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is this legal?




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mckiller7



Joined: 30 Sep 2006
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:43 pm Reply with quote
[URL removed. No, this is not legal -TK]

i know this is kinda in the wrong place, but its the most popular. so here i can get the most answers. anyway, my friend showed me this site and i didn't know if downloading manga off there would be considered legal
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Samurai-with-glasses



Joined: 17 Aug 2005
Posts: 628
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:49 pm Reply with quote
My educated guess: No.

Extremely few manga, if any whatsoever, are available for download. The closest you can get from actual legal companies is something like a preview with a few pages at a manga's start, and that's even rare.

I haven't clicked the link, though; a little bit wary of spyware stuff.
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mckiller7



Joined: 30 Sep 2006
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:57 pm Reply with quote
there is actualy a lot here, and some i think are complete, but most are a couple volumes. you could see if you clicked the link, but i guess not

k, thanks tony, but i still wonder if companies could sue
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Tony K.
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 11459
Location: Frisco, TX
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:19 pm Reply with quote
mckiller7 wrote:
k, thanks tony, but i still wonder if companies could sue

They can, but basically it's too much time and trouble to track down every single person or group that hosts illegal downloads.

Imagine it. You and maybe a couple hundred employees, over half of who only produce and distrubute your product and maybe a handful of legal experts and executives vs. the hundreds of thousands or even millions of seeders and leechers in the form of torrents, websites, direct downloads, and whatever the heck else people use these days.

To send them letters, threaten legal action, shut them down, etc. would only prove fruitless since the Internet is so vast. I suppose these companies should just have faith in the goodness and honesty of paying consumers.
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SharinganEyes92



Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Posts: 816
PostPosted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:22 pm Reply with quote
Samurai-with-glasses wrote:
My educated guess: No.

Extremely few manga, if any whatsoever, are available for download. The closest you can get from actual legal companies is something like a preview with a few pages at a manga's start, and that's even rare.

I haven't clicked the link, though; a little bit wary of spyware stuff.


No, it's not legal, as Tony said. However, if you want to preview certain series, it's perfectly legal to go to ShonenJump.com and preview the first chapters of the series that they offer. Whenever I'm interested in purchasing a Shonen Jump line of manga, I always preview it there.
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daxomni



Joined: 08 Nov 2005
Posts: 2650
Location: Somewhere else.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:09 am Reply with quote
Tony K. wrote:
To send them letters, threaten legal action, shut them down, etc. would only prove fruitless since the Internet is so vast. I suppose these companies should just have faith in the goodness and honesty of paying consumers.


Trust me, the internet is not nearly as vast or anonymous as most users seem to think and the consumer protections that most folks seem to assume are written in stone are in fact easily modified with new legislation.
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marie-antoinette



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 4136
Location: Ottawa, Canada
PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:58 am Reply with quote
daxomni wrote:

Trust me, the internet is not nearly as vast or anonymous as most users seem to think and the consumer protections that most folks seem to assume are written in stone are in fact easily modified with new legislation.


Of course, at the same time you have to contend with the fact that the Internet is international and thus there are many different copyright laws out there. For example, I know the Canadian copyright law when it comes to downloading is far less strict than the American one, essentially making things like downloading music legal (or close enough that people believe it is legal).
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daxomni



Joined: 08 Nov 2005
Posts: 2650
Location: Somewhere else.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:05 am Reply with quote
marie-antoinette wrote:
Of course, at the same time you have to contend with the fact that the Internet is international and thus there are many different copyright laws out there. For example, I know the Canadian copyright law when it comes to downloading is far less strict than the American one, essentially making things like downloading music legal (or close enough that people believe it is legal).


While you are technically correct that there are many different copyright laws out there, you are incorrect to claim that they differ significantly from one country to another. International agreements like the Berne Convention (of which Canada is a signatory) have helped promote a fairly consistent view of copyright protections world-wide. If you can provide any specific evidence that supports the view that downloading copyrighted music which you have not purchased is legal in Canada, please do so.
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CrazyCanuck



Joined: 06 Jan 2006
Posts: 104
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:31 am Reply with quote
daxomni wrote:
If you can provide any specific evidence that supports the view that downloading copyrighted music which you have not purchased is legal in Canada, please do so.


I can answer this one. A levy was added to all black media (CDs in particular) that is supposed to be redistributed to musicians to make up for lost royalties from music downloads. Since they are effectively taxing music downloads it is de facto legal to do so. Since any attempts to prosecute music downloaders in Canada would result in complaints that they had paid for it via the CD levy, no such charges have been seriously prosecuted. Note that the levy goes only to music rights holders and not to motion picture rights holders. Downloading movies is still very much illegal in Canada.

On a side note, the levy in question has been a major headache for all involved and when last I looked into it no money had actually been paid out to any musicians. But since it is still collected the end user has fulfilled thier legal obligation and has thier butt-covered legally. The RIAA has been trying to get it repealed so they can sue people in Canada like they do everywhere else.
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indrik



Joined: 22 Jul 2006
Posts: 365
Location: yonder
PostPosted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:57 pm Reply with quote
daxomni wrote:
While you are technically correct that there are many different copyright laws out there, you are incorrect to claim that they differ significantly from one country to another. International agreements like the Berne Convention (of which Canada is a signatory) have helped promote a fairly consistent view of copyright protections world-wide.


The more I look into international copyrights, the less I find this to be true. Keeping in mind that I'm not remotely an expert, my understanding of the Berne Convention is that it simply means that signatory countries will respect other signatories' copyrights, not necessarily their laws. I think that's why we're looking at things like Japanese companies asking US distributors to try to enforce their (ie, the Japanese companies') copyright in the US. Apparently the same laws that make it difficult to sue dojinshi artists make it difficult to sue fansubbers from Japan, even though both dojinshi and fansubbing are violations of copyright. The European Union has some fairly strict agreements on copyrights, but individual countries have made separate rulings on fair use and the legality of things like filesharing systems that make it fairly difficult to navigate the laws, even though they all necessarily fit the overarching treaties. I don't have a good (internet) source on that, but if you've got some time to kill in a college town, hit the law library, plug "filesharing" or "p2p" or even "fansubbing" into the search engine and start reading abstracts. It's illuminating. I just read a really interesting article about how the relationship between dojins and manga artists constitutes a prisoner's dilema, which I've been arguing for months now. I'd sue for the guy stealing my idea, but he's probably a lawyer.

The US right now has some of the most strict and conservative readings of copyright law right now, for good or bad. There are quite a lot of countries, including Canada and Japan, that have much less strict definitions of things like fair use (or the equivalent) that make it harder than I would have thought six months ago to determine what is and isn't legal.

Which is all to say, yes, downloading subbed manga and anime is definitely illegal from the point of view that it's a derivative translation of a copyrighted work, a violation of an exclusive license if it's been licensed, and... um, probably some other stuff, too. ^^;
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