A friend of mine told me about this service. Has anyone here more infos on the matter? Is it legal? And if so, how much does it cost?
Any help will be appreciated.
Legal in what sense?
Do you mean, is all the content protected by hentaikey properly licensed and the artists being paid for their work? Well… no. None of these ‘network’ or ‘AVS’ sites really have the staff and energy to strictly patrol the people who submit sites to them. The whole POINT of a network site is that the member gets access to TONS and TONS of content for just one low price!
So they generally set a few ground rules and otherwise anything goes until a complaint is made.
Do they usually work with people complaining? Yes, HentaiKey will yell at webmasters and make them take things down if the content owner complains. I have been involved in getting some sites that were hosting english hgames to remove them, and the network TRIES to tell people not to do that. (Not everyone listens until they are personally yelled at.)
As for the cost - well, look at their site!
The free version is free - you have to give them an email address and they will try to upsell you to other programs, but it IS free. You don’t have to sign up to any of the other programs.
Most of the sites available on the free level are small, or are linked to other non-free sites, so that you get a little bit free but are encouraged to pay for a full membership to get MORE. Same as most things in the adult business.
You’ll certainly get access to lots of hentai out of it. But then, you could get access to lots of hentai just by hanging out at 4chan long enough. It’s all a matter of how much you want and how much you want to work to get it. (Also, hkey is big enough that they can afford to commission at least a small amount of ‘exclusive’ art - we all know how long exclusive tends to stay that way, but it’s at least ‘more rare’ )
Oh well, what a pity… These doujinshi were pretty juicy… Guess i’ll have to renounce to them.
Not all of the content is legal, but not all of the content is illegal either. If it’s an artist-run site, or it’s marked a Hentai Key Exclusive, then they’ve paid for it. Also, they’ve got the rights to distribute certain h-movies legally. It’s confusing.