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[Submission] Fuwanovel Crowd Funding


Okami

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In topic Solidbatman created "MangaGamer Considering Crowd Funding" a lot people said that they would be willing to donate if MangaGamer choose to use fundings for some good no nukige VN. So I thought why don't we (Fuwanowel) start crowd funding in order to pay people to do fan-translations. I mean there would surely be a lot people who would be willing to translate VNs if they were to get paid to do it, they don't even have to like VNs as long as they have good knowledge of both English and Japanese and they want to earn some money from home that would be good enough. We could easily find people like that on some freelancer site. And as we would be funding for fan-projects and not for sale we could without problem give fans a choice to choose what VN they want to get translated with their donations.

 

So we first put up a news about this project and we give a pool for witch VN they would like to get translated (In the pool we put only VNs that there's no project for already) once people decide we start crowd funding and once we get enough money we search for freelancers.

 

So what's your opinion about the idea? Personally, I don't see any reason why to not do it.

 

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It's a major legal issue if we don't hold the license for whatever game is being fan translated. 

Basically this.

You can indeed pay people to make a patch, no one will stop you from doing that but that's not where the problem lies. The problem is you can't legally generate profit off of someone else's work without a license for it, and since a patch will tamper with someone else's work and you don't hold a license for it and are making a profit out of it that's what would be illegal.

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It's a major legal issue if we don't hold the license for whatever game is being fan translated. 

 

 

Why? We wouldn't be earning money ourself nor would we be selling those VNs we would just be paying for fan-translations.

As far as I know fan-translations aren't illegal and there were already few fans-translators who were being paid for their translations (Not like we ourselfs don't help in fan-translations already). And even if it is illegal I don't think piracy is a big deal everybody does it anyway. We are already doing it too by sharing VN torrents.

 

 

Basically this.

You can indeed pay people to make a patch, no one will stop you from doing that but that's not where the problem lies. The problem is you can't legally generate profit off of someone else's work without a license for it, and since a patch will tamper with someone else's work and you don't hold a license for it and are making a profit out of it that's what would be illegal.

 

Like I said we wouldn't be profiting as all we get we would spend on freelancers. And what I said above about pricey too.

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Lots of legal issues. Most of it would be illegal without the license of the game. It's not a matter of who's getting money, it's a matter of law. And illegality means no crowd funding website.

 

Plus ethic issues. A lot of people here would be completely against this idea. It's not fan-translation anymore if you pay for it.

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Like I said we wouldn't be profiting as all we get we would spend on freelancers. And what I said above about pricey too.

You are paying people to mess with someone else's work without permission from the owner. That is illegal as stated by the copyright law.

Paying means someone is earning money off of it regardless if it's just one payment it is still illegal. 

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You are paying people to mess with someone else's work without permission from the owner. That is illegal as stated by the copyright law.

 

And it is illegal to give people torrents to download those VNs for free, but we are doing that don't we?

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And it is illegal to give people torrents to download those VNs for free, but we are doing that don't we?

The thing is when there's money involved you will get into much more SERIOUS trouble.

As soon as money is involved you're pretty much exposing your neck to the law and that's where you're doomed.

 

And like Down said fan translation is done by fans, not to earn revenue off of it.

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The thing is when there's money involved you will get into much more SERIOUS trouble.

As soon as money is involved you're pretty much exposing your neck to the law and that's where you're doomed.

 

And like Down said fan translation is done by fans, not to earn revenue off of it.

 

Then we can do it on server of a country where nobody cares for piracy even if money is involved on a name of a person who is from that country. Like my country, for example, half of my life I have been earning money by selling games and movies that I torrent then burn on CD. I have been doing that until internet didn't become popular in my country and until everybody learned to torent for themselves which was just few years ego.

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Then we can do it on server of a country where nobody cares for piracy even if money is involved on a name of a person who is from that country. Like my country, for example, half of my life I have been earning money by selling games and movies that I torrent then burn on CD. I have been doing that until internet didn't become popular in my country and until everybody learned to torent for themselves which was just few years ego.

Well I won't stop you as an individual if that's what you chose to do but I would never risk making money off of these things and I know Fuwanovel is non profit so I know here it won't happen. And projects posted here even if by individual users other than the Fuwanovel staff involving this kind of stuff won't be allowed too I'm sure.

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Well I won't stop you as an individual if that's what you chose to do but I would never risk making money off of these things and I know Fuwanovel is non profit so I know here it won't happen. And projects posted here even if by individual users other than the Fuwanovel staff involving this kind of stuff won't be allowed too I'm sure.

 

I don't know what country you are from or what lows are there, but from here I find it very funny how you are speaking about making money of piracy like it is a big deal as here it is pretty much legal thing as even popular shops that have their TV commercial sell only torrented games and movies totally publicly and nobody say a thing to them.

 

Anyway lets wait for mods and admins to give us their opinion.

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I can already say Fuwanovel will never, ever, ever endorse such a thing. Fuwanovel is not a translation group, only a library of already translated games. 

 

 

Anyway lets wait for mods and admins to give us their opinion.

 

Basically what batman and down said, Okami. It gives legal problems, so we can't do it. 

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Legality and such aside, if someone doesn't want to do something that often takes over a year to do for free, then you'd need a pretty hefty amount of money to hire them, and since a lot of VNs are 18+ some of the most popular services like Kickstarter are out of the question. So we'd have to raise a pretty big sum from a rather niche audience, and regardless of whether the first one succeeds, the next one will be even harder because if it succeeded the people who already gave would be less likely to give, and if it fails then once again people will be more hesitant to give.

Just my 2 cents.

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Well I don't think 18+ would be that big of a problem on KS, but all these crowd funding companies are based in the US and have to go by their laws and those are broken. So you cannot improve work of someone else and take money for it even if you put so much work into it yourself, the US law doesn't permit it and that's what you have to follow. There was that project on KS to translate a VN but it got taken down because of that.

 

But!

Fuwanovel is actually a workaround for that - people who form projects here and do all sorts of work here from support, walkthroughs and such, will never ask money for it - and in return they get everything from fuwa for free as well. That's how it works - if everything is free, you can also join and work for free and everyone can have everything. As I would say communism can work on the internet :P

And that is one of the goals of fuwanovel, to promote the fan translation as much as possible, because fan translation is done with passion and with no profit, and as such everyone can enjoy it for free as well.

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if your goona go to all the trouble to start a crowd funding translation project or group why not just turn your self in to a small start up company and try to legaly aquire the liscenses to the properties therefore saving your self all the legal headaches and being able to profit off the work thats being done hell look at https://sekaiproject.com/ these guys are doing essentialy what im allready talking about they legaly gained the liscenses then crowd funded their projects this way there is no grey area plus you could easily branch out to media besides visual novels and eroges think of the other great products from otaku culture most of the world cant enjoy, light novels, obscure or independant manga (after all the biggest names in manga are preety much allready coverd by yen press, viz, dark horse etc...) and other things like all the bad ass social media and smartphone games they get that we dont . the prospect for profit and continued funding for operations is there if handled right the true problems come when you try to do this a a organized criminal enterprise. there's been tons of small publishers and independent media companies over the last 30 years who did manga and anime licensing that had a modicum of success sure you wont be able to afford all the best properties right out the gate because fees will be high but if you start with good properties that are less well known or companies that produce a larger percentage of products a year  your chance for success is higher. hell thats basicly how mangagamer operates they buy a ton of  nukige in order to keep funding for there bigger more expensive projects because whether you enjoy them or not nukige sells well . plus what your suggesting while it sounds positive actually does a disservice to the visual novel and fan translation community , these companies usually don't care if some small group gets together and puts out a patch for a game that will likely never be licensed in the western market but if you involve money thats a whole different deal now your competition to them you have made a profit from their hard work and they will involve police, interpol and lawyers if they have to to prevent someone from harming their business model. and that will bring unwanted negative attention down on the community as a whole which is the opposite of what fuwanovel is trying to accomplish.

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if your goona go to all the trouble to start a crowd funding translation project or group why not just turn your self in to a small start up company and try to legaly aquire the liscenses to the properties therefore saving your self all the legal headaches and being able to profit off the work thats being done hell look at https://sekaiproject.com/ these guys are doing essentialy what im allready talking about they legaly gained the liscenses then crowd funded their projects this way there is no grey area plus you could easily branch out to media besides visual novels and eroges think of the other great products from otaku culture most of the world cant enjoy, light novels, obscure or independant manga (after all the biggest names in manga are preety much allready coverd by yen press, viz, dark horse etc...) and other things like all the bad ass social media and smartphone games they get that we dont . the prospect for profit and continued funding for operations is there if handled right the true problems come when you try to do this a a organized criminal enterprise. there's been tons of small publishers and independent media companies over the last 30 years who did manga and anime licensing that had a modicum of success sure you wont be able to afford all the best properties right out the gate because fees will be high but if you start with good properties that are less well known or companies that produce a larger percentage of products a year  your chance for success is higher. hell thats basicly how mangagamer operates they buy a ton of  nukige in order to keep funding for there bigger more expensive projects because whether you enjoy them or not nukige sells well . plus what your suggesting while it sounds positive actually does a disservice to the visual novel and fan translation community , these companies usually don't care if some small group gets together and puts out a patch for a game that will likely never be licensed in the western market but if you involve money thats a whole different deal now your competition to them you have made a profit from their hard work and they will involve police, interpol and lawyers if they have to to prevent someone from harming their business model. and that will bring unwanted negative attention down on the community as a whole which is the opposite of what fuwanovel is trying to accomplish.

 

I think you misunderstood, I am not trying to profit here I am trying to get more VNs translated, and I think that translating/spreading VNs to the west is fuwanovel's goal. But I didn't know that to you guys, it matters so much if it is done legally or illegally. I guess I am more "the end justify the means" kind of guy so I assumed people here are too.

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I'll put it in a blatant form that everyone can understand:

 

When it comes to the issue of content under copyright, another person CAN NOT ASK FOR MONEY TO CHANGE SOMETHING WITHOUT THE OWNER'S PERMISSION.  This 100% includes crowd funding.  We at fuwa do not charge any money whatsoever at all and it is simply a matter of "sharing" or whatever term you wish you call it.  Fan-translation is not a job, it is all voluntary.  Monetizing the process is basically defeating the purpose of the term "fan-translation" entirely.

 

Quite literally, if this crowd-funding ever happened (god forbid), and the translators received an amount of money greater than the costs in the translation project, they make a profit and are liable on a horrendous level, and quite possibly the backers as well.

 

Most fan-translation projects will ask for optional donations to help with things such as website fees, but do they ever require it?  NO.  It is not a matter of "we should do it to get more visual novels translated," or the concept of putting an incentive of money to translating visual novels, because that actually increases the large amount of liability fan-translators have, to a level that will 100% GET THEM SUED.

 

Now that my anger rant is over, there is the possibility of a fan-translation group getting the license for a visual novel (it is unlikely, and it would take an absurd amount of time, but it is possible), thus allowing them to crowd-fund the translation project and give all proceeds to the developers and people noted in their contract.

 

If you still believe that crowd-funding doesn't make the translators give them a profit in some way, shape or form, then just click whatever "Donate" button they have.

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I think you misunderstood, I am not trying to profit here I am trying to get more VNs translated, and I think that translating/spreading VNs to the west is fuwanovel's goal. But I didn't know that to you guys, it matters so much if it is done legally or illegally. I guess I am more "the end justify the means" kind of guy so I assumed people here are too.

 

 

no i don't think i misunderstood your plan at all you said the idea was to pay translators and hackers to do fan translations of games that you don't own the licenses to. the people you pay will be making a profit through their work. that is against the law . international  copyright law  which means if the companies find out and they likely will they can involve interpol, and since you're likely not doing all this in house but rather paying for the services of hackers and translators from multiple countries this constitutes and organized crime on a international scale. interpol will take it seriously and will be able to perform arrests. while wherever you live piracy and copyright infringement may not be a big deal when it gets the international courts and police involved it does become a big deal .

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the only way crowdfunding would work is if it's towards working to a license with the japanese game company (but even then it's iffy because you have 0 recognition and probably have to sign a shitload of contracts with said jp game company.... not to mention because of the 0 recognition, the japanese game company would probably laugh at you))

 

If it's for "fantranslation" (crowdfunding to do so)... well I know more of this stuff in fansubbing terms for anime.   The reason fansubbing for nothing (just for optional donations) "works" is because it's on the grey/gray side of the law.     Once you include money into the equation it shifts to the other side of the law...

 

which regardless if you agree with its current implementation or not, but you'll probably be sued and lose in court if you go along with that route.

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I wouldn't so easily dismiss this as illegal, in fact I think this is an issue that is open to legal debate. If professional translators are hired (through the donations), they would not own their labor. Meaning that the people paying them own their labor, (Fuwa). So long as the owners of the labor are not profiting, it does not seem illegal. Infact, not only would the owners of the labor not be profiting, but we would actually be losing money because we are distributing the translation patch for free. Those of you arguing that the translator's are profiting are thinking in a very socialist way. You are essentially arguing that the workers (translators) own their labor, and are thus profiting off of it. Laborers who are payed are not profiting, as they are selling their labor to us. Theoretically we can have them translate anything, what legally matters is what we (the owners of the translations and their labor) do with the translation.  Since we would own their translated work, (as we would be paying them to translate for us), the only people legally responsible for making money are those who own the translation. So long as the translation is distributed for free, no profit is made, and thus nothing illegal is occurring.

 

Investopedia's definition of profit is, "A financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity. Any profit that is gained goes to the business's owners, who may or may not decide to spend it on the business. 

Calculated as:
profit.gif"

 

Through this definition, if you do the math you can can see that no profit would be made at all. We would have expenses, but no revenue would be generated. In other words if we plug in.  (Profit = 0 - x).   x being our expenses. 

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in regards to specific matters of copyright here its more down to national copyright law.

 

true the idea is a Non-Profit product, but as said earlier the idea of gathering money to fund a Modification to a Copyright Product is technically Illegal in most countries

 

even more so in modern day times, where copyright owners of products could take legal action against modifications to their protected products without permission.

 

In regards to torrents, That's also more  to do with Country Specific law's, Technically its nothing serious as no files are hosted under the name Fuwanovel so no Real law is broken under a group.
as all that's happening is "if you want to try out this Novel here's a link to where to get it" 

 

Honestly most people break laws everyday, even more so for copyright, as a lot of people don't know how they work and how stupid most copyright laws actually are.... But that's for another topic Completely, I could rant on for hours about it  :P

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