dothackers.net

Japanese, U.S. Manga Publishers Unite To Fight Scanlations

You know the ones: Manga Fox, One Manga, etc.

Discuss.

Hm. This is serious. My daily dose of free pirated manga is now in jeporady. D: I've recently seen several actions that were already taking place against Onemanga, as they deliberately deleted their entire section of mature manga. As far as this goes, most of what was said in that article somewhat concerns me. There are several manga that are extremely rare to find in my area, which puts me at a severe disadvantage when I have cash but no credit card, rendering online ordering and purchases obselete for me, yet I manage to find the manga on scan sites such as MangaFox and Onemanga, and it's at my kind of price. FREE. Sure, this hurts sales, but the possible removal of scanlation sites could severely damage the moral factor for most manga titles, as hundreds of thousands of people rely on scanlations only for their reading pleasure, simply because they are broke, or their manga is nowhere to be found in stores, hurting sales even more IMO.

I think I'll just go to each translator's site from now on. Gotta bookmark them now too.

I've always said whether it be filesharing, torrents, rapidshares, scanlation sites, nothing ever beats a good pair of Internet Relay Chat.

_Tri-edge_ wrote:There are several manga that are extremely rare to find in my area, which puts me at a severe disadvantage when I have cash but no credit card, rendering online ordering and purchases obselete for me, yet I manage to find the manga on scan sites such as MangaFox and Onemanga, and it's at my kind of price.

In this day and age that's the worst excuse ever. If you have a bank account, you can use Paypal. If you don't, then all of your money is hidden in a mattress and translators robbing you should be the least of your worries.

Personally I don't think that things like manga with a relatively low cost of production (versus, say, movies or videogames) really need to benefit from the full stream of revenue provided by our ridiculously unbalanced intellectual property system (not that the artist even seems to see most of that money--but that's just all the more reason that wherever it's going it probably doesn't need to be there). But this worldview also entails that if I somehow ever wrote a popular book, I've committed myself 100% to letting people steal it versus becoming a millionaire. If you support that, go you, but also remember that money is still feedback and publishers are more likely to support an up-and-coming artist if they draw the manga that people like to buy rather than the manga that people like to steal. That doesn't need to stop anyone from drawing, but it could. Or at least keep you from ever hearing about them.

But anyway, excuses that sidestep the moral issue of copyright infringement, like "I don't like paying money for goods or services," or, "ordering something instantly from my couch is too hard," aren't real arguments. There's no magical moral ticket to bootleg manga except maybe a firm and coherent idea of how and why the rules need to be changed like I just described...

As funny as this is, if the Old Media thinks for a second that doing this will do anything to stop pirating comics, they are charmingly naive and ignorant.

Not to mention it's tremendously easy to fix this problem without having to battle these sites. I mean, hell, I can't speak for all of these sites, but OneManga takes down a series the second they're asked by the publisher.

Frankly, the manga industry wouldn't have this issue if they didn't overprice their material, release volumes so far apart from each other with potentially egregious mistranslations or editing, and didn't push decade old manga out of print.

What about all the manga that will never be published in other countries/languages?

As for myself, I read online manga sometimes, but only because most of the longer series I'm into, like Pandora Hearts or Air Gear, won't be caught up with the current Japanese volumes for a loooong time. Regardless, I still plan on buying the English versions once they're released in the US, so reading online manga and keeping up with the current storyline actually prevents me from losing interest from lack of exposure over long periods of time. At the rate PH is being published in America, it'll be around five years before we're caught up with where Japan is now. I'll be old enough to legally buy alcohol by then! @___@;;;

I only have one point on this subject; What happens to the manga that are only released in magazines like Jump? Not only will you have to import the magazines directly from Japan, but you also have to learn Japanese in order to enjoy your purchases D:. Then you have to take into account the fact that you'll be shelling out masses on shipping costs, and you'll probably be doing this on a weekly basis in order to fulfil your pleasures...

As far as I'm concerned, the publishers are simply looking to start a 'chain reaction' that will eventually lead to them making more of a profit than they ever have done, and to keep on doing so for pretty much the rest of their working days. And the worst part is that it's not the authors who are complaining about these sites; It's ONLY THE PUBLISHERS. It's a scam I tell you =_=...

This is going to affect my friend big time. She always just reads manga off those websites insted of buying them. I rather buy them though. Maybe because my computer is to slow to load them.

shugo_lover wrote:This is going to affect my friend big time. She always just reads manga off those websites insted of buying them. I rather buy them though. Maybe because my computer is to slow to load them.

I like to buy them because you can read manga anywhere if you actually own it physically. A perfect solution for if you get bored during long car rides and don't have portable internet access, aside from the nausea that comes with it.

Basically this move is going to hurt the manga industry more than it helps it.

When the manga industry screws up so does the anime.

Hmm could go one way or the other. Onemanga has always had trouble, but nothing too harsh. To one hand, online scans increase popularity & that in turn returns to publisher/company depending those who use that advertisement to buy the material. It's a percentage and a certain online population fills fan base. There are some manga, I wouldn't even know about had it not been online. Then after reading some of them I'd buy the comic.

The issue might lack of a demo, with games people are more likely to buy them when they can see a preview. I think the same applies with comics. For that there's online, libraries and even book stores. Other times those same books might only make it to one. Sometimes its an issue with online translation but other moments its the publishers belief in a lack of popularity overseas. I think the Meloncy of Haruhi was brought over because of increasing online popularity. The anime was originally for a Japanese audience with no plans for foreign release but subs changed that ratio and brought more attention to the studio or so I've heard.

But when it comes down to it, if the publisher, author, or developer can't make money then they can't continue the product. If it were me I'd create a percentage and so long as it didn't affect sales (1/5) then it wouldn't be a problem. Maybe a comic version of hulu should be available? Hmm in either case I believe something needs to be offered in order to encourage a purchase but what does one crazy man know eh? <.<

EDIT: Thinking about it aren't comics weirdly over balanced, the same series: (25) Takoban = 115.00 (25) 234.00 No wonder there's so much online. (The hell does that extra $119/3.00 go?)

|<!73 wrote:The issue might lack of a demo, with games people are more likely to buy them when they can see a preview. I think the same applies with comics.

You mean like this?

http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2755/hackAlcor/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2874/ha ... llection/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2760/hack4Koma/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2146/hackGU/1

|<!73 wrote:I think the Meloncy of Haruhi was brought over because of increasing online popularity. The anime was originally for a Japanese audience with no plans for foreign release but subs changed that ratio and brought more attention to the studio or so I've heard.

That's a complete myth. Almost all anime are made with only the Japanese audience in mind, but pretty much all of the shows popular in Japan get brought over regardless. Bandai brought over Roots, it was never a question they'd bring over Haruhi.

Random pages? The summaries are more of a demo than those things. A lot of time it takes me a few chapters/entire volume to decide if I like a manga or not. I'm reading a nice bit manga right now, most of them a monthly releases. I'm not sure if I could even buy them in my town's horrible book stores. Even if I could I'm not paying 8-13 bucks a volume. Especially when I'm reading several series with several volumes. I think I would probably drop all my series I'm reading right now if I had to pay except maybe one. One that I wouldn't be able to continue anyways because I dont think my stores carry it.


The only way I would buy them is if they did some zune/itunes thing where you pay 10 bucks a month and get to read all you want on a kindle or something. Even then I doubt they have crazy people who translate the chapters 2 seconds after they are released.

Kuukai wrote:

|<!73 wrote:The issue might lack of a demo, with games people are more likely to buy them when they can see a preview. I think the same applies with comics.

You mean like this?

http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2755/hackAlcor/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2874/ha ... llection/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2760/hack4Koma/1
http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2146/hackGU/1

|<!73 wrote:I think the Meloncy of Haruhi was brought over because of increasing online popularity. The anime was originally for a Japanese audience with no plans for foreign release but subs changed that ratio and brought more attention to the studio or so I've heard.

That's a complete myth. Almost all anime are made with only the Japanese audience in mind, but pretty much all of the shows popular in Japan get brought over regardless. Bandai brought over Roots, it was never a question they'd bring over Haruhi.

Point had forgotten that. (Despite that fact I'm on their mail list >.<) But if demo's aren't the case what is? I'm going from memory but I remember for the one of the series I enjoy, online scans were a faster way to catching up with the story. Also what are some way to solve that while meeting both parties? (Buwhahaha I have all of those, behold my might collection.) As for the myth I'll take that as my blunder, though I have something along those lines.

Every time companies try to fight online sources, usually something bad happens to the industry itself 8I

This is a very delicate situation to say the least, but it's fairly similar with the pirating of anime going on...

If you guys wanna know my suggestion though, why can't they do with Onemang & Manga Fox what they did with Crunchyroll? It use to be an illegal streaming site with its fansubs, but now all the money they make from advertising goes towards the industry, and they even buy licenses to some of Japan's newest shows.

Sure anime and manga are different, but I don't see why they can't do something similar and make it work...'cause unless companies like viz start doing near-if-not simultaneous releases (Which they're perfectly capable of doing) of books or chapters (probably online for chapters) then people will still find a way to get their fix.

We all know stealing is bad. We all know that stealing from starving artists is about as bad as kicking puppies. But companies should never point the finger at their customers, but instead ask themselves "Okay, why is this happening, and what can we do to better serve the people?" If they did that, then illegal scans would be pointless. (maybe not pointless for EVERY series out there, but still) I know I stopped downloading certain anime's when I found out that legit places had them and released episodes just as fast as the pirates.

An idea someone mentioned: http://mangahelpers.com/news/details/377. Appearently they've opened up an official scan site that works with artist. I don't know found it on a google search well there ya go an idea, digital publishing.

Hmmm, that's very interesting. Though from what I read...isn't it kind of like deviantART? Only with manga-artists specifically and working with publishers right? (I'm honestly confused here, not tryin' to say this or that xD)

Still, I followed them on facebook 'cause it seems promising c:

Tolby wrote:A lot of time it takes me a few chapters/entire volume to decide if I like a manga or not.

A lot of the time game demos only show one level or aspect of the gameplay, does this mean I should go out and bootleg the whole game? Besides, as opposed to with games, you can actually run over to Borders and read the whole book if you need to. No, they don't have everything, but if you're not buying anything that's not a sufficient explanation...

MizuTakishima wrote:Sure anime and manga are different, but I don't see why they can't do something similar and make it work...'cause unless companies like viz start doing near-if-not simultaneous releases (Which they're perfectly capable of doing) of books or chapters (probably online for chapters) then people will still find a way to get their fix.

This I agree with, I imagine part of it is greed. Each translation company likes to maximize profits by bringing over just the right number of series at the right pace so they don't end up competing with themself. Like I said before I don't think they really need all that money, but that doesn't make a lot of the excuses here any less fallacious...

MizuTakishima wrote:But companies should never point the finger at their customers, but instead ask themselves "Okay, why is this happening, and what can we do to better serve the people?"

That's a valid argument when groups like the RIAA sue your grandmother, but when they're just shutting down warez sites I don't think they're "fighting their customers."