Narutofan

[Assertn]

As you may or may not know, Narutofan's recieved alot of attention from the anime community, both good and bad. Tazmo's been notorious for putting up manga releases without the consent of scanlation groups (at one point inane even put up "NARUTOFAN DOES NOT HAVE OUR CONSENT TO DISTRIBUTE" all over their releases). I've also heard that tazmo would take steps towards shutting down other similiar Naruto community sites. But this topic isn't about all that. It's about exploitation for profit.

http://www.narutofan.com/index...ent-main,2006%20budget

According to this article, Narutofan.com costs $32000 a year to function. Wow...that's insane....
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, he's even started posting the withdrawal statements from his account to show that this is accurate. What's misleading, however, is the assumption that all the overhead is compensated by donations. This is wrong. It doesn't take 15 servers to host torrents, a few OST mp3s, and the Naruto manga. It just doesn't. What 90% of these servers are likely being used for is direct downloads of anime for the Plus! members.

A plus membership is $3.50 per month at Narutofan. That's $42 a year.
How many plus members does it take to reach $32k? 762 members.

While it doesn't state anywhere how many plus members they have, it IS known that the total number of members is over 900,000.

If only 0.08% of the members are plus members, then that will be enough to offset costs.
If 1% of the members are plus members, then tazmo's making over $300k a year...a 17yr old making six figures for offering fansubs released for free by DB and AONE.

In short. Don't send a dime of your money to tazmo, whether it be donations, memberships, or otherwise.

[Knives122]

well I see your point, and seeing how I don't pay for anything online that has to do with a membership (like when this site: http://www.animecrave.com/ told us to start paying $5 a month I said screw you and stop going to it) I will not be paying for it what so ever.

[Carnage]

Thats an interesting way to become rich! Very greedy though. I wish I had a ton of anime/manga, and could create a website offering free episodes, and would pay it off by putting a bunch of ads on my site, but then create an option when pplz come to my site if they want to go into the ad or adfree site, just like one site I saw a few years ago. That would be cool[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img] Well, Im archiving every anime I download onto DVDs and soon Im just going to download every anime I can, so it might just happen. Plus, I know someone with 5 terrabytes of anime, so it might just happen! Who am I kidding, no its not[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

[Terracosmo]

Yep. That kid's loaded. He has way too much money than he should have. But then again, the people who get free anime at great speeds aren't complaining either, so... [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

[Assertn]

Nah.....but if I worked for DB or Aone...i'd be pretty pissed.

[DarthEnderX]

While I certainly think this is stupid, and I don't, nor never would actually pay for fansubs I had to note this part here..

Tazmo's been notorious for putting up manga releases without the consent of scanlation groups (at one point inane even put up "NARUTOFAN DOES NOT HAVE OUR CONSENT TO DISTRIBUTE" all over their releases).

No offense to whoever, but basically, they were complaining because he was distributing what is essentially someone elses content without their permission, when really, permission wasn't there's to begin with? Translating someone ELSES work doesn't suddenly make it YOUR work.

After all, I'm sure Kishimoto can't write "INANE DOES NOT HAVE MY CONSENT TO DISTRIBUTE" all over his manga, so I don't see why they would expect any better from someone else.

[FunkyBunch]

Well if he's making money off of Naruto, especially that much money...it could be trouble for fansubs in general.
When it's fansubs using bittorrent with no profit so to speak it's one thing, but if a kid, can make upwards of 30k, let alone more than that, it might make US distributors crack down even more. It's already technincally illegal internationally, distributing someone else's work without their consent, but making THAT much money may make them look harder, and make even MORE lawsuits.
That kind of money, would really eat into their profits, especially if they are re-leasing uncut anime, original language DVD's in the future.

[Carnage]

Tazmo's not just making money off of Naruto, hes making it off the 90 different fucking animes he has on his website. And holy shit thats alot of anime.

[Ero-Fan]

Eh, anyone who's stupid enough to pay money to get shit they could get for free elsewhere (with a little searching of the shitton of torrent sites out there) either has too much money or deserves to get taken.

[aznroyale]

Originally posted by: Ero-Fan
Eh, anyone who's stupid enough to pay money to get shit they could get for free elsewhere (with a little searching of the shitton of torrent sites out there) either has too much money or deserves to get taken.

ppl are retarted.........like one of my friend's friend, he buys manga, and he could download them instead

[Ero-Fan]

Yeah, I know people are retarted. Just saying, its their fault for being stupid. Not that this guy should be admired, but taking advantage of people is pretty much commonplace anymore. Thats why scams work so well. No common sense. You give out your personal information to strangers, you should expect to get screwed.

[aznroyale]

saddest thing is they rather waste money.instead of getting it for free

[kenren]

dont they think before they buy something? -_- ...like anime or manga...

[SamuraiX-]

Kinda sad, if you think about it. And that guy having that much money is just absolutely ridiculous. I'm willing to bet that he will get screwed sometime in the near future. Is it even legal for a teenager to be charging someone money? Doesn't the guy still live in his parents house? Does he even have a real job?

Maybe it's just bs. All that information on that page could be lies. Who knows. :/

[FunkyBunch]

I don't know where he's getting his servers from, but at those prices he must be getting them from Harrod's!
I've built many a webpage, and have never run across server costs that high for anything.
In my area, you can 2+ GB of HD space and unlimited bandwidth(about 100MB/s) for as little as $10/month, it's not very much more for extra HD space either, I haven't priced it out, but I'm sure you could get something like 200 GB for less than a $100/month.
If the other reasons arent enough to sway you, the fact that he's A)lieing about his server costs or B)An idiot or C)Just a jackass trying to make money
That better be enough to stop you.
You guys should ban his IP so he can't download ANY more Naruto, they're servers so they should be static.
That would be fun.

[Necromas]

So wait, this guy is downloading fansubs from OTHER, FREE sites THAT WENT THROUGH THE TROUBLE OF SUBBING IT THEMSLVES, and he's hosting it on HIS SITE for MONEY?

My god, someone please stab this man in the face.

[DarthEnderX]

But not possible. As soon as a sub is "released" it goes all over the internet. It's not like he couldn't just go get it from a normal torrent site or have his friend DL it and then load it onto his site.

[Assertn]

ive heard rumors that some of the servers are just single systems with multiple ips, and that there are actually fewer than he says there are. The same source that says this also claims tazmo of being a wife beater, so it'd be up to you to weed the truth from the rumors. There's some interesting stuff there to say the least.

[SamuraiX-]

WTF?! He's offering kiddie porn for people to support his site?! O_o

[Psyke]

Originally posted by: aznroyale
ppl are retarted.........like one of my friend's friend, he buys manga, and he could download them instead

I don't see how that's bad. It's a way of supporting the manga, and it's good to collect an entire series on manga and then keep/read it. Ok there's storage problems, but of course you're not gonna buy that much manga. For me personally, I buy quite a bit of manga including Bleach and Naruto, although I'm reading the raws/scanlations downloaded from the internet every week. It's a totally different feeling when you're reading from a book rather than from your computer screen.