As you all know, fansubbers do their thing for free (usually). They do it for the benefit for the fans and themselves rah rah rah.
But think of it, are fansubbers really doing this for the fans? Or more for enjoyment?
Let's say, you pick up and read a book, or even, spend the time to watch an episode. The opportunity cost of watching an anime is the next best thing that could be done, ie, study or work or whatever.
Same goes for fansubbing. Instead of translating, I could be studying, flipping burgers at Mcdonalds or entering some random fansubber IRC channel to flame them etc etc.
What do I get out of it?
Enjoyment. A benefit.
Psychic income.
Psychic income is, let's face it, part of our everyday life. To spend a day watching an entire series takes time (At least 6 hours, I presume), and that time could be used to something better. Moving away from something as trivial as watching animes, psychic income is the value you put onto non-tangible things, like say, your living environment. Imagine that you are living in a pretty nice neighbourhood, and earning roughly $100k a year. A company calls and asks if you need to go the middle east for $150k a year. Normally, you would do it. However, because of, say, you prefer the surroundings you have right now, you place an additional, say, $100k, as your benefit. So, as strange as it sounds, you will say "No" to going to Dubai because the cost exceeds your benefits.
So, how is this related to fansubbing, pirating or pretty much any form of volunteer work which you spend time but receive no income whatsoever.
It is through these volunteering work that we receive some sort of benefit for it, or we won't be doing it at all. Whether it is helping the elderly, putting subs so everyone can watch it, or flexing your e-ween around so you can kick-ban people as and when you like and putting those "I AM IN CONTROL OF 3842384 MORTALS" type of stuff, this benefit is what drives us to do such work. If we have something better to do, or we THINK we have something better to do (on hind-sight, there ALWAYS is), we won't be doing these kind of charity.
My point?
Fansubbers earn psychic income. Thus, they get benefit for fansubbing. This is why, I realised, that they shouldn't take criticism too harshly. Yeah, criticism sucks, but if you step back and take it with a pinch of salt, you can either ignore it, or use it to improve. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but once you've learnt to swallow it, it is one of the best ways, that I've found, which will allow you to improve, and take that one step closer to perfection. Compare my SR eps 1 and 2 scripts with some of the scripts later. It is through all that "OMFG, NF, U SUX" that I've picked up some very valid points, learnt to check my work more, and improved.
Yeah yeah, real life yada yada. Flames. Yada yada.
Get over it.
Annoying to read.
But hey, a good way to improve.
And of course, all those "SLOW DESU" type of stuff, just ignore them, and the world spins fine. Fansubbing is fairly inelastic. Complain all they want, the supply is limited. In fact, we should start charging people for it, because according to the elasticity principle, when a good is inelastic, revenue is increased by increasing the price. >:D
And who says no one is doing that now? There are some "private" sites out there which offer 100mbit private servers if you pay $5 a month or something. Someone knows that such an opportunity is there, and will exploit it. Thankfully, the amount of free media has kept that nonsense at a low.
So, if something is too slow? DO IT YOURSELF (like us here ;)).
Now, if I can turn psychic income into REAL income. XD
And oh, the best thing of psychic income?
It can't be taxed.
Whee.
