512 replies to this topic

[cmertb]

I support this change. If it backfires in some way we can't foresee now, just go back to the way it was.

[illya_]

At first I thought 'yea lets go private and beat those pesky bots!'.

 

But after reading the thread (especially the animesuki one) and doing some thinking I am leaning more towards a delay for none-registered readers.

 

Else there is the risk that batoto won't get any (or as many) new users, which is the beginning of the end. And I don't want batoto to end.

 

 

 

And I honestly don't think forcing login for reading will stop the crawlers

 

 

 

 

 

Ofc Grumpy I think whatever you decide on will be good.

[UsersAgainstRegistration]

Long time reader, never registered until now, just to say this.

 

Complete prevention of a copy is not an achievable goal, but making it inconvenient--creating a deterrence is possible. And that is making contents viewable by members only.

 

It's only going to make it inconvenient for users, not crawlers. Crawlers can login, they can use cookies, they can even run javascript and grab screenshots of the page (easy to do with python and webkit). The inconvienence will last for a bit, then they'll update their crawlers and then it will be bussiness as usual.

 

• Objective: No more crawly crawly on this site.

 

Impossible.

 

One option you could use is add a captcha. Not to each page, maybe once every X minutes or every X requests per IP, whether they are registered or not. That will not stop crawlers of course, but they'll have to pay money to some captcha resolver site and to some proxy to give them different IPs so they can keep working unsupervised or will have to solve them themselves manually. It will still inconvenience users. But it's something.

 

 

[dapprman]

First time post from a long term lurker (well since Jan 2014 anyhow).

 

I'm not sure there is a real solution unless there's some form of anti-bot function with the forum that spots and blocks high rate downloads (i.e. an account trying to read more than 5 pages in 5 seconds sort of thing).  The key problem is leachers will create accounts (and some possibly already have) leaving you none the wiser.  I'm hoping it's more of a frustration thing than bandwidth costs as the former is just a case of putting up with how the 'Net works (the same sort of thing has happened since the early days of the commercial porn sites where many were effectively aggregators leaching off other sites).  If it's bandwidth, and thus a cost problem, then that's a more of an issue and may require a two tier type of solution, with a premium membership requiring a subscription (though this is also a good way to kill a site).

 

Personally I'd prefer to see a time lock for non registered members where they can see, but not access new content (say for the 7 day period that others have suggested, though I think 3 would be a better balance), it's not hard to register after all - think I probably did it when I found out I could follow comics (I only read a few and started off coming here to finish some manga when Viz failed and Del-Ray Publishing lost their licence with Kodansha (who then did not translate the same manga - i.e. Nodame, Suzuka, ...))

 

Perhaps one option (in addition to requiring membership to access the latest content) would be to randomly send out news emails to all members, and lock those accounts where the email produces an error ?

 

What ever happens - Grumpy you do a great job (as do all the contributers/scantilators) and I hope you find a happy solution.

Edited by dapprman, 20 October 2015 - 10:28 PM.

[Melvin Miller]

I like this site and have used it since its beginning, but I also use a few other sites as Batoto doesn't host everything I desire to read.  Also, it hosts some with quite a delay and I must admit that I'm interested in reading something fairly soon after it gets released.  So, whatever you do I'm sure I'll continue to use the site just because it does put a lot of the manga I read in one spot (especially the ones that come from small scanlators).

 

That being said, you're bringing up an issue that I've seen since manga has been hosted on the internet.  My suspicion is that you know there is nothing you can do about it, and this is more of a communal rant than anything else.  I've seen everything, from extremely profane and obscurring watermarks (A-Team comes to mind) to flash encrypted pages, and none of it stops the agregators because we are talking millions in revenue.  They don't steal it to make enemies or to annoy, they steal it for the same reason anyone ever steals anything ... greed.  I'll say it again, you do quite a good job and no matter what you do I'll continue to come here as long as it exists, but I'm not aware of anything that can be done to stop this problem (or even to make it inconvient).

 

The other thing that occurs to me is that you're worried the revenue stream after restricting the site won't pay for the overhead.  If that's the case and you have make it a register and pay site, then you really will have a problem.  When things aren't free here but are "free" elsewhere, traffic will die.  Additionally, are you worried that scans stolen from Batoto and posted on agregator sites will cause a DMA backlash?  I'm not sure if Batoto is cut any slack because it is not specifically profit oriented, but do you fear troubles down the road because Batoto facilitates stealing content?

[cmertb]

Oh yeah, that reminds me. If the site goes private, can we finally overturn the heavy handed censorship that's currently in place? It's worth it to be private just for that.

[Hnguyen91]

I don't the think becoming a member is that annoying. The benefits are plenty. For me, receiving updates on mangas I like is awesome. I'm able to jump right to the new hot release without scanning through the list. I don't know how other web browsers work, but Safari keeps me logged in all the time. I never have any issue with logging in or anything. The only time I have to go to other mangasomething sites is when the chapters are missing here.

[MasterFnarg]

Just to check, member meaning you sign up and have a verified email, or a sub sorta model where you pay a fee? I realise it's hugely unlikely to be the second one, just making extra special sure.

Edited by MasterFnarg, 20 October 2015 - 10:37 PM.

[2hot4you]

Can you leave everything as it is? I don't think that anyone gains anything by these changes. I really like batoto and use it regulary, but if all this is "just" done to stop other sites from ripping chapters, it's not needed. It's not like forcing people to make an account will somehow make shitty sites like mangafox stop taking whatever they want to. I bet it will be bypassed by making an account or some shit in a matter of hours, max 24h, because if one site does it, every other site will rip it from there (Even Kissmanga does reupload chapter from mangahere or some shit from time to time). It will just be a loss for batoto as half the people without an acc will make one only to lurk and the other half will probably fuck off, because of various reasons. Either someone's to dumb or gets triggered by this. And I'm pretty sure that a good amount of scanlator on this page want sites like kissmanga to rip their chapters. Not every group does it for "only" batoto. Especially /a/nons end up uploading stuff here so that it spreads and people can read it on whatever shithole they want. I realise that there maybe translator out there who are mad when they see their stuff on a shit-tier reader rescaled to half the size and random watermarks on it, but it's not like anyone is forced to read the stuff there and whatever amount of cash they make, no one really cares. If you wanted to genuinly support the author you wouldn't have scanlated chapters of a series in the first place or released it in a way that promotes it instead of bringing out the whole thing. And people pretending that they have any actual rights over their scanlations is disgusting to me. I'm aware of all the energy and time you spend on your hobby, but man it's your hobby. No one of us has any right to pretend to be the good guys here, so crippling batoto itself for the sake of securing anyone who doesn't needs to be secured nor can be secured in the first place is wrong. As I said I like batoto, but Daiz does have a point about the things he said about batoto, but that's a whole other "issue", so fuck that.

 

 

Then what's the point? Making them get the chapters a few day laters at best? The popular series will be simply ripped from the scanlator sites right away (like it's already happening partly). The unpopular ones or the ones of unpopular groups/groups that use batoto without having a HP will get uploaded with a little delay. That's the only thing this change could bring and it's nothing worth putting your efforts into. This sites is better the way it is now, then the way you want to go. Making batoto private would be a step back. Instead of trying to make this a  secret club  site that actively excludes a group of people, you should rather enhance the functions batoto has/add new ones or leave it as it is, as it's at th every least good right now.

I agree with this mostly.

 

You are not gonna stop the re-uploading to other sites with this. I know what you're trying to accomplish with batoto, but its time to think about yourself and your site. Batoto is not gonna be a fortress where only good willed people will be allowed entry, and everyone else will be detered. It's impossible to judge every entry into this site, and if it was, it would be extremely time consuming. 

 

I know it's easy to make an account, and it really shouldn't be a problem for a not member to make an account to view content, but thats not how it works. Imagine you're someone who stumbles upon this site on the quest for a manga they want to read, but see that you need to login to view this content. If everyone like this would make an account straight away, your plan could work, but if even 9 out of 10 would make an account, you still lose 1 who is never coming back. You have mentioned many times that keeping this site up is costing a lot, constantly looking at ways to generate income, and thus resorting to ads. 

 

As far as i know and remember, these are giving you a hard time already, since there is no ideal one and you had to remove manga already to satisfy them. How long and how far are you willing to do this? If you lose 10% of the people coming to batoto, thats gonna cost you quite a bit? (I don't know what percentage would cost you how much, as this is your private info of course, but i don't see it helping) So why would you take this risk? Why would you risk the chance of not having enough money to fund this site, just to prove a point and to make others see how good batoto is and how they are great to scanlators and all that? Why are you considering throwing away so many people who come here to please some others?

 

Isn't batoto good the way it is now? Maybe you should redefine this website's ideals?

 

I really don't think its a good idea, and considering this without knowing crucial variables is just suicide man. Get the complete picture first.

 

And besides, is this thread a notice to us in advance, or are you asking for our opinions here? What good are the opinions of 50 people replying to this thread gonna be when your own sites future is being decided, the one where you spend so much time and love on. 

 

 

 

Whatever it's gonna be, ill still be here though. It might even turn into some final stand kinda thing, with 20000 members against the evil manga leechers, that would be kinda cool in its own way right?

[Daktyl]

Oh yeah, that reminds me. If the site goes private, can we finally overturn the heavy handed censorship that's currently in place? It's worth it to be private just for that.

// Offtopic

I don't really know how bad it was before, but right now we're actually quite lenient with policies in regard to "mature" mangas. Even many smut are allowed. The only ones I've seen that we really censor are the blatant hentai masquerading as "borderline-H" and expecting to get away with it (then again, I could be wrong. I'm new here)

 

// On topic

I don't think going private would be a good idea personally. As somebody mentioned only a page or two in, it'd be similar in a sense to pointless DRM on games and such. I don't doubt that the sites that crawl us for data would have their bots working with an account within a week of the change.

 

And that's not to mention the significant dev time required by you, Grumpy. You seem to be lacking in that time already... *cough* https://vatoto.com/forums/topic/16874-how-i-plan-to-overhaul-the-follows-for-comics/*cough*\

In the end it's up to you and the rest of the community though, so whatever ^.^

[kendama]

Hmmm…

 

as the admin of a (very small) scanlation group, I'll feather-weigh in.

 

I understand your goal is to safeguard the preference of certain groups not to see their work distributed in places other than Batoto without their permission.

 

However, this is not the only reason groups have to choose Batoto. Death Toll, for example, don't care who rehosts our work, but we chose Batoto as our reference manga aggregator because it is the only one that allows members themselves to upload  and doesn't resize pages. There are aggregators that allow for member uploads, and aggregators that don't resize, but no other one does both.

 

So, to reach a compromise solution, why don't you add the "chapter will be viewable by members only" option in the upload page? I don't know whether it is feasible, but it would allow groups that care about unauthorised rehosting to make things more difficult for leech aggregators, whereas those who don't care could still make their releases available to all.

 

I would add to do this only for future chapters, while keeping the chapters that have already been released to the date of the change available to all, as to all effects they have already been rehosted universally anyway. I suppose that level of flexibility would take quite some coding, but I see it as the least dramatic solution. And I would include some cue in the front page which allowed guests to tell which releases they can see.

 

(This probably has already been suggested, as it is very intuitive, but I didn't read all the comments in this thread and in any case, this comment can be viewed as adding my vote to this option.)

[cmertb]

// Offtopic

I don't really know how bad it was before, but right now we're actually quite lenient with policies in regard to "mature" mangas. Even many smut are allowed. The only ones I've seen that we really censor are the blatant hentai masquerading as "borderline-H" and expecting to get away with it (then again, I could be wrong. I'm new here)

If that's true, can I upload previously removed mangas? In particular, http://vatoto.com/comic/_/comics/bloody-mary-r1989and http://vatoto.com/comic/_/comics/harem-end-locked-r10166

[haunter50]

I mean, disallowing proxies and stuff and then IP-Banning some people should work, no? I don't know much about the ways to crawl, but I don't think the registering rule would help.

[DVerde]

 it'd be similar in a sense to pointless DRM on games and such.

 

This wouldn't be DRM, because it's *Free*.You don't pay a dime to post, read, or shite on Batoto. XD The worse that happens is people go to the scanlator's website if they want to read a release "nao!" Lots of scan teams already have delay rules in place for upload sites anyhow... So it's not like making a greater delay for guests is anything new.

Edited by DVerde, 20 October 2015 - 11:30 PM.

[kwh89]

No point going partial private. Just make it a members only site but before u do the switch. Do a shout out, let people know that you're transiting into a members only site and let them know the benefits of it. 

 

tbh. Having the ability to follow stuff and all already makes it worthwhile to join in as a member. 

[BCrane]

Hmmm…

 

as the admin of a (very small) scanlation group, I'll feather-weigh in.

 

I understand your goal is to safeguard the preference of certain groups not to see their work distributed in places other than Batoto without their permission.

 

However, this is not the only reason groups have to choose Batoto. Death Toll, for example, don't care who rehosts our work, but we chose Batoto as our reference manga aggregator because it is the only one that allows members themselves to upload  and doesn't resize pages. There are aggregators that allow for member uploads, and aggregators that don't resize, but no other one does both.

 

So, to reach a compromise solution, why don't you add the "chapter will be viewable by members only" option in the upload page? I don't know whether it is feasible, but it would allow groups that care about unauthorised rehosting to make things more difficult for leech aggregators, whereas those who don't care could still make their releases available to all.

 

I would add to do this only for future chapters, while keeping the chapters that have already been released to the date of the change available to all, as to all effects they have already been rehosted universally anyway. I suppose that level of flexibility would take quite some coding, but I see it as the least dramatic solution. And I would include some cue in the front page which allowed guests to tell which releases they can see.

 

(This probably has already been suggested, as it is very intuitive, but I didn't read all the comments in this thread and in any case, this comment can be viewed as adding my vote to this option.)

 

I'll second this idea.

 

Leaves the option for other scanners to have their scans spread to aggregators but frankly I'd like to have our scans be only here at batoto (assuming they don't get taken down again by DMCA >.<) because the website has always been supportive of scanlators and hasn't just been out to make a quick buck. This website has always been about scanlator choice so I think this is a good place to start and we can see where it goes from there.

[UncomfortableTruth]

You need to ask yourself what your motivation for this change is. Do you want to implement these changes to benefit the users of the site, or to benefit your own ego? Because as several people have already stated before me, barriers to viewing don't help the average user of Batoto, who doesn't have an account and who doesn't upload chapters here or anywhere else. If it becomes too much of a hassle to read what they want to read here, they will simply go to where it isn't a hassle. Batoto is my go-to manga reader site, but I'm already more than happy to go somewhere else with lower quality for series that have been removed for one reason or another.

 

And, again as others have already stated, a measure as simple as registration will do absolutely nothing to deter "thieves" (and I have more to say about that later) from reuploading manga from Batoto to their sites. Because unlike the average user, they are persistent enough to jump through your hoops. Nothing you can do will deter them, and everything you can try and fail to do to deter them will only result in deterring the average user. And average users far outnumber both the "thieves" and the people that would jump through hoops to continue reading their favorite manga or manhua or whatever else they like here. It doesn't matter if you lock the manga behind registration for a week for for a millenium, they will simply go find somewhere else to read it.

 

And if you realize deep down in your heart of hearts that you really are just doing this for your ego and you're okay with that, THIS IS STILL A TERRIBLE IDEA. As I already stated, the average user is your lifeblood. Alienate them, and your site dies, or at the very least shrinks to the brink of unsustainability. If you're fueled by your ego, I doubt that would be what it wants.

 

 

Now, regarding "thieves" from other sites, and this is going to be the REALLY uncomfortable part.

 

Every aggregate site, every scanlator, every raw provider is a "thief." And that's okay.

 

The entire online scanlation community is built around taking someone else's work and making it more accessible to other people. Whether you're scanning the raws, translating them, editing the translated text into the images, or hosting the finished scanlation, the end goal is to get the work to somebody else who would not otherwise understand it, or potentially even know it exists.

 

You might have more pride and thus a higher standard of quality than a site like mangafox, but in the end you're doing the exact same thing they are. You are taking someone else's work and publishing it on your site.

 

The scanlation community is one gigantic glass house, and here you are throwing stones.

 

 

So instead of trying to alienate users and honestly being a bit of a hypocrite by trying to lock out sites like mangafox, instead just focus on being the best experience for the user out there, and the word of mouth should take care of the rest.

[Anomandaris]

Uh, here's my two cents...

 

Crawling is super hard to completely prevent, but the aim is to make it sufficiently difficult/time-consuming/expensive that that it's much less common. Batoto is just a giant target saying "scrape me" right now.

 

Login required

Requiring users to be logged in to view manga is, in and of itself, a tiny obstacle for bots to overcome, but it gives Grumpy far more options for blocking bots. I assume that's the whole point. I'm okay with that; I signed up because follows are useful, and I'm sick to death of aggregation sites in general. I do worry about Batoto losing a lot of readers, though. One way to reduce the impact would be to make it easy for people who come here to get an account. Like one click + captcha easy (with Google/FB/Twitter account signup, etc).

 

Partial private options

The form originally suggested by Grumpy, where the most recent updates are available without an account for a few days, is useless. It would be trivial to for aggregation sites to continue to scrape new chapters.

An alternative would be that the latest chapters require an account but older ones don't. This would make it easier to ban bots that try to immediately get new chapters, and let people who browse older chapters continue to read without an account. It won't stop bots waiting a week (or whatever) to add chapters... but the race to host chapters quickly is a real thing, so maybe it would be sufficient. Or maybe not. I suspect the latter.

 

Group options

I think giving groups a choice about whether to make a chapter private or public is an excellent idea. Some feel strongly about this for a variety of different reasons, others don't.

 

 

I mean, disallowing proxies and stuff and then IP-Banning some people should work, no? I don't know much about the ways to crawl, but I don't think the registering rule would help.

No, banning IPs is not at all sufficient. Proxies used for scraping are basically a gigantic pool of IPs, with the requests spread across the addresses. Banned IPs get dropped from the pool (usually rotated to some other bot crawling a different domain).

But if users have to be logged in, one of the main benefits is that there are lots of options that would help detect when a user account is being used for scraping, and then Grumpy can ban that account. There would be an ongoing battle to avoid detection etc etc (as always) but it shifts the balance in Grumpy's favour because it is a ton of work for the bot writers.

 

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?

This just punishes ordinary users who just want to save a page. It has zero impact on bots, but is really annoying for everyone else.

 

 

I don't think going private would be a good idea personally. As somebody mentioned only a page or two in, it'd be similar in a sense to pointless DRM on games and such.

Game DRM prevents people who pay money for a product from basic access to the product they paid for. Some DRM systems are rootkits. There is (rightly, in my opinion) a visceral hatred of those kinds of DRM. Mind you, Steam is also DRM. Anyway, I don't think comparisons between site-login-required and game DRM will lead anywhere productive.

 

Let's not forget that some aggregation sites exist only to rake in ad revenue by displaying heavily compressed images and playing the SEO game.

Edited by Anomandaris, 20 October 2015 - 11:57 PM.

[serriatian]

Grumpy, while I sympathize with you own your point on aggregate sites, I don't think that making Batoto private will help us in the long run.  Most readers these days just want the chapters as fast as possible, they couldn't care less whether it's from Batoto or Manga____.  I've also seen some people mention blanket IP bans, an interesting idea, but I don't think it'll work with entire countries at a time.  While I appreciate your actions against bots and scrapers, I don't think that the cost of offsetting so many non member users will be worth the outcome.  

 

Found this quote from reddit

 

 

All this would really do is incentivize the scrapers because now that scraping is going to get a lot more hits for your aggregate site. That new account batoto requires? that's 90% of the population saying "fuck it" and not making an account - instead going to that aggregate site that doesn't require an account.

The harder you make it to access the site and/or scrape, the more profitable you make it for the scrapers.

Edited by serriatian, 20 October 2015 - 11:51 PM.

[hypo_crit]

Stop acting so high and mighty here. None of the contents of this site belongs to any of you guys. In the end everything is stolen, you can describe it how you want it, but it's not your content, no matter how much you edited it. Stop beeing so fucking hypocrites.

 

Let's check what will happen when you add login requirements:

- A big part of your 90% non registered users won't bother to log in, there are enough of different sources.

- You are basically helping the people you want to hurt, since many of this not registering user will just go to mangafox or whatever

- Bots will be rewritten so your login requirement won't even matter

 

By the way, the only reason why our scanlation group uploads to batoto is because we know that half the internet "steals" from you. So, it's an easy way to spread our work. Honestly, we don't care about all the revenue, the only thing why we even bother is because not everyone knows japanese and want it to make available for everyone. Your idea is actually hurting this.

 

But yeah, batoto has always been the most elitist site, so go on with this acting high and mighty and risk everything for nothing. The worst thing for everyone not dependabe of batoto will be that certain apps won't work for a short time, some pages will have a delay for a certain time. This will change nothing. By the way, there is already a better "secret club" out there.

Edited by hypo_crit, 21 October 2015 - 12:07 AM.