Unholy
07-08-2006, 12:02 PM
There has long been a giant WAR ON MEDIA in the Anime community. That is, the fact people get incredibly outraged at the fact websites charge for the downloading of Anime.
There are two types of these "culprits", those websites that ask for donations such as Bleach Portal and those that have "Premium" Services such as Naruto Fan.
The Anime Community of the internet is like any community on the internet, made of hundreds of thousands of people. Of these, there will be the occasional evil person or so, that will exploit the community to make a profit, however I wish to explain in this what exactly goes into making a website and then let anyone contribute or argue anything that I say.
First, being my area of expertise I will start with websites asking for donations, since that is what Bleach Portal is.
Bleach Portal has one of the highest Donation Goals in the anime community, being only a smidgeon below $1000. This all goes into our pockets right? Of course not. No matter how much you can bring in your facts and figures, people just have no idea that their facts and figures are so rudimentarily incorrect that they should probably do a little more research next time.
Debate One: "A server doesn't cost $950"
Absolutely Correct, but 5 do. Bleach Portal currently uses 5 Dedicated 20mbps Servers for its media downloads. That's $249 per server, per month. That comes to a total of $1245 a month.
Why do we need 5 servers? Because of the insane traffic that we receive each and every day. you know all the complaints about slow downloads? THAT IS BECAUSE OF THE TRAFFIC. Simple and plain evidence there, even 5 servers cannot handle our traffic.
So why can't we get more servers? Because they are already $1250 a month! People are already complaining about our goal being $950!
Debate 2 "So the contests must be rigged then"
There is a simple phrase "Spending Money to make Money" the prizes are paid via advertising revenue. These Prizes then give incentive to potential Donators to donate causing increased Donations surpassing the cost of the Prize itself.
Debate 3 "But you have advertisements everywhere"
Well first of all, The banner ad on the top of our page pays for our dedicated "WEBSITE" hosting, not our "MEDIA" hosting. The Website and the Media are hosted on entirely different servers in different locations. Secondly, the bottom advertisement not only has to pay for the prizes but make up that other $300 of our donation goal that we don't get each month to pay for the Media Servers. Any excess money is then saved and spent to upgrade services such as the new Download Script which we brought someone from outside (so not myself) to do so that we could get the most from our servers.
Debate 4 "I don't believe you"
Well... that is just a testament to your own ignorance in the field. If you knew anything about running a large website, and providing large media files to a wide audience then you might actually understand that what we say here isn't just a giant government conspiracy so that we can steal all your money. Trust me, for the work that goes into Bleach Portal, even stealing all the donations would make it the lowest paying job since slavery.
My added addition.
I personally as I mentioned above, do not see the problem people have with Anime Websites making a profit. Sure, the Fansubs are free property, but what the Fan subbers do is illegal to begin with. You can go into the ethical reasons from dawn till dusk, but it is a shit load of work to create and maintain a website, not to mention a large scale one. If it weren’t for the every increasing experience I get from this project, and just my love for providing the fans with the things they enjoy I wouldn’t be here.
Spending your whole life on something for no return seems to me quite useless, I mean, there is A LOT of work that goes into websites that have nothing to do with Media, “stealing money from the fan subbers” is a ridiculous claim.
Sure, a lot of sites wouldn’t deserve any money at all for the work they do, they get some substandard CMS and get a few people to randomly work for free and then go “yay look at my site I’m so great” Bleach Portal is constantly trying to improve everything in its arsenal (in Version 5 unlike ever before) I do hours of tireless work, but so does everyone who has helped me so far and will help me in the creation of Version 5 of Bleach Portal. Websites, although may seem like a few hours work take hours to not only create but test and secure (especially in my field of being the programmer)
If a webmaster was found to be taking money from donations that weren’t hindering the site (such as buying like a shared crappy media server then keeping the $1000 donated for a better one) then I wouldn’t really have a problem with it. For anyone thinking that I probably do this, it’s just my luck that Lunatic controls the funds so I couldn’t even if I wanted to … *cry* :P
Anyway, as for services such as Naruto Fan, some are good, some are bad. Many such as Naruto Fan is beginning to become are excessive at their money laundering. With Bandwidth limits, there is no need for $8/mo for 5GB of B/W. Servers themselves are inexpensive, it’s the lines they are connected to that cost the money. If you are limiting the amount one can download, then that’s just insane. For example a server with like 2TB (2000GB) of Bandwidth per month is $200 or so. That may be a bit high. Anyway, that’s say 400 people at 5 GB per month. That’s $3200 taken from members for a $200 server.
So, sure they are making $3000 profit from one server, but really is that even a problem? I mean, sure the fan subbers subbed the anime, but they don’t own it either. If the licensing companies don’t care, then it doesn’t really matter. The question isn’t “Oh they are selling free fan subs!” because the fan subs don’t belong to the fan subbers to give away for free anyway. Making a profit from them, or giving them away for free are both equally illegal. So really, if one can charge $8 for a service and get people to pay for it even though they are being grossly ripped off, then good luck to them.
The world is full of people looking to make a profit, money is wanted by everyone, it is the global commodity, people will do whatever they want for it, and no matter how much you ***** about ethics, they will always be doing it.
There are two types of these "culprits", those websites that ask for donations such as Bleach Portal and those that have "Premium" Services such as Naruto Fan.
The Anime Community of the internet is like any community on the internet, made of hundreds of thousands of people. Of these, there will be the occasional evil person or so, that will exploit the community to make a profit, however I wish to explain in this what exactly goes into making a website and then let anyone contribute or argue anything that I say.
First, being my area of expertise I will start with websites asking for donations, since that is what Bleach Portal is.
Bleach Portal has one of the highest Donation Goals in the anime community, being only a smidgeon below $1000. This all goes into our pockets right? Of course not. No matter how much you can bring in your facts and figures, people just have no idea that their facts and figures are so rudimentarily incorrect that they should probably do a little more research next time.
Debate One: "A server doesn't cost $950"
Absolutely Correct, but 5 do. Bleach Portal currently uses 5 Dedicated 20mbps Servers for its media downloads. That's $249 per server, per month. That comes to a total of $1245 a month.
Why do we need 5 servers? Because of the insane traffic that we receive each and every day. you know all the complaints about slow downloads? THAT IS BECAUSE OF THE TRAFFIC. Simple and plain evidence there, even 5 servers cannot handle our traffic.
So why can't we get more servers? Because they are already $1250 a month! People are already complaining about our goal being $950!
Debate 2 "So the contests must be rigged then"
There is a simple phrase "Spending Money to make Money" the prizes are paid via advertising revenue. These Prizes then give incentive to potential Donators to donate causing increased Donations surpassing the cost of the Prize itself.
Debate 3 "But you have advertisements everywhere"
Well first of all, The banner ad on the top of our page pays for our dedicated "WEBSITE" hosting, not our "MEDIA" hosting. The Website and the Media are hosted on entirely different servers in different locations. Secondly, the bottom advertisement not only has to pay for the prizes but make up that other $300 of our donation goal that we don't get each month to pay for the Media Servers. Any excess money is then saved and spent to upgrade services such as the new Download Script which we brought someone from outside (so not myself) to do so that we could get the most from our servers.
Debate 4 "I don't believe you"
Well... that is just a testament to your own ignorance in the field. If you knew anything about running a large website, and providing large media files to a wide audience then you might actually understand that what we say here isn't just a giant government conspiracy so that we can steal all your money. Trust me, for the work that goes into Bleach Portal, even stealing all the donations would make it the lowest paying job since slavery.
My added addition.
I personally as I mentioned above, do not see the problem people have with Anime Websites making a profit. Sure, the Fansubs are free property, but what the Fan subbers do is illegal to begin with. You can go into the ethical reasons from dawn till dusk, but it is a shit load of work to create and maintain a website, not to mention a large scale one. If it weren’t for the every increasing experience I get from this project, and just my love for providing the fans with the things they enjoy I wouldn’t be here.
Spending your whole life on something for no return seems to me quite useless, I mean, there is A LOT of work that goes into websites that have nothing to do with Media, “stealing money from the fan subbers” is a ridiculous claim.
Sure, a lot of sites wouldn’t deserve any money at all for the work they do, they get some substandard CMS and get a few people to randomly work for free and then go “yay look at my site I’m so great” Bleach Portal is constantly trying to improve everything in its arsenal (in Version 5 unlike ever before) I do hours of tireless work, but so does everyone who has helped me so far and will help me in the creation of Version 5 of Bleach Portal. Websites, although may seem like a few hours work take hours to not only create but test and secure (especially in my field of being the programmer)
If a webmaster was found to be taking money from donations that weren’t hindering the site (such as buying like a shared crappy media server then keeping the $1000 donated for a better one) then I wouldn’t really have a problem with it. For anyone thinking that I probably do this, it’s just my luck that Lunatic controls the funds so I couldn’t even if I wanted to … *cry* :P
Anyway, as for services such as Naruto Fan, some are good, some are bad. Many such as Naruto Fan is beginning to become are excessive at their money laundering. With Bandwidth limits, there is no need for $8/mo for 5GB of B/W. Servers themselves are inexpensive, it’s the lines they are connected to that cost the money. If you are limiting the amount one can download, then that’s just insane. For example a server with like 2TB (2000GB) of Bandwidth per month is $200 or so. That may be a bit high. Anyway, that’s say 400 people at 5 GB per month. That’s $3200 taken from members for a $200 server.
So, sure they are making $3000 profit from one server, but really is that even a problem? I mean, sure the fan subbers subbed the anime, but they don’t own it either. If the licensing companies don’t care, then it doesn’t really matter. The question isn’t “Oh they are selling free fan subs!” because the fan subs don’t belong to the fan subbers to give away for free anyway. Making a profit from them, or giving them away for free are both equally illegal. So really, if one can charge $8 for a service and get people to pay for it even though they are being grossly ripped off, then good luck to them.
The world is full of people looking to make a profit, money is wanted by everyone, it is the global commodity, people will do whatever they want for it, and no matter how much you ***** about ethics, they will always be doing it.