Forum - View topicViz Media Comments on Digital Piracy After Manga Uploader Arrests
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GrayArchon
Posts: 393 |
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Right, because "Zolo" is "the highest possible quality content" and "U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa" constitute "a global audience". |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I always thought of pirates as fans putting out content illegally for free, but this case seems to have money involved. At the very least, why would the delivery man give manga magazines to pirate uploaders for free? If the uploaders/pirates were paying him, where is that money coming from? Is MangaPanda making enough money from their ads to pay off Chinese piraters in Japan to bribe delivery men? How much money is floating around the manga black market?
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CoreSignal
 Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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This. Manga isn't made for free. While I'm sure Oda is living his dream making One Piece it's also his job, meaning he's supposed to get paid for it and guess what?, it's probably Shueisha who's paying him unless you and every other One Piece fan has been writing him checks this entire time. As Greed1914 said, buying manga used is actually worse since your money goes to who bought the manga, not the creator.
Seriously, a 99 cent subscription isn't that much. I just find it funny that how some people can agonize over paying 99 cents. In all seriousness though, I understand that people who can't read it through legal means have their reasons but if you do have legal access I don't see why you wouldn't try to read it legally. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14889 |
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Japanese already think the low crime rate in Japan is being increased by damn foreigners (because they know Japanese always follow the laws); this'll just make that thinking even more prevalent.
The delivery man is now radioactive - anybody associated with the delivery man, the police would be hot on their trails. The delivery man better had been getting enough bribes to risk his job over this. |
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anddo
 Posts: 670 |
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You act like every manga is properly licensed. More and more scanlators will br affected by this and eventually we'll have a situation where only a select amount of manga are available in English according to the business plans of Viz and other manga licensing companies. To begin with, most of these franchises became as popular as they are in this part of the world because of unofficial scanlations throughout the decade. I don't condone illegal consumption of manga of course (I buy as many as 10 volumes of a variety of manga a year), but there's no denying this will have a negative effect on the licensing industry. |
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DranzerX13
Posts: 85 Location: USA |
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MangaPanda should get arrested because they're getting paid through the ads on their site, while hosting their illegal content (including content released 4 days before the official WSJ release date).
I can understand reading scanlations from series that are not and will never get licensed over here in North America. Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken is an example, because none of the Dragon Quest mangas have ever got licensed for the English speaking markets (US, Canada, Europe, Australia). It's still illegal, but it's probably in a gray area since it's not licensed. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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And it is not just him. A lot of other people are involved in the publication and distribution of manga, such as office workers and those delivery people. All of those people need to be paid in order for us to keep getting manga.
I am going to disagree with that because I believe that the used manga market does help to support the industry. I would not buy as much new manga if I could not sell what I decide not to keep and get some of my money back. And used manga is a relatively cheap and completely legal way for potential new fans to be introduced to manga. |
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mglittlerobin
 Posts: 1071 |
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The "Zolo" issue is because the U.S. has a copyrighted character named "Zorro", it'd probalbly be hharder ot neogtiate copyright with that character and Zoro from One Piece. |
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purplepolecat
 Posts: 131 |
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Next week on Tokyo Manga Police: the squad stake out a local bookstore after receiving a tip about a high school girl who reads manga cover-to-cover - and then puts them back on the shelf without buying them!
Seriously though, legal sanctions are not going to solve anything. Look at anime: the only tactic that ever took a bite out of fansubbing was the introduction of cheap, legal streaming of almost every anime show. Manga is a tougher problem because there's so much more of it, and the scanlation process is more labour intensive; but if there's a will to do it, it will happen. Is there a big bootleg manga industry in China? I know there's one for anime DVDs, so I assume there must be one for manga. That's probably what these specific arrests were about. |
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getumbuck
Posts: 198 |
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This excuse again. If this really were the case Funimation wouldn't be able to call the character "Zoro", yet they do, it both their dub and official sub. I mean don't sugar coat the reason man, because it's clear as day. The character was originally called "Zolo" in the horrible English dub 4Kids produced. To prevent character confusion in the manga, Viz chose to name the character "Zolo" in their version of the manga as well. The only problem is Funimation picked up the rights to the anime, did an amazing job with the dub and now most people know his name is "Zoro". Their refusal to change his name is probably out of some stupid sense of preventing confusion for manga only readers, who apparently only buy the Viz release of the series. |
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GrayArchon
Posts: 393 |
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Quite a bit of money, though obviously it's difficult to say how much. There's a reason there are so many aggregater sites. The people running them would not be doing so if they were unprofitable. They aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it because they've recognized an unmet market demand (simulpub manga, large manga archives) and are seeking to meet it.
A subscription is not 99 cents. A single issue is 99 cents. A subscription is $25.99 which works out to about 50 cents per issue. Not an unreasonable amount of money, but certainly more than a dollar. As for why people who have legal access wouldn't try to read it legally, a few things spring to mind. Convenience. A website with no log in requirement that merely loads some .jpgs and individually lists series and chapters is always going to be more convenient to read on a computer than a website that requires log in, uses a clunky flash based reader with limited ability to skip to a given page, and no ability to skip to a given series, or to read/reread multiple chapters of a series sequentially without the interruption of switching issues, and finding the chapter in the next issue. To put it another way, Viz WSJ seeks to emulate a magazine that changes it's order every week, while scanlation websites seek to enable you to read a given series sequentially. Preference. If you've followed a scanlation group for an entire series before official sources finally picked it up, you'll likely be inclined to stick with the group you've followed if they continue translating it simply because you're comfortable with their translation. Or if official translation demonstrates problems like a lack of attention to detail, noticeable errors, or a tendency to "localize" things in a way you disapprove of, you'll be inclined to check out other sources to see if someone else is doing a better job. Artwork. While theoretically the official version should always be much better, issues do crop up. Crunchyroll's reader app is simply incapable of handling two page spreads, rendering it impossible to properly view such spread through the app. You can view them through Crunchyroll's website, but their online reader does not allow you to move one page at a time. So if Crunchyroll screws up the page placement(which they have done a few times) then you will again be left with a two page spread you're unable to read. I've seen two page spreads be screwed up in other ways as well, such as a black bar separating the two pages, or a screwed up scan job cuts off details and leaves the two pages not lining up. Or more specific to Kodansha's work, a while ago they switched to a new typesetter. Who makes the translated sound effects the same size as the Japanese sounds effects, makes a point of avoiding covering the Japanese sound effect with them, and apparently pays no attention whatsoever as to what other artwork they're covering. A character slashes something and it's carefully bracketed by a japanese sound effect for "slash" split in two? They'll cheerfully slap the english sound effect between the two, covering up what was being slashed in the first place. A character shows off a new form or power and is surrounded by japanese "OOOOOOO" sounds effects? They'll slap an english "O" on the character's foot. A dramatic spread of characters bracketed by a sound effect? They'll toss the english sound effect over part of the characters. So scans vs official can end up as a matter of "pick your poison". Comprehensiveness. Aggregater sites, and sometimes true scanlator sites offer the entire series for reading. If you pick up a new series like Shokugeki no Soma, or My Hero Academia, all the previous chapters are readily available for you to read through and catch up on the series. Official sources tend to not be so accommodating. They expect you to buy the volume collections if you need to get caught up. If they pick up a series part way through like they did for the previous two mentioned series, there will likely be a gap for which there is no official source. Not even back issues have those chapters, and translated volumes aren't out yet. To say nothing of the additional cost incurred purchasing the volumes. Does that give you a better idea of why someone might forego the official version, even if it's available to them?
I do hope you realize that the people arrested were effectively just low level employees of Mangapanda's. The site itself is something that Viz and Shueisha have known about for years, and been unable to do much about other than send requests to Google for it to remove search results. This does little to hurt them.
"Zolo" is used because 4kids used it, and Viz declines to change it. The so called issue of copyright did not prevent Viz from using Zoro to start with before they changed to match 4kids, and it has not stopped Funimation from using the name Zoro in their own releases. Plus while it's obviously a reference, Zoro is not the same as Zorro. To say nothing of the fact that Zorro's copyright is tenuous at best. As the original work was created prior to 1923, it should be in the public domain. In short, "Zolo" still exists because Viz just doesn't care about such details. Last edited by GrayArchon on Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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getumbuck
Posts: 198 |
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Viz also called Zolf J. Kimblee "The Red Lotus" Alchemist in their version of FMA, in place of his actual title, "The Crimson Alchemist". So it's not like these guys haven't made some stupid changes simply for shits and giggles outside of One Piece. It's one of the reasons I'm not very happy with their translations. I mean I'm glad they exist and are making manga available to the west legally, but some of the stupid changes they make are cringe worthy at times. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13621 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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"Zorro" is trademarked and thus Viz couldn't really use that spelling without asking for a lawsuit by the rights holders.
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Buzz201
Posts: 266 |
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No. I'm just not immoral enough to try and justify piracy using two titles that are widely available. Quite frankly, if there's a cheap legal alternative out there and you're not using it, you only have yourself to blame for other titles not being available. Whilst I think piracy of titles that don't have an official release is more justifiable, I'm certainly not going to suggest it's in any way fair or moral, because it isn't, and I'm certainly not going to use that as an excuse to pirate manga that is widely legally available. |
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Honestly if Japanese companies would get their heads out of their collective asses about some of their legit business decisions, the petty squabbles of scanners and subbers will mean nothing in the big picture.
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