There is a trend currently were fan translaters are paywalling the latest chapters, with poor translations. What are your thoughts on this? I don’t mind asking for donations, but asking for money with mediocre translation is scammy.
Examples: https://asuracomic.net/ https://madarascans.com/ https://nightsup.net/ https://casacomic.com/
Not really a fan translation service if they’re requiring payment.
Nothing in any of those three words precludes payment (it’s work after all) but it’s still notoriously scummy. A donation jar would make far more sense.
I should clarify it depends on your definition of fan. When you’re making a derivative work, there’s two versions. There’s fan which is The person is enthusiastic about the content and then there is the intellectual property variation of it, which is someone who is doing it for non-commercial reasons under fair use(or said countries equivalent). However, once you start requiring money for said process, it removes the protections the creator has shielding it and generally changes the definition to that version.
Additionally, I agree a donation jar would be much better, but even then it’s been shown that that doesn’t resolve all liability because fan projects have been taken down for having a donation button even though the project itself is free, heck projects have been taken down for having advertisements on the projects website despite having nothing to do with said project
“Fan”
That’s the part that precludes payment. Fan works legally have to be free, that’s what makes it not copyright infringement.
That’s the part we have to combat. The idea that being a fan of something means any contribution you do to the fandom has to be treated as essentially unpaid workforce for the franchise. In truth, it’s nothing in the fact that you are a fan, but rather the fact that the thing you are a fan of is defended by some of the vilest scume of the earth (lawyers) that is a problem.
Down with copyright law!
People also shouldn’t just be able to make money off of other people’s creations without limits.
IMO, ideally we would implement a system of ‘open licensing’ where people could freely use others IP as long as they pay a public, standardized percent of revenue based on the usage.