Why foreign fans shouldn't link to Japanese uploaders
I'm just saying, the common courtesy is to not direct-link to Japanese uploaders on foreign sites, and there are good reasons for it!
#1 If Japanese website hosts notice a lot of foreign traffic on their site, they're likely to BAN FOREIGN IPs. Then none of us outside Japan will be able to access the site! There are several sources outside Japan for Hello! Project & other idol pictures these days, most JPOP forums have some kind of a picture forum... So you should encourage other foreign fans to use those sources instead of everyone attacking the original Japanese source!
#2 To those people who sometimes spend hours looking for new uploaders, it sucks to see someone just provide links to fans who'd never bother seeing the trouble for it themselves. No offence but if a fan is too lazy to make the effort, maybe they're not supposed to find the original source! They're also not likely to share their findings with the rest of the community, so what's the point in giving the link to them??
#3 Some people argue that Japanese fans should take the foreign fans into account, too. Why?? What exactly do they owe to us? If anything, WE owe to THEM for making most pics and videos available. We should show some respect to them by not killing their fricking bandwidth! Uploader links belong to 2ch, to the Japanese community. If someone's too lazy to go and look for them there or wherever, they don't deserve access. That's what I think. And language difference is no excuse: when I started I didn't know crap. It's not difficult to find your fav members name, go to 2ch, search it there, and start looking for links.
I'm just so angry because one of my favourite uploaders just went down, and when I googled the name of the uploader to see if it changed address, I discovered that some English-speaking asshole had linked it on their website (along with other Japanese uploaders). THANKS A LOT!
Comments
As one of those who relies upon these uploaders to provide sites like H!O with weekly TV-shows, I absolutely -hate- having to locate the new uploader 4 times a year just because some jackasses made the links public.
Only reason I see for posting these links is that you may get a cyber-karma of "awesome" and an internet-ego boost for sharing the source. For the 1 day it lasts.
And in my books, that is not a good enough reason to kill a site.
Couldn't agree more.
I don't really visit the uploader sites much, but when I do it's a pain when they go down. I've had a few emails from Japanese based fans pointing me in the right direction to the sites, but one thing they always say in their emails is not to link to the site on my blog or any forums and that seems only fair.
Good points. I try not to upload anything if I can help it.
http://www.bloggerparty.com/blog/radreview
It just seems selfish. Sorry, if your thoughts are 'omg I have to horde the link to myself' the last thought in your mind is probably the good of the community. The thought in your mind is probably "I have exclusive access to certain materials, people will like me more for it, therefore I'll have a better place in the community/my site will be visited more/etc".
Just curious, what was the uploader that went down? it's very likely that I know of it myself XD
Wth, it's not about a fricking popularity competition! It's a natural reaction when you've worked hard for something and then see someone get it for no effort at all. (I wasn't kidding when I said it sometimes takes hours to find new sources)
And I really don't see how "the last thing on my mind is the good of the community" if I share what I find and try to preserve the original source by not killing their bandwidth! I didn't start my Egg gallery "so that people would like me"... I made it to promote H!P Eggs! (And mind you, I find it very helpful that I have that to link when people ask me stuff like "who is Sayaka Kitahara?")
Anyway thanks Jostein, paul.thomas and others for comments! And thanks to people like you Jostein, when I see some file on an uploader, instead of starting the download there I can find an alternative link for it ^__^
And one thing I forgot. Uploader sites may have instructions such as "please only download one file at a time", "don't use download accelerators (which kill the bandwidth)" etc. No wonder sites go down when people who don't know better (=know to read the Japanese instructions) go there and leech like mad.