420604

[Aricitic]

And... Sonce it was brought up...
As per: https://www.google.com/search?q=hourly+wage+for+translators&oq=hourly+wage+for+translators&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.10259j1j7&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
At legal locations about 21.24 USD.
As a reminder, translating manga that is uploaded online is not legal ... (This would be for things like medical interpreters, call centers, etc. MAYBE for manga and light novels, but for the price they go at, I highly doubt it)

Sorry for the double post,. But I thought this important enough to warrant it
Anyway, I'm out

 

[boag]

This entire comments section is now more entertaining than the manga, all its missing is tiddies.

 

[littleoni]

I'm late as hell to the party, but willing to join on the fun!
Nah, I'll just point out some things that are quite obscure and gray about the copyright laws.
First of all you cannot be sued for translating manga. You cannot be sued for publishing it online and distributing it as long as no one has license over it in the country the server is located at (or if the server belongs to a company, the country that company is registered at). As long as you claim not owning any of the material displayed, you are safe from lawsuits. Trouble come when you try to a) claim ownership in any way; b) make money. Any instance of the group earning money thanks to a translation can be seen as monetizing the work of another person and can be thus prosecuted. This is the fishiest part since ad revenue does count: content you have no ownership of has attracted viewers to your ads. A donation system, on the other hand, does not count since people may donate you for any reason they want included plain benevolence. A donation-and-reward system (Patreon) would count.
You CAN license a translation. No translation group is going to acquire the right of licensing, and the most you can pull of without the rights is a CC (Creative Commons), which is a license that forbids the licenser from selling the product, so yeah there is that. You could put a CC on your work even without knowledge or permission of the original creator as long as you state clearly that you don't own or claim to own any part of the original work. In that case, your TRANSLATION (text only, no images, no fonts, no nothing) would come under licensing and the group would be legal owner of the translation. Usage of the translation without the owners consent ... Would be still allowed since you can't block that with a CC. But the owner then could sue anyone who claims ownership or monetizes their work.
It's important to also point that it only gives you ownership over a given translation. Not a series, author, magazine, volume or chapter. A single work of translation. If someone else goes ahead and, without consulting your work, does an independant translation it has nothing to do with yours and you can't sue or in any way stop anyone from doing anything. The only thing a CC protects you from is a) someone claiming to have done what you have done; b) someone making a profit on work you have done (remember it also "protects" you from making a profit out of your own work).
About sniping ... As stated above, a group can't claim ownership of a series, volume or chapter, as many groups as may want could do the same chapter and it would be okay. Still, it's a dick move. You are pouring effort into making a low quality work by yourself when at a later date someone will do it anyway. Effort you could have placed into translating something no one else is thus increasing market variety. Still, if you see a group doing a shitty work it's perfectly moral to "snipe" them and take over any series they are doing if your intent is to bring more quality in.

 

[BzzBzz]

@littleoni

Still, if you see a group doing a shitty work it's perfectly moral to "snipe" them and take over any series they are doing if your intent is to bring more quality in.

The problem is "shitty work" term IMO. It's very subjective and broad term.

In your opinion (by "your" I mean not your exactly but more "not mine") it may include bad redraw/TL/TS. I personally don't care much about redraw/TL/TS as long as I can understand what happens in the art and text is readable enough.

In my opinion "shitty work" also includes long delay. By "long delay" I not only mean a couple months backlog but also release of ongoing series just right before next chapter raw publication (even if it's weekly series). IMO if you can't do your work in time of half of original series delay (3-4 days for weekly series, 2 weeks for monthly) you have no rights to complain that someone "snipe" you work.

P.S. Before someone QQ about my demands of release time "I work with my pace you have no rigts to demand anything", I'll answer this right now - you can say this when you remove all ads and donation section from your site. As long as I pay for your work (doesn't matter if it's ads or donations) I will demand whatever I want.

 

[littleoni]

@BzzBzz
It's volunteer work, you can literally demand nothing. If you demand anything, it becomes "donation-and-reward" and thus monetization and thus a crime.
And as long as there are ads, they should take down the ads. By keeping their ads on they make sure I only visit their site if I really need to, they don't get exposure and I won't donate since I don't visit the page, so yeah, there is that. Also the fact the ads are illegal, but whatever.
And with "shitty work" I was not referring to this case in particular, I don't think Champ is doing anything wrong even if they are late. They are constant and do their job.
"Shitty work" is what you consider it to be. You have put your conditions, and for you anything else will be considered, "shitty work", right? Then go ahead and do it better. You are hereby entitled to snipe as much as you see fit. Again, consider what I said before: you would be making an effort of translating something that will eventually be translated anyway. If you see your effort as needed, go ahead.
(I may sound sarcastic or condescending, I am not. I really mean what I say. If you think you can do a better job, I don't think anyone has any right to complain).

Ah, and one edit. I forgot to mention this before. What I will say now will sound terribly offensive, so brace yourselves:
If you are a translation group and you come here and see me writting that you have not right to put on ads and want to say "but hey, we need to pay for this, we need the money" ... You are not a professional. You work is not certified. You are not paying taxes over this income. And, last but not least, you have no right to make this income by current law. If you want to make money through translation or editing, go pro. Study, and apply for a job at an editorial. You can use your online work in your resumee, and they will look at it, I can assure you. You will still need to get certified if you wish to translate, though. If you don't want to go pro, then your work is volunteer only and you can't demand money. It's a hobby and hobbies sometimes cost you money.

 

[CucarachaEnojada]

Mientras tanto,hay personas que disfrutan esta discusión inútil y aun pueden leer el manga tranquilos viendo como se destruyen unos a otros.

 

[Bolshack]

@CucarachaEnojada

No voy a destruir nada, excepto tal vez mi tableta. Jaja. Todo es drama falso de todos modos. La gente está sola en sus sentimientos. Cualquiera que sea el resultado, por favor, disfruta leyendo el manga y apoya al autor siempre que puedas.

 

[criver]

@littleoni: I am fairly certain you can get sued over distributing copyrighted material. The leeway here being that most of these works are not licensed in the USA (many TLs would also refuse working on licensed stuff simply based on principles) and that even if they are licensed, suing somebody costs money, so they'd rather first send you a cease and desist letter. What do you think happened with Nyaa some time ago?
The whole shitfest here due to the TL uploading his translation was totally unwarranted. The argument "I was first here, so I call dibs on it" is as ridiculous as it gets too.

@CucarachaEnojada:
I wanna see you remain as calm when you do some work for free, share it, and people start flinging shit at you because of their preconceived notions.

@Bolshack: Mentioning fake drama's pretty rich coming from you. Considering you do not hesitate to libel people.

 

[littleoni]

@criver
You can't get sued for overdistributing copyrigted material. You can get sued for distributing any amount of licensed material. A copyright essentially prevents anyone from claiming your work to belong to them. The license is the right of profit. I lead a manga / anime asociation here in Spain, we have had to go over the law a couple of times when we wanted to do a public screening of an anime, for example.
(And yes, I refuse to use Spanish here, it would make no sense)

 

[criver]

@littleoni:
Wikipedia doesn't seem to agree, but maybe I am missing something.
Here's what I am referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Enforcement as well as the rights granted below.
I've also read about cases of companies suing other companies exactly over copyright infringement, namely using copyright-protected work without permission.
Note that piracy falls under copyright infringment.
By no means am I an expert in the field, but as far as I am aware, and based on the articles I have read, you can get sued over copyright infringment.

Actually don't reply - leave the comment count at 69.

 

[Sheogorath85]

@criver since you seem to be in such denial, here's your "evidence" that you keep begging for, from a few hours before this chapter was uploaded:

Spoiler

 

[Aereus]

@Kosac07 I'm sorry, but I've done my share of scanlation and being behind on projects. Your argument holds no weight. If that is how you felt, you would have just released it in Spanish then. But not only did you snipe them, you skipped to the latest chapter leaving a large gap. Many people will inadvertantly click in and not realize its way far ahead and spoiling them. Besides the fact the Spanish group was making regular progress and you jumped on this chapter the moment it was published on NicoNico. Lastly, it's a sloppy zero-effort release.

You knew exactly what you were doing. "Project" my ass.

 

[Aereus]

@BzzBzz Inotherwords you have no respect or appreciation for the original author/artist and are willing to accept sloppy and inaccurate releases as long as you get your fix of vaguely ballpark meaning letters on a page. While you hide behind a shield of entitlement and technicalities.

 

[Vasqueztion]

 

[Khaos]

I'd rather watch two AIDS infected cockroaches have sex in a tank full of human sewage and garbage than read this shit

 

[Khaos]

If we all report this I'm sure the mods will do something, not like they would just sit by if they get 1k reports on a chapter

 

[littleoni]

@Khaos
The chapter is not reportable. The attitude may be wrong, but in the end the person did what they were supposed to do: they uploaded a valid chapter translated and edited. The quality may be crap and the translation may be off, but the work remains done.

@criver
I'm not an expert either, I just had to prepare in case of a shitstorm on my side. As long as you distribute the work the right way and no one holds the right of exclusive distribution and profit (license), you cannot be sued for distribution. Usually, when they say that a company was sued because of copyright infringment it means they used someone else's work, either directly or modified, without notifiying the copyright holder or crediting him. And that's the most important point. If you go to Youtube, you will find a lot of copyrighted music being balantly distributed without the copyright holder's permision, yet because there is "I don't claim to own anything in this video. All rights of this video belong to the respective copyright holders. Licensed by ~~~~ in ~~~" at the bottom, the video will not be taken down.

 

[criver]

@Sheogorath85: I am not "begging" for evidence, you're supposed to provide evidence if you accuse someone, otherwise it's on the level of libel. I just called @Bolshack out on his clowning around. Nice broken link btw.

@Aereus: "Your argument holds no weight because I think so boohoo". With the risk of repeating myself, the fact that a person can't count and due to that will spoil the chapter for himself is on him. This is by no means something you can blame the TL for when he has uploaded it with the correct chapter numbering. Also the chapter is not sloppy - the quality is ok and the translation is perfectly readable. The bs you're spouting just goes to show that you're biased. Your reply to @BzzBzz says it all - I haven't seen such a leap in logic in a very long time.

@Khaos: Go ahead and report it, I want to see you get told that your opinion doesn't hold more weight just because you're bigoted. The chapter is perfectly readable and the quality is ok. I've seen chapters that were actually bad quality get uploaded, obviously there was no such shitstorm like here, since it's not really about the quality, you just want to shit on the TL for translating something that somebody else called dibs on.

@littleoni: I have a little knowledge about the Fair Use catch. It doesn't actually protect you in any way, if you're called to court and they deem it to not be fair use (which you can bet will happen if you made a company waste money to sue you) then that's it. All the yt videos citing fair use doesn't protect them, they can still get a cease and desist letter or get sued (or the easiest: get reported to yt), the issue is companies can't be bothered to deal with all of them the whole time. I am not sure where the myth started that it's ok to share something illegally as long as you write that you don't own it, this is simply untrue.

 

[littleoni]

By the way, I got so engrossed in all of this that forgot what it was all about. TL;DR: it doesn't actually matter whether you can or cannot get sued in this context. You are mostly right. Yet the law can be twisted into escaping.
@criver
I won't be looking for the explanation now, and you are right in some cases. Essentially, to be able to make use of the Fair Use catch you must own a personally licensed version of the material. And you can't prove such ownership over Youtube so they sometimes send the letter and Youtube does their thing. But in fact if things come to court you can get away with it. As I said, we in the assotiation had trouble with it once and a distributor threatened to sue us if we went ahead and made a screening in a juvenile center (considered to be a public space). Since we were in possesion of a personally licensed copy of the video, in the end they could do nothing since the law clearly states that as long as a) authorship is recognized; b) no profit is made; c) the material is not distributed (we could not copy the video and give a copy to everyone attending) you are safe. The last part was because the distributor was a license holder in our country. So in case of online manga, if the material has no license holder in the country, 100% safe. If they do, you are screwed if you try anything. If there is no holder in your country but there is one somewhere else, that holder may request an ip block by the ISP's. It would then go through court and you would have to pay for the trial if you lose, but still have no criminal charges or fine. Your site would end up blocked wherever the block was requested. This has pretty much never happened because, as you said, the companies cannot be bothered.
I remember some years back a mangaka had personally tried to stop a fan translation from happening and nothing could be done. Don't remember who, it's been years.
Also, I will reiterate: the right of distribution and profid lays with the license holder. As soon as there is one you have to take down all material or you are in deep if they were to sue you. Fair Use or whatever won't save you.
The difference between copyright and licensing is quite subtle but important. A Copyright is proof of ownership of a concept. If you have copyright over Isekai Maou it means only you can make a chapter of Isekai Maou; no one but you can use the name "Isekai Maou" for anything you have not made; you also own the characters, world, names, etc, everything related. Most Copyrights work also as local licensing, but you would have to pay to get one of those. The CC Copyright is "free" but does not work as licensing: you are forbidden from selling the work (you and everyone), but you still have ownership of the concept and can sue anyone using it without your consent. A License is a contract that allows you to distribute copyrighted material for profit. It has a tax, like any commercial contract. While a copyright is more or less universal, no matter where you got your copyright, once it's registered you have ownership and could sue anyone anywhere (not exactly, but it's sophism explaining the exceptions); a license is registered with a taxing organism and only applies wherever that organism can collect taxes. When making a translation you claim no ownership of the concept, you are supposed to do a fidel reproduction of the original but translated. It's the same work. So it's not infringing copyright. If you post it online and are in a licensed area, you are conflicting the legal distributor.
About, for example, game piracy (and why it's different). Originally the games had no piracy protection, so why did they add it, if they could just sue those who shared the game? Because they would be protected by this "fair use" loophole. So the companies added piracy protection, a mechanism in the code of the game that somehow prevents you from copying it (usually, a unique serial key). Now there are cracks, right? Well a crack is a modified executable, so it's a unauthorized reproduction and modification of copyrighted content.

 

[criver]

@littleoni: If you get to court, the company, whose rights you're infringing upon, will make damn sure it gets its money. In your example they threatened to sue you, the most likely reason they didn't is because suing someone costs a ton of money and they figured they will gain nothing from this. It makes sense to sue someone if you'll get more money than you'll waste on suing him. Note also that screening something and distributing it are two different things.
Piracy is not only in regards to games but whatever. You can actually get a pretty big fine where I live not for distributing but even for downloading stuff illegally (as long as they catch you). Obviously the catch is that if the work you're downloading is not licensed here the original publisher simply won't bother.