

I've been a member since the first few weeks Batoto came up, mainly as a way to discuss The Company's ToG releases. I don't think privatization would do much for your problem and it'll just add more. Honestly, I'd expect secondary pirating in an industry that piggybacks off scans of printed, published material.

[LeleSocho]

I have to say that in principle i'm not completely in favor on making it private as i usually never sign up for this kind of stuff and usually if something like this happens i just don't visit the site anymore but then i realized that i signed up here like not even a couple of months ago because of how clean, well designed and light this site was...

So in the end i guess that if people want to visit the site they will become members because of its qualities regardless of what they think in general.

 

So since i'm here i wanted to congratulate to you on this site, it's really well done.

[shaurya]

Which means I won't be able to download chapters from Batoto

Yeah I know that bypassing the ads by directly downloading the images is greedy and cruel on your servers but think about the people with low internet speeds. It takes some time to load a single image(it's like 1-2 minute for One Piece and JoJo colored comics which is really long) but downloading chapters using a download manager or FMD gives us the privilege of reading without waiting between two pages. It would be great if something is done about it. 

Edited by shaurya, 20 October 2015 - 05:05 PM.

[Sicilian]

So should we expect that mobile apps for manga-reading like manga watcher and mangarock will become basically unusable with batoto?

[arimareiji]

Which means I won't be able to download chapters from Batoto

Yeah I know that bypassing the ads by directly downloading the images is greedy and cruel on your servers but think about the people with low internet speeds. It takes some time to load a single image(it's like 1-2 minute for One Piece and JoJo colored comics which is really long) but downloading chapters using a download manager or FMD gives us the privilege of reading without waiting between two pages. It would be great if something is done about it. 

 

Just an idea, but you could try doing what I do - multitask. If a page is taking a little while to download, go to another tab and come back when you see it's done.

 

I see where you're coming from, but to be honest? If it actually were possible to block downloading (without also blocking everyone else from viewing), and I were in Grumpy's shoes, I'd do it in a second. The harm of making you or me wait a little bit between pages would be greatly outweighed by the benefit of locking out the for-profit aggregator sites.

[Harshrox3]

i see... maybe i'll stick to my "partial private" one...
like a few days delay in non members...
and also, make some sort of ads to make non-members becomes members... more like encouraging banner to sign up and its perks in becoming a member...

 

I really like this idea of delaying a week or two for non registered users it sure helps to maintain fairness to those who registered at the same time it doesn't hinder manga readers to look for previous work(since it is all over anyway) .

 

I think though we need to think of maintaining the status of how a person can read a latest ch since at one hand it may sound like all cool and good but that just increase a hurdle for restricting those manga aggregator sites, which can be easily maintained some measures must be taken which can be both user friendly and at the same time crack(atleast make difficultly level a notch higher) on those who wants to abuse free service of hardwork of scanlator.

 

maybe we can restrict no: of follows and make new changes around that idea since if follow is required to read latest manga It will become too tedious to try out new possibility but it will become problematic for those agreegator sites because then they have to go make multiple accounts logged up in at every-time since the max they read is a fixed no: of follows but then also there are "n" no: of loop holes like unfollowing after reading it ,and if we make follow permanent it just restrict user friendliness and restrict one to try new manga..............argh it makes my brain hurt I think above idea is viable though it needs some refinement I have some suggestions though .......care to hear ???

Edited by Harshrox3, 20 October 2015 - 05:39 PM.

[Dillan767]

whatever you decide is probably the best choice and i do not have a problem at all, but the point with the translators is a good point.

[Knight Hawk]

Those registered already will be made members? Or do we have to re-register?

[zerors]

Quick question, why not restrict the amount of chapters one can see as a guest?

Normally people here read a few chapters and then leave.

 

A bot however would need to constantly check all released chapters.

Restricting heavy users would only affect people that either already have an account, or bots, or people that should have accounts anyways.

 

That's how I see anyways.

 

This change does not affect me, and if it's for the best, I support it whole heatedly.

[Blankdom]

I remember visiting some sites that makes it impossible to right-click / press ctrl. Maybe you can do something like this, so they can't easily copy and paste / download images?

[omnipotentcheese]

Which means I won't be able to download chapters from Batoto

Yeah I know that bypassing the ads by directly downloading the images is greedy and cruel on your servers but think about the people with low internet speeds. It takes some time to load a single image(it's like 1-2 minute for One Piece and JoJo colored comics which is really long) but downloading chapters using a download manager or FMD gives us the privilege of reading without waiting between two pages. It would be great if something is done about it. 

 Actually this wont stop your from downloading. A user opening one ore two manga and DLing would not even show up as a blip on the radar. This is purely a move to stop crawlers, which download the entire contents of the site. It might help with bandwidth costs, and will certianly help maintain the trust of the translation community. If their works are uploaded on Batoto, Batoto will try to keep that work safe. Ordinary users with a membership probably wont notice any difference at all. Only unregistered users would notice, and all they have to do is make an account. It's a pretty low bar.

[Harshrox3]

 

Truth is:  Batoto go private >> new "batoto" appear >> batoto became the e-penis status" " I use batoto".

 

believe me i had a fansub. when re encode was a thing.. those infamous mp4 80mb.

 

i did something similar. 

 

result : before i had 2000 downloads + episode.  time my episode take to get ripped to rencode site 45 minutes.

 

after : 350 dls - 60 minutes.

 

batoto will die and noone will remember it in a few months

 

 

Yeah there is also that issue I personally think it is scanlator choice and most in this business knows what batoto is we are here by our own choice to host our material here so I don't think new batoto will crop up soon since this site is by scanlator and as long as trust between batoto and scanlator is strong (which is not gonna go soon) there is no problem for that, since we have our good old batoto  anyway only those agree gator sites will have those problems

Edited by Harshrox3, 20 October 2015 - 05:47 PM.