Lately in the manga I’m getting there’s been these extras about Tazmo and his antics over NarutoFan, so much so that I’m getting a bit fed up with it. These days I don’t even bother to read the garbage, I just delete it.

The whole argument of paying a subscription fee to access direct downloads of fansubs and scanlations is an old and recurring argument.

Some are off the belief that charging a fee for giving access to direct downloads is wrong, others don’t, and yet others don’t give a flying rats arse.

There are several other sites that offer the same service, and yet these are never targeted, only NarutoFan.

The arguments given by those complaining about NarutoFan don’t really hold up to the light. Lets face it, the complaints of Tazmo simply pocketing the money are also unrealistic. Hosting a server for the amount of downloads that site does, with the amount of bandwidth it uses isn’t cheap, nor is it easy keeping a site like that up and running  smoothly.

Like a lot of other sites (and even cheaper than some) he charges $5 a month subscription for access to the full downloads section. As someone who’s ran a server before for a direct download site, I know well the costs of running such a site. For me at the time the monthly cost of the server was over £500 a month, on a few occasion closer to £700 when it got hit by people dling entire series. These costs can not be easily absorbed by a single person, so subscription fees come in.

I’ve never used NarutoFanPlus, but I have used others like it (you’ll even find one on my blog roll), and I’ve never begrudged paying my monthly subscription fee. Not everyone can use torrents or IRC. When I was in university I couldn’t use torrents and could barely use IRC (I could use it to chat, but not to dl). So sites like NarutoFan became extremely useful, since it meant I could still get my anime fix.

Manga is a little bit grayer IMO, since most manga can be found either on Lurk or on other free DDL sites. Most groups also upload their releases to the likes of RapidShare and MegaShare, so there’s not really a need for a subscription based manga site. However NarutoFan is both manga and anime, so, for me, that’s fine.

The other argument against Tazmo is that the competitions he runs are all frauds. My answer to that is, if that’s true why hasn’t he been arrested yet? If he’s really ripping people off like that someone would of lodged a complaint with the cops and had him arrested for fraud, or at the very least had the site closed down.

Frankly I think they should stop bitching about it, if people want to use such services it’s up to them. It’s not like they’re getting tied into a life long contract, it’s a month by month rolling contract that can be canceled at any time.

From what I’ve seen, this seems to be nothing more than a personal vendetta that was started against the host of NarutoFan, which has spread. Since these notices only just appeared, where as the whole Tazmo thing has been going for at least two years now.

If the complaints of fraud, are genuine, then provide the proof. Go to the cops and have the site shut down, otherwise shut the fcuk up cause it’s getting boring now.