Fansub Gratipay Drama or: How I Learned to Crowdfund for the Sake of Generosity and Love

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

Twitter    


Hey guys, remember how that one series in Fall 2014 randomly decided to fuck up its pacing and tone by shoehorning AIDS into the plot? Well how about Crymore does that, but with pedophilia instead?

Gratipay
If you read nothing else in this post, this image will suffice. Glad to see [Underwater] is led by such a quality human being.

 

Disclaimer

Note that for the sake of readability, posts will be contracted. So, for example, this:

A

will change to this:

B

Because, let’s be serious, you wouldn’t read that first one; I wouldn’t either.

You’ll have links to everything I’m quoting, so feel free to check those if you feel I’m trying to fake you out. Unlike some sites, I don’t censor constructive comments, so call me out if you see something amiss, and I’ll let you know why you should up your literacy game.

 

 

The Timeline

Kaiba Line

Have some music while you read. It’s gonna be a long one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKZ_iXTBQ0

 

 

Pre-Gratipay

Spoiler:

I had been batting around the idea of creating another post on fansub donations, but felt I’d beaten that horse to the point where even Daniel Radcliffe wouldn’t fuck it in a play.

Crowdfund Crymore
The route I had planned to take.

But in OT8, J.C.Penny brought up that some groups were having donation drives.

B

Figuring it could rekindle my motivation, I decided to look into it some more. And what I found was Commie making sick money off of donations. Way more than even the $4,000 UTW once raised. And how were they making it? By acting like they were broke. http://commiesubs.com/state-of-the-cartel-2015/

State of the Cartel 2015
tl;dr: “We’re poor and we can’t give you anime unless you pay us.”

While I don’t like fansub donations in general, I despise lying to a user base in order to guilt trip their wallets open. So I did something I apparently wasn’t “allowed” to do: I contacted Gratipay (the crowdfunding service Commie was using, à la Patreon or flattr) directly.

 

All my kek

The toppest.

 

Fansubbers Get Mad

Spoiler:

As a result, herkz flipped his shit and blocked me on Twitter.

He's been tweeting about me a lot the past couple days though, so maybe he's just tsun-tsun for me.
He’s been tweeting about me a lot the past couple days though, so maybe he’s just being tsun.

And Commie’s new pet (you know, the shitbag that killed Kaylith Fansubs) was none too happy either.

Playing the Rat
I mean, the whole conversation around this is hilarious, but you’re here for Gratipay drama, not Xythar-lite’s bitch tears.

And while Jing was knee-jerking, duplex slipped in some IRC logs. http://privatepaste.com/10fc356d31

It’s a quick read, but here’s a selection (Bardiche is RHExcelion, the supreme leader of Commie):

 

<BardicheAssault> Also the first jimmy wales donation drive was spent on madoka trip 
to nyc and I want to do something similar for axpo
<&herkz> wow that sounds really useful
<&herkz> oh wait
<&herkz> not at all
<&herkz> what the fuck
<&duplex> lmao
<&duplex> holy fuck
<&airfoil> fansubbing, everyone
<&herkz> why the hell would you spend donation money on that
<BardicheAssault> I paid for food and hotel for like 6 people
<BardicheAssault> Why not
<&duplex> what the fuck
<&airfoil> as a contributing member to this group i demand to be allowed to use 
donations for frivolous and expensive person expenditures
<BardicheAssault> Sure I'll pay for your hotel and food if you come to axpo
<BardicheAssault> If we do make enough money
<&airfoil> out of the donation tin you mean?
<BardicheAssault> Yes

 

Yeah, that’s right. Commie’s donation drive is so RHE can afford an entourage. A little bit different from the official story.

Considering Commie had people like this donating…

Commie Guilt Trip

…and had already made over $3,000 from Gratipay alone (this is ignoring all they money they made from DDLs, PayPal, Bitcoin/Litecoin, and all other crowdfunding sources they were on before)…

Gratitude

…I thought it’d be prudent to take a peek at a discussion they opened up around it.

Gratipay Support

And I found myself involved in quite the quarity GitHub conversation.

 

Let’s Gratipay

Spoiler:

Yosha~
So excite.

Now, Gratipay is an Open Company, which basically means they take open source ideals and apply them to running a business.

I joined the conversation under the assumption that a company with such beliefs would not want to financially support someone who was:

A. Illegally profiting off of others’ works

B. Scamming/defrauding people

I was wrong.

A. was taken off the ballot almost immediately. While I can sympathize with his sentiments, idealism sans realism is folly.
“A” was taken off the ballot almost immediately.

As for B…

Colin

While that excuse made sense (gotta get that paper), the next one is where the crazy happens. And I should have expected it from someone named Chad.

To Whit

That’s a lot of words, so let me just break it down.

Per Chad, Gratipay’s mission is to “enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love” and in order to accomplish this, they will financially “enable” literally anyone (with a special emphasis on enabling criminals and criminal behavior). So with that kinda mindset, when Chad randomly brought up /pol/ and /younglove/ communities as “unsavory”, the wheels started spinning.

And when he qualified what he meant by /pol/ and /younglove/…

Whit please

…I was a little confused, and not in a good way.

(At this point, I’m way over the RHE drama, just so we’re clear. RHE would probably fuck a child if he got the chance, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of person even the worst parent would let their child near, so it’s kind of a moot point.)

 

Now, I don’t know whether /pol/ and /younglove/ are actual hives of racists and pedophiles (and quite frankly, I don’t want them in my search history in case that is the case), but whether they are or not is completely irrelevant because that’s what he (did I mention this guy’s the founder of Gratipay?) believes them to be. So I asked for some clarification, hoping I was misunderstanding his company’s stance.

And, well, he clarified it. As a bonus, have some Daiz (who joined soon after I posted a link to the conversation on Crymore, which is weird, considering I thought he was boycotting us).

Gratipay
Sometimes the dragon wins. And no, Daiz isn’t being sarcastic there; that’s his actual opinion.

Forgetting real life for a second, these are the kinds of villains I’d love to see in anime. They’re most assuredly evil, but you can almost sympathize with them. There were probably humans in their bodies once, after all.

Back to real life: what the actual fuck?

 

Current State

As you might expect, tumblr’s a little pissed off about the child pornography thing, so they’ve decided to jump into the conversation too. And since we all know where Daiz stands on the subject, there’s some rather entertaining discussion going on that you may be interested in following.

Daiz getting rekt

Hell, depending on when exactly you’re reading this, some even crazier drama might’ve cropped up. Though I hope not, since I don’t think my sides could take it.

 

Final Thoughts

Regardless of what you think about this drama-infused situation, I think we can all agree that if there’s any lesson to be learned from this whole hullabaloo, it’s that the only good arc in SAO was the first one.

120 thoughts on “Fansub Gratipay Drama or: How I Learned to Crowdfund for the Sake of Generosity and Love”

  1. I think the best way to stop this kind of behavior is to teach people how to properly donate. For example here on Chile we have the massive “Teletón” event each year for two days on TV, on all national channels. All the country donates millions of millions to be used for poor disabled child’s health. Actually the Teletón’s service charges quite more than a few minimum salaries for their work, so yeah.

    As for Gratipay comes, just lol.

    Reply
    • The big problem with donating is that most people just can’t really be bothered with it or don’t really care as long as it makes them feel good.
      In your example, people could very well go out of their way to give money straight to people in need but do they? No, they give it to someone who will then give it to people in need.
      Same applies to fansubbing donations, instead of donating just whatever someone could say “let me pay directly for your server’s costs for this month” and that’d be the end of that, instead people are giving money to these groups blindly and they never know what happens to it but they think they’re helping so it’s ok.
      Obviously this logic is a bit shaky but the idea is to give directly to the people who need the money, not the people asking for it or be really transparent about it but even then it’s easy to fake numbers so that also depends.

      Reply
      • People loves to feel they are good persons and generous, without the effort and time needed to be that in the first place. Still, it’s better than don’t care about it at all (world isn’t black and white), but those bad intentioned campaigns and donations systems are wrongly directing the at least some interest on help, sucking most the money and cutting all the spaces for advertising for the needed groups and organizations.

        Reply
    • I don’t get why a donation site that acts as an intermediary to online purchases hasn’t popped up. Heck maybe even amazon itself could launch one.
      You’d donate and the person receiving that donation can use that money towards an amazon or newegg or other online delivery site purchase, but all the donation pool money can only be used in that way and would have to go through the site, which would then keep an accurate history log of all purchased items, which it displays to donors/potential donors. So they can see where their money is actually going, and if a group starts purchasing superfluous items it will show up on the donation page to deter any future donations.

      Expecting ppl to police themselves with donations is never going to be an effective solution, and god knows how many times donators have been swindled or mislead under the current donation systems.

      Reply
      • He holds the purse so to speak, as all the donations are tied to his accts. Kicking him out would mean bye-bye to all that money, pure and simple.

        Reply
      • So that paste is from basically a year ago to this day.

        >Why hasn’t RHE just been kicked out of Commie?
        From what I understand, which may be entirely incorrect, he’s the symbolic manifestation of commie. If the people don’t have a totem to dance around and worship, then nothing will happen. Without RHE, there is no commie. It would have to disband. The individuals may find some other person to follow, or maybe not.

        Reply
          • That is an entirely appropriate response given what I know about you, which is admittedly only based your previous posts here, and what Dark_Sage has typed.

            You need to extricate your sense of self from commie/RHE. Otherwise, you will take all of this personally on their behalf, when there’s no need to do so. Be your own person.

            This doesn’t mean that RHE can’t be gotten rid of. What comes to mind is the donation scandal of Box of Boxtorrents where his admins overthrew him and took everything and founded BakaBT with it. That worked out well for them.

            Though, I suppose that isn’t really applicable in the case of Commie since it’s mostly automated now and nobody really does much of anything.

            Reply
            • I remember when I took Philosophy 101 in college.

              Please don’t stop posting, though. I’ve enjoyed both of your comments very much so far :D

              http://www.crymore.net/off-topic-v8/comment-page-1/#comment-244012
              >For the record, I don’t know how any of this works, nor do I consider myself some sort of representative of Commie (or any one particular group, for that matter). I’m just an editor. But if you’re right, and money is being squandered, then sure, that sounds like a problem.

              (tl;dr admittedly you can’t read)

              Reply
              • Regardless, you are still complicit.
                >I don’t know how any of this works
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

                >nor do I consider myself some sort of representative of Commie
                It’s irrelevant what you consider yourself.

                >I’m just an editor.
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

                >But if you’re right
                Using “if” goes beyond the “benefit of the doubt” when the person in question openly admits to misappropriating the funds.

                >that sounds like a problem.
                Could easily be construed as “seems like a problem, but that’s simply your opinion, it isn’t.” or “that sounds like a problem, but I couldn’t care less either way.”

                Who cares what the people you enable do, as long as you get the attention and satisfaction you crave?

                Why, yes, I am having fun. Thanks for wondering. :D

                Reply
                • Jeez, you must have one hell of a professor! They usually won’t admit to it, but ask him if he smokes weed. I always wanted to smoke with a professor.

                  >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

                  I don’t know how server costs apply to the subbing process. The law was not relevant to my comment.

                  >It’s irrelevant what you consider yourself.

                  Given your perspective at the periphery, I’m going to say that what you consider me is even less relevant, despite this being so much fun.

                  >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

                  I have no interest in anything other than editing. The idea of “rank” was not relevant to my comment.

                  > Could easily be construed as “seems like a problem, but that’s simply your opinion, it isn’t.” or “that sounds like a problem, but I couldn’t care less either way.”

                  Remember the part where I said you can’t read? You completely missed every point.

                  You’ve made a critical mistake, my dear freshman, so I’ll do you a kindness and set you on the right path. You may not have covered it in class yet, but there’s a thing called “confirmation bias”, seen here in your native language of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

                  Go buy a new textbook.

                  Reply
                  • Hey, do you own a fedora or trilby? Usually people who quote confirmation bias in place of admitting wrongdoing(Even by a group that you are supposedly only tangentially related to.) own one of those types of hats.

                    Reply
                  • For your benefit, all the following replies assume you are being disingenuous rather than sincere, because that would just be sad.

                    It was meant as “ignorance isn’t an excuse”.
                    >I don’t know how server costs apply to the subbing process.
                    They aren’t being used for server costs. Not that you would know, as you typed. That’s the problem.
                    Strictly speaking, it doesn’t apply to the subbing process. Then again, strictly speaking, having an editor isn’t essential either.

                    >I have no interest in anything other than editing.
                    That was my point. It’s like amoral scientists who simply want to research without being encumbered by ethical concerns. You edit whatever needs to be edited. Though, given such an attitude, I think you’d be better suited to be being paid to edit that which no one else wants to edit, rather than wasting your time with mundane fansub editing.

                    > You completely missed every point.
                    Simply stating that doesn’t make it true.

                    I see your confirmation bias and I’ll one-up with the fallacy fallacy.
                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

                    Reply
                    • I’m not sure who you think is paying for the server if donation funds aren’t being used to pay for the server.

                      As for the rest, go bug RHE yourself and figure out exactly what happened. You seem a little uninformed about exactly how Commie’s funds are spent.

                    • >It was meant as “ignorance isn’t an excuse”.
                      >They aren’t being used for server costs. Not that you would know, as you typed. That’s the problem.

                      And I’m telling you “I don’t care” in big, bold letters, champ. If someone takes care of it, great. Misappropriating funds is a bad thing, and I probably don’t like the idea of it any more than you do. But trying to call me the problem does nothing other than satisfy your young mind’s desire to show off the skills you just learned in psych class. Good thing D_S is here to uphold morality in this wasteland we all inhabit. #browniepoints

                      >That was my point. It’s like amoral scientists who simply want to research without being encumbered by ethical concerns.

                      I’m sorry, but linking a Wiki page based off your misinterpretation of a blog comment does not constitute a “point”. And sweet analogy. I’ll be sure to remember that what I do to scripts could kill people and destroy families the next time I go to edit. Take your fallacies and go.

                      >Simply stating that doesn’t make it true.

                      Citing hypocrisy is so cliché, but it’s like you’re giving me no choice.

                      >I see your confirmation bias and I’ll one-up with the fallacy fallacy.

                      I’m dying.

                    • All right Sagey, give me your spreadsheet with Commie’s income and spendings for each month for the past 3 years. Then I’ll believe you.

                    • I’m afraid we only have the logs that were posted here. If you want more specific details, I think jdp and herkz were looking for those too. Why not follow-up with them and see if anything ever came of it?

                    • >And I’m telling you “I don’t care” in big, bold letters, champ.
                      Yes, I’m aware that you don’t care. That is why I stated that you don’t care.

                      > But trying to call me the problem does nothing other than
                      You aren’t the problem. You support the problematic behavior though. You simultaneously state that you don’t care, but that it’s also a bad thing. I surmise from this that it doesn’t bother you to support that which you find disagreeable, or if it does, it doesn’t matter because you don’t believe yourself to be personally involved.

                    • Good thing you clearly know “exactly how [the funds] are being spent now.” As for me, I don’t see a dime of the money, and quite frankly I don’t care to worry about that which isn’t my responsibility. The one thing I do know is that the donation money is used to pay for the server. Nobody actually cares to pay for it themselves. So you can rest assured that at least some of the funds are appropriated correctly (contrary to what our little Psych major up there seems to think).

                    • Sorry for using evidence more than feels? Look dude, not all of us have the capability to be sniveling sycophants. You wanna do something useful for once? Take that talent of yours and get us something that backs up your claims.

                      Otherwise, don’t blame us for using the facts we’ve got, instead of the ones in your kokoro.

                    • >at least some of the funds are appropriated correctly
                      Good to know what you believe is an acceptable standard.

                    • Okay, so I did some fact checking and I found this out:
                      The previous server (now dead) cost roughly $250 (varying with exchange rate, power consumption, etc.). This included paying off the server, paying for power and Internet, and paying for certain additional misc fees.
                      While Commie’s gratipay income has varied rather significantly week by week, it is probably safe to say that basically all funds acquired over the past year have been directed towards fansubbing purposes.

                    • $250 for a server and RHE’s personal utilities, huh? I’ll believe that.

                      Now here’s the fun part: Commie’s averaged $330 a month on Gratipay alone over the past 9 months (presumably you used alternate crowdfunding services before then). Your current goal is $400 a month from Gratipay alone. And you’re now making $500 a month. So what’s with the discrepancy, considering you’ve already thrown “misc. fees” under the $250 figure? And how much are you pulling in from the additional funding sources?

                    • Why even pay for an encoding server in the first place? Just hire someone who has a good computer and Internet connection, and have them setup RDP/VNC.
                      For releases, just grab a cheap 100mbit kimsufi and seed from there are enough seeders. (I would suggest just asking whoever has a good connection to seed it, but >legal ramifications.)

                    • Fansub arms race. You think they can demux HorribleSubs rips, remove the honorifics, then mux the scripts back in… manually? That’d require their members to have pride and like a minute of time to spare. And who has a minute to spare when the circlejerk is 24/7?

                      Plus it’s not their money. So who cares? Lie to the leechers, and they’ll take care of it.

          • Tropic Thunder was a good movie

            This is my favorite part of that paste:
            Dec 31 23:00:59 &airfoil one thing i’m curious about is how spending hundreds of donated dollars on an anime con trip relates to us not having enough buffer money to make it through to next month

            Dec 31 23:01:09 &airfoil there must be something im missing hmmmmmmm
            Dec 31 23:01:21 BardicheAssault I was fucking joking about axpo
            Dec 31 23:01:32 &exr btw coinbase fees are 1%

            Dec 31 23:01:34 BardicheAssault Holy fucking shit

            Dec 31 23:01:41 &jdp or you were entirely serious and realized it was dumb when everyone jumped on you

            Dec 31 23:01:47 &airfoil ┐( ¯3¯)┌
            Dec 31 23:01:54 BardicheAssault I’m about to start fucking banning people
            Dec 31 23:02:04 &herkz well rhe there’s no way any of us can tell if you’re telling the truth since you do it all in secret

            Dec 31 23:02:07 &herkz so what do you expect

            Dec 31 23:02:17 &jdp for disagreeing with you? real mature bro
            Dec 31 23:02:19 &herkz the server could be $100/month for all i know

            Dec 31 23:02:33 BardicheAssault It’s actually free I pocket everything
            Dec 31 23:02:41 &jdp we’re all technically adults let’s try and act like it
            Dec 31 23:02:43 &herkz you should ask for more then

            Reply
  2. “As a result, herkz flipped his shit and blocked me on Twitter.”

    I’m surprised they didn’t block you sooner, don’t they block everybody? I’m pretty sure they blocked me on more than five of my accounts at this point, also I should probably get a life.

    Reply
      • This makes sense. After all, I didn’t have any reason to check his Twitter account until he retweeted something I said about this issue.

        Kind of weird he’s stalking my Twitter but lacks the confidence to engage with me, to the point where he’d prematurely block me. Oh, did I say weird? I meant sad.

        Reply
  3. So in short, ban 4chan, reddit, 8 chan etc from all possible plattforms because some User might so something illegal and it might stay for a few minutes before moderators can remove it?

    If a User decides to post illegal content on crymore and you take too long to remove it, would that make it your fault?

    I can’t say i disagree with Daiz overall after reading the entire github thread and not just the out of context examples you choose to put into this post

    Reply
    • Where did I say that I was against 8chan? I don’t know enough about the site to even have an educated opinion about it.

      Like I said in the post, if Daiz and Chad believe that funding (or “enabling” as Chad would say) actual child rape is okay so long as the rape isn’t happening directly on the funding platform, then there’s a glitch in their moral programming. And that’s the issue I have. Perhaps I didn’t explain that well enough?

      >Now, I don’t know whether /pol/ and /younglove/ are actual hives of racists and pedophiles […], but whether they are or not is completely irrelevant because that’s what he […] believes them to be.

      Reply
      • Clearly it wasn’t so clearcut as the discussion is still open. Now if it is proven that the offending person/company is supporting “actual child rape” i’m fully okay with banning them from whatever service they are on. I just doubt that’s the case in this particular discussion

        That aside “enabling an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love” is a silly company mission to have.

        Reply
        • I don’t think it is either, though again I didn’t look into it too much. I took it as more an example/expression of how much they believe in their ideals than an actual real-world situation. But if their ideals are truly that toxic, perhaps they need to modify them.

          Reply
        • That isn’t a company mission. It’s just a lazy way to say they don’t care as long as you’re not going to get them arrested.

          All companies share one goal and pretty sure most people are aware of it but forget often.

          Reply
  4. ayy lmao, D_S and duplex think they’ll achieve something, good luck with that, maybe you need to keep making threads about this on /a/ and, perhaps, something will happen.

    Reply
        • This is 2014, and in many places, 2015. If your encoder does not have a computer good enough to encode, he should not be an encoder. That also reduces ftp costs as you don’t have to store .ts and BDMV files on there, capping the space needed on an ftp to about 200 GB.

          Commie either is embezzling the money received (which now has a lot of evidence pointing to it), or is wasting money on resources it does not need.

          Reply
              • So encoding is only for those who are fortunate to live in a country with good infrastructure and can afford a good desktop? The way I see it, that’s just shutting people with talent out of the scene.

                Reply
                • Yes. Hate to say it, but if there’s a person with talent in a bad situation, there’s another person with talent in a good situation. Encoders, except for maybe like the top 2 or 3, are very replaceable. So at that point, factors such as your internet speed and encoding speed matter, along with reliability and communication.

                  And even the top 2 or 3 encoders I don’t believe is worth spending $200 a month extra for their services.

                  Reply
                    • Really? Half of the encoders in the fansub scene are on dial up? And yes, I’m talking dial up or worse. 768 kbps upload can put a 400 MB video up in 1.2 hours, which can be done while the subbing process is happening.

                    • >implying that ADSL2+ is on the same level as dial-up.

                      Um, nope. I’m certain it’ll takes longer than that; 1.2hrs might be enough for a 250MB video but certainly not a 400MB video. How do I know? I’ve tried it myself.

                      And are you really saying that? How can they start the subbing process when they don’t have a raw to work with?

                      You also forget that there’s scene filtering to do. This obviously takes up time. So lets say you make a wr first and upload that. Lets say that’s 160MB. So that’d take you 40mins to upload but the typesetter can’t start because >wr. Then you later have to upload the premux which would approx be 350MB. That will take about 2hrs. Can you really say this efficient? You’re wasting several hours and hindering progress at the same time. If you can do it all on a server, you will be saving hours.

                    • 400 * 1024 = 409,600 kb
                      409,600 * 8 = 3,276,800 kbit
                      3,276,800 / 768 = 4,266 seconds
                      4,266 / 3600 = 1.2 hours.

                      And I have been on 768 kbps for 3 years out of the past 5. Don’t act like I don’t know what it’s like.

                      As for what you’re saying about times, yes, it’s bad. You left out the time to download the .ts to scene filter too (2 hours). But you know, there is another encoder out there with a better connection who can do just as good of a job as the encoder with a bad connection. And who doesn’t require a $200 a month encoding server.

                    • Except there will always be data lost during the transfer and your speeds will always fluctuate so you will never truely reach 768kbps. Simple math calculations will not work. Welcome to the real world.

                      Yes, I left that out but if you could do all of that on the server then there is no need to wait those 2hrs.

                      Now here is something for you to think about. Sure there are some encoders who are just as good but how many of them will even bother to enter the anime fansubbing scene? Finding good staff members is hard. If you reject someone solely because they don’t have good internet then it is entirely your loss. In fact, there is no guarantee that someone who’ll meet all your prerequisites will appear.

                    • If you’re an encoder, and your internet sucks, it should be up to you to rectify the situation, ie pay out of your own pocket for a remote server, and not the group to pay for your server.

                      It should be up to the encoder to make sure he has access to a computer with a good uplink, and not on the group.

                    • “Yes, I left that out but if you could do all of that on the server then there is no need to wait those 2hrs.”

                      Unless there is a method I don’t know about, yes there is. All video and images come back about 10 times bandier over an RDP than on my own computer. They encode fine, but you can’t look at them and do any intense filtering.

                      “Now here is something for you to think about. Sure there are some encoders who are just as good but how many of them will even bother to enter the anime fansubbing scene? Finding good staff members is hard. If you reject someone solely because they don’t have good internet then it is entirely your loss. In fact, there is no guarantee that someone who’ll meet all your prerequisites will appear.”

                      Ever try recruiting? Encoders are a dime a dozen. They are probably the easiest position to get someone good in it. In addition, encoding isn’t an art, it is a science. So if you can’t find someone, you can teach someone how to do it just as well.

                      Though you still have yet to convince me why ANY of these encoders are so good that they are worth $2,400 a year to a fansub group to keep around.

            • If you’re on dial-up, you should sort your life out before seeking validation from the ever-decreasing amount of people who don’t know what Crunchyroll is.

              Reply
                • Neither did I, and I still managed to cut it back when distro was an actual position.

                  If you can’t afford to have a decent set-up, what makes you feel so entitled to have others pay for your hobby?

                  Also, have you heard of pre-muxes?

                  Reply
                  • Oh, don’t get me wrong. My setup is great; I only have a problem with Australia’s infrastructure and the government that says “fuck you” to its people.

                    Because I lead and release things for more than one group, it really becomes a hassle to release content. I’d have create patches every time and upload a torrent onto the ftp and wait for someone who has control over the server or someone with fast upload speeds to help me distro the release. I now have access to Hiryuu’s server but before that, everything was a hassle and I often had to delay releases for someone to help me distro.

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        • It’s odd to find myself agreeing with Kristen, but I don’t see how encoders would know enough about what they’re doing without having a decent PC at their disposal. I mean, how would they even learn without the kit? No, I don’t think encoding can really come under the banner of expenses you’d expect donations to go on.

          FTPs I can understand. They do cost money and they are vital to fansubbing. Computers so fansubbers can fansub (any position) = er, no. When leechers complain they can’t watch our 1080p 10-bit super-HD-with-bells-on releases, we rightly tell them they should get with the times and buy a decent PC if they want to download fansubs. Why should we make an exception to that for fansubbers to make them? :x

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  5. …and the scene continues its decent into the hellhole.

    Whatever happened to archdeco anyway?
    >”Please donate so I can get a new computer to fansub”
    >people donate
    >thanks, ilu all
    >*poof*

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  6. Why do groups need donations to keep their server running? It’s their group, isn’t it?

    $200 per month might be a bit much for a single person, but why not get 4 people to chip in $50 a month, or 8 people to chip in $25? Commie is a big group with a lot of members. Why not put the onus on them to keep it alive before shifting the responsibility to the leechers?

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  7. The timing of this whole thing couldn’t have been worse…

    I mean, is it gonna count towards The Great Shitstorms of 2014 or 2015?

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  8. So technically is fraud or not :v? As a certified internet lawyer I’m greatly interested in this case. They were donations and no one said in a contract they were going to be used 100% for fansubs, right?

    ofc doesn’t change how skeevy the entire donation drive is in the first place.

    I’m not even going to talk about Gratipay and their fantastic PR moment there.

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  9. Isn’t this how cartels work? The leader starts with (dis)honest work, and when they are successful, they stand on the shoulders of their users.

    Commie received enough money to donate to other fansubs, not that they will.

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    • You can generalise that to anything. Leaving aside the cartel bullshit (a useless coin nowadays /s), not all the groups that are considered part of it even ask for donation. Looking at the current situation at Commie, it looks pretty clear that most of the members don’t really agree with RHE and his modus operandi.

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  10. Watashi will also be starting scamdrives in the new year. And apparently you will be able to pay jhk to make me work on things?

    P.S. Fuck off, Kristen.

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  11. I’m just here to make sure I’m not going crazy, but this isn’t *news*, is it? I swear I heard the “RHE using donation money to go to AX” story months ago. Feels more like a year, considering how long I’ve been out of the loop.

    Reply

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