Forum - View topicNEWS: U.S., Japanese Publishers Unite Against Manga Scan Sites
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ninjapet
 Posts: 1517 |
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People are still going to find ways to get things out online. Even if a scan viewing site goes down, you can still find a 3rd party to download the files.
Though this is a big step in solving everything, publishers and English c.o's need to get on the bandwagon and offer weekly series they publish on a week to week release online so people don't have to go get fan scans. I mean I can dream right? |
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Brack
 Posts: 291 Location: UK |
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A lot of people won't though. It's not individual scanlation groups that have raised the profile of scanlations to the level that this action is required, it's the rise of the aggregation sites that host scanlations for online and mobile reading. There'll always be a hardcore who'll find a way around, but the appeal of these aggregations sites isn't just that they are free, it's also that they are easy. The question is, will this just be aimed at the aggregators or will they also try and cut off some of the more popular scanlations at the source? |
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BeanBandit
Posts: 303 Location: Canada |
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I only read scans for ongoing series I'm following were I dont want to wait a year for each book to come out (I'm looking at you Claymore). Ideally I would love to read such titles legitimately through Viz or Yen press or whatever but in most cases it's just way to long between releases to wait for the official English release. Heck I would even pay for some sort of subscription if these companies provided the ongoing material from Japan shorty after release there, especially if I could put it on something like the iPad. Unfortunately that's probably an impossibility considering.
Having said that though I do buy everything when it does eventually come out. That and I do support companies bringing down the hammer on those providing scans of stuff that do have a legitimate North American release as people really have to start paying for the stuff. But yeah kinda two-fold for me, but overall I do support the move as the scanlations are very much getting out of hand. |
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spartydragon
 Posts: 61 Location: Portland, OR |
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Wellp, it was fun while it lasted.
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Kuchibiru
 Posts: 17 |
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Whoa. They really are cracking down on this, huh? There are always going to be ways to get your hands on scanlations, no matter where they're compiled. It's just sad knowing that there's so many great stories out there that we cannot purchase from an official English dealer. Face it: One-shots, short stories, mini series, and the stories in magazines just won't sell as much in English as they do in their original language. I don't know what can be done about that, though.
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Revolutionary
 Posts: 607 Location: New England |
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Yeah, they need to start offering manga legally online. I would love them forever if they were able to bring us the newest chapters of One Piece right along with when the Japanese get them in Shonen Jump.
I don't care if I have to pay for it, I just wish they'd get something worked out. The online community of One Piece is far too happy to spoil you of the big events in recent chapters if you aren't caught up. 
I also wish they would set up a service for the most obscure of manga that will never make it to America. That's a total pipe dream, though. I guess I'll never be able to read those. |
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domino
 Posts: 373 |
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Why don't you publishers fix the rampant and growing problem of there being nowhere to legally buy your comics? Every scanlation I read was read because I couldn't find any store selling your comics. Manga selections at stores are thinning, a lot of old series have disappeared, and it's difficult to find the one volume you need without ordering (and even then a lot of good ones are out of print).
Please put more effort into legal digital distribution of manga content and you will be saving everyone a headache. If publishers made legal digital manga stores that sold chapters of manga on iPad or iPhone a few days after being released in Japan and included digital value you can't get elsewhere (the option to change it back to Japanese text with a button click, like the My Darling is a Foreigner digital comic), I'd buy from it every week. Innovate and THEN go after scanlation sites, not the other way around. If your services are still not as convenient as scanlation sites due to lack of innovation, new scanlation sites will just keep popping up to fill your creative gaps. |
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Graddick
 Posts: 46 |
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When had bringing the hammer down on file sharing sites ever worked? Members scatter then regroup with even less willingness to start purchasing what they are distributing.
I guess that if you can't make a product people want to buy, it must always be someone else's fault. |
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Daimao Raki
 Posts: 593 Location: Dark Side of the Moon |
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I wonder if the companies are considering doing same day releases for manga that expire after a month(the files).
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Brack
Posts: 291 Location: UK |
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Are the scanlation aggregators really file sharing sites though? If people were just sharing their scanlations via file sharing software I doubt that so many people would be reading them. They've crossed whatever fuzzy line there is between file sharing and out and out illegal hosting. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Yeah, something tells me this isn't going to be hurting the scanlation groups themselves, but rather the big sites that get all the traffic by hosting hundreds of different manga series.
Personally, I'm all for it. |
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Hanajima Arashi
 Posts: 4 |
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Hunting down sites that make money off of your product, which took time and money to produce, is not the same as going after fan-translation groups or fans themselves. Heck, if I were a scanslator posting translations for a fan community, I would be pissed if people were making money off of the work I did for free. People don't buy the product because they can get away with not buying it. The massive amount of people who obviously are reading this stuff is proof that the product is desirable. If we got rid of places that collect all the manga in one place, the people who are dedicated fans of a series (the people who would actually BUY the series in tankoubon or English release when available) would still be able to get access to the latest chapters, because they are members of the fan-groups that make these scanslations anyway. It's just the lazy people who only want free entertainment 24/7 but don't even care enough about it to haul themselves to the library that suffer. Oh, and the people making money off of others' work, too. I would like to point out, also, that companies are making more of an effort to release manga online. You can't expect them to release every chapter of a long manga like One Piece, but it's a good sign that Tokyopop has chapters of their manga available for preview, and that companies like Viz are doing simultaneous scan releases. |
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Graddick
Posts: 46 |
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The distinction that's been drawn between the two is largely a matter of splitting hairs. Both are sites where you go to get free entertainment. I only used the term "file sharing" because the article doesn't say that they are distinguishing between sites that host manga itself and sites that connect users with torrents or DDL links. |
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TatsuGero23
 Posts: 1277 Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!) |
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Right, while this won't eliminate scanlations, it will change the norm of things in the fan culture as a whole similar as to how anime is changing. Your still gonna have those who will search high and low for scanlations and free downloadable content but this union will shift a good number of readers toward more legitimate sources. Hopefully more sites can do what Shonen Sunday is doing. And if they already are then freaking advertise it so people know there is a legit source to read manga online. New scans sites will pop up for a time but once they get a handle of the scan sites and start more efficiently distribute their content both online and in book form, it'll probably mirror the direction anime is going right now.
And I see this more of an effort to combat current releases. Dealing with older or out of print content is a different situation. But also one common to all written material like last week's Answerman pointed out. Not just manga. Although it would be neat if Manga and Comics were to ones to pioneer that movement of a more efficient back catalog. Also alot of scan sites are both online viewers and download sites. Although most will have you go through links and a few forum pages, most offer some form of DDL. Last edited by TatsuGero23 on Tue Jun 08, 2010 12:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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minakichan
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I can't blame them, they're desperate. But who knows if this will actually help or hurt them... Of the hundreds of volumes of manga I own, the vast majority I only purchased after reading the scanlation, borrowing from a friend first, or manga cowing. In Japan, it works the same way-- a copy of a weekly manga magazine is passed around like a $2 whore or just read in the convenience store.
I think it's a gray area-- if it helps, good job. If it does nothing, it didn't hurt, but then publishers will have no excuse. We'll see how this turns out. |
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