I've come across the scanlation group "Eclipse Scans" and noticed that they have a system of "donate to us and we will release manga" going at the moment. For example, if they reach $100 in donations, they will release 10 chapters. $150 and 15 chapter, $200 and 20 chapters.
Thinking about it practically, this is a fair trade - the readers want a manga, so they pay for the group to scanlate it and let everyone read it.
However, I dislike for the group's attitude towards their side of the deal:
For each chapter, there are 4-5 ads for their group.
When advertising, they often use pretty images from series the group does not scanlate, or art they didn't draw.
Their cleans aren't always high or even good quality despite being "paid". This includes:
http://eclipse-scans.net/eso/LIFE/22/20/ - Pages where the side darkens to a black, meaning the raw provider didn't bother to unbind the book. The process of doing so is quite simple, doesn't take much time, and the only bad side is that the owner of the book won't get to keep it for his/her own library.
http://eclipse-scans.net/eso/Tobenai-Tori/4/5/ - Pages that are are rough and "severe". Using the same example, neglect in replacing text that isn't "necessary" to take out.
http://eclipse-scans.net/eso/am800-kimi-ga-suki/1/8/ - Less noticeable, but often done and thus worthy of mention. Overuse of blurring. Often leaves light gray mass around lines, plus the overall effect of looking through a film of water. That, or JPEG did it, which is another thing: putting pages on the site in low quality despite not having a download link.
I dislike the system they have going, but people have donated and people have praised them for chapters. Are they overstepping their boundaries, or is it a fair deal?
>a fair trade
Hilarious. The authors of the manga they translate get nothing out of this. If I'm okay with reading manga illegally (and I do, mind you) I'd rather not pay anything. And the fact that the quality of their releases sucks doesn't help. Those guys are scum.
(And 10$ per chapter? Give me a break.)
I don't think its all that unfair...
I mean sure.. it's different from what the other scanlation groups do.
But the way I see it, it's kind of like a thank you for donating thing I don't think their intention was to charge people.
Well I like Eclipse and I think they should just understand that they don't need to thank us for donating. It puts out the wrong impression. lol~
P.S. Life 20 wasn't scanlated by them.
There are tons of groups that emerged with that 'fuck you, pay me' mentality. Which is pretty disgusting... Thou there is some stuff I'd actually consider donating to. Mainly because I know there is a 100% chance of it never being translated to English.
Commission sites: Chocolate Scans, Sahadou, Brolen’s Scanlation Hideout, Doujin-MOE and hundreds more I cannot think of, off the top of my head.
Also, if you don't mind sharing scans or playing an online game, you can even get stuff translated using earned credits on e-hentai.org