📝 TO THOSE WHO HAVE TAKEN CONTENT WE FREELY SHARED AND REUPLOADED IT FOR PROFIT — WE HOPE THIS MESSAGE REACHES YOU.
Our team does not create or share content with the intention of it being downloaded, redistributed, or reuploaded to monetized platforms. Everything we release is provided in good faith for direct access through our unmonetized channels for STAYs.
The work behind what we provide to the fandom—and in support of Stray Kids—is extensive. It requires ongoing time, coordination, and financial investment. All operational costs, including maintaining our website and the tools required to run it (approximately $1,400 USD annually), are covered out of our own pockets. We choose to do this freely and intentionally, without monetizing our platforms.
If our goal were profit or wider monetized distribution, we would take very different steps. We could place ads across our website, enable monetization on our YouTube channel, TikTok, and other social platforms, or pursue other revenue streams to offset costs—such as selling fanbase merchandise, as some others do. We have deliberately chosen not to do any of that in order to keep our work accessible, community-focused, and free from commercial influence.
To put this into perspective, a single piece of content—our subtitled Soul Beam episode, for example, which required four full days of work from one of our admins—generated over 20,000 website visits in just 10 days. If monetized, that traffic alone could have covered several months of our operational costs.
Instead, we chose to keep it free rather than use it to generate funds. As a result, those same expenses were covered out-of-pocket by one of our admins selling part of her Stray Kids photocard collection to keep everything running.
The same admin who spent days creating the subtitled episode—entirely for free—was also the one who sold her Stray Kids photocard collection to help cover the team’s expenses. She was adamant that we do not monetize any of the content we share.
Her selfless sacrifice—both of her time and something deeply personal to her—makes the current situation even more disheartening. Seeing any of her work taken and monetized by others is, quite frankly, a slap in the face.
So to be direct: seeing our work taken, reuploaded, and monetized by others—especially when those funds are being used for personal gain rather than being reinvested into the fandom or in support of Stray Kids—is unacceptable. And to be frank, it pisses us off.
It disregards the time, effort, and personal sacrifices behind what we do, and it goes directly against the purpose for which the content was shared.
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