Forum - View topicINTEREST: Trade Group: Manga Pirate Sites Cost Industry 1.19 Trillion Yen in 2021
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zrdb
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I don't give a shit about manga but it seems to me that the same principals that apply to anime also apply to manga. If something isn't readily available and somebody wants to read it guess where they're gonna get it from?
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Alan45
Village Elder
Posts: 9967 Location: Virginia |
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This article was specifically about Japanese language pirate sites. I really doubt that many people in Japan have any problem with the availability of manga. |
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SHD
Posts: 1757 |
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Those are primarily for foreign users. Just because the language is Japanese doesn't mean it's for Japanese only, it's just that it's for people who know Japanese well enough to be seeking out untranslated manga in the first place. Lots of them that I've seen actually have information in English and/or Chinese as well. For that matter though, those sites are available outside Japan. Which is actually important even if you are Japanese but happen to be outside the country, in which case quite a lot of manga/magazines are in fact not available for you. |
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Alan45
Village Elder
Posts: 9967 Location: Virginia |
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@SHD
I have no doubt that the sites are used by people outside Japan. However, the trade group is specifically complaining about the effect on the native manga market. I assume that if they are able to tell how many hits the sites are getting, they are also capable of determining where they are coming from. My guess is the vast bulk of the traffic is coming from Japan. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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Well, there is some percentage of the anime viewerbase that're actually anime fans, who actually place some intrinsic value on anime as content they love and are willing to pay for it. Some subscribe to CR, Funi, or a different site because they're willing to pay for some percentage of what they consume, but since anime piracy in well-served areas is a pricing problem, they pirate if they're asked to pay more than X amount.
Well, nothing screams "piracy isn't a pricing problem" quite like "we need to routinely slash prices by 75% to entice people to pay." But actually, I don't deny that GabeN was right... about PC gaming. I don't deny that Steam worked... for PC gaming. But that's because of the technical nature of the medium, which allows ways (like the features you mentioned, or multiplayer servers that exclude pirated versions) for game distributors to actually offer "a service that's better than the pirates." Those avenues aren't available in the anime/manga sphere, where it's "pay money, click a link, watch a video / view images" vs. "click a link, watch a video / view images For Free."
I don't doubt that you and some others would make use of a "Steam for Anime" (or manga) type of service. But I've seen the numbers in the broader piracy scene, where episodes get millions of views on illegal streaming sites, but only 50k-100k downloads. "Archival-quality" Blu-Ray rips get even fewer downloads than that. So if there's barely any "market" for digital downloads when they're free, where is the demand for a paid, download-to-own service? Through the view counts on illegal sites, the vast majority of pirates have shown that they're mainly interested in watching stuff as it comes out and moving on to the next season, not owning or collecting titles. I don't see things being much different for manga; readers are mainly going to illegal reader sites, not downloading .zip/.rar chapters like back in the 2000s. Thus, the "we need Steam for Anime / Steam for Manga to combat piracy" sentiment is not based on any evidence-based assessment of the piracy landscape. Rather, it's a faith-based or religious belief that some mystical, inscrutable Quality of Steam will somehow win over the pirates, even when any pay-per-episode/show/chapter/volume system will inevitably be more expensive than the current subscription regime... which the "Not A Pricing Problem" crowd considers onerously expensive.
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zrdb
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All I can say it that if I wanted to read a specific manga title (and it really doesn't matter where-japan, the us etc.) that wasn't available where I was I'd get it by any means available.
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