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Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

> This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product.

Product? Are they sellings these files?

The word "product" refers not only to things that are sold, but also to things that are produced (made, fashioned, fabricated, etc.).

I'm not a native English speaker, so I suspect you are right. However, I'm not finding anything here to support your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product

This is as close as I get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business)

And it says:

> In marketing, a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer.

Sounds like something you'd buy?

You make a good point. Their product is better and cheaper!

Many individual manga are scanlated by commission, or the patreon model for entire groups. Weird no one else mentioned that. Lots of scummyness in that area, where individuals republish other groups and sell it.

In some cases, pirate sites do have a cost to be able to fund operations and maintain quality, but one way or another, the customer pays something to someone (even if it's just access to internet via their ISP) and receives a product. So yes.

Not the question you asked but to make it clear, I don't mind paying for things. I've had a Crunchyroll premium account for years and I have a whole bookshelf filled with official translations. But sometimes they come years later and you want to actually discuss the series that's going on right now with fellow fans, just like you would for an English book. Or you want to be able to read it at all (see: alphapolis).

An interesting story:

Long ago, I downloaded a fansubbed anime series. My sister is interested in anime as a genre and has been interested in watching that series. When I asked her recently why she hadn't already watched it, she said "because it's not on crunchyroll".

In the pirate ecosystem, you can watch what you want to watch. The "legitimate" ecosystem seems to breed learned helplessness.

The worse part is when you see translation rights being bought and then the translator never following through to the end even if I put my money into it. I feel that's why I'm mostly ambiguous to the whole situation on what could be done better. I just know I would not be exposed enough without the pirates.

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