Forum - View topicINTEREST: Wall Street Journal Reports on Manga Piracy
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Redlinks
Posts: 496 Location: America |
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Sadly, I dont think this problem will ever be solved. But one day, I hope they do. Specially since all these companies are at stake. Damn it people! Buy your manga and support the mangaka and the licensor! D:
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asura_wings
Posts: 31 |
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That is why we should also distribute EBOOKS without DRM! aside from Printed volumes which is very easy to collect and store compared to printed volumes! We just need to trust the fans of the mangas! |
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2305 Location: In front of my computer |
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It's also one of the reasons I also don't like scanlations. I won't say I don't read them - I do for a couple of series that are currently unlicensed - but for those series I do read I really wish they would get licensed up soon. Not only so I can stop reading them illegally, but so I can purchase the legal copies and enjoy the feeling of having them in my hands and reading them that way. |
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noobiesnack
Posts: 34 |
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@Aura: Problem is easily solved if they distribute online. Inside the online releases, there would be links to buy the hard copies for those that are like you.
@asura: Again, why do people keep thinking that something more than what the manga-aggregation sites have now is needed? all I see it as is pointless money to waste to spend setting it up and buying the licenses to use the software. @Redlinks: There is no stores in my area that sell manga and I am not paying $13/vol to have it shipped to me when I already have a lack of space in my room. I am in college and have no space for any more books as is. Which is why there needs to be some way to read online and support the mangaka. @Paploo: In theory its possible that a large chunk of people would start reading your releases if you actually release it for free online and at the same time it hits shelves in japan. Once you actually have a legal online way, you can then throw legal notices showing the fact you have a place where they can read the chapters legally. like I said its a theory and a long shot, but its better than repeating what happened not once, but 3 times in history. Also, are you suggesting that I spend $13/vol, read it, then have that $13 sent to the library where I will never see it again? Also, there is a place that is starting up which I hope will be successful, I said it multiple times already. OpenManga is trying their hardest to get launched and provide a decent legal service. again, I just hope they can get it done and the publishers jump on board before they kill themselves with all the money spent on lawyers. @bayoab: flooded? what part of its flooded? Also, when dealing with online releases it is not that difficult to license stuff... all that really has to be done is special attention to countries that have certain censorship. In what way ARENT they similar? Publishers filing lawsuits against the actual hosts and content creators > Record Labels filing lawsuits against Napster and other illegal download sites as well as people who upload large numbers. In what way ARENT they similar? And no, investment really isnt a loan. Its an investment. It is money brought in from someone who has a stake in the company that could allow them to profit off of it. It is more like a donation for the future. They dont keep track and pay off an investor once they get money. @enurtsol: that is still an accomplishment. It means things for them are moving in the right direction. If they have to live off of investments for now, so be it. It is going to take time to make a profit. But its investment for the future unlike when you throw legal notices everywhere. a good deal of time and money has to be put into paying the lawyers to do research and to look up all the titles in conflict. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I think it's pretty naive to assume having it online legally'll stop aggregator sites from hosting it- people even torrent/pirate webcomics afterall. There's also the fact that some artists might not want their work online, which is their right. I was mostly indicating that if you want a wide selection of free manga, librares are a cool place to check out, totally legal and industry approved, and support your community. Not sure how you got that rant out of it [why do people always get indignant about it when people bring up libraries as an option? Are manga fans too cool for libraires? WE'RE TALKING ABOUT COMIC BOOKS ON THE INTERNETS. ON A FORUM. We are not too cool for libraries] I think aggregators are a bigger threat than laywers fees. Bayoab's mostly talking about how the market can only support what people buy- and with people purposely not buying stuff, that means less titles and slower releases. If you want quicker releases and more variety, buy stuff! |
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OLady
Posts: 163 Location: Texas |
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It seems that all of this boils down to :
1) How can I have my cake and eat it, too? 2) Money walks, talks and kicks butt. 3) Beggars can't be choosers. Free access to anime/manga is a self-destructive delusion. There are always two sides to a fight. In this case, greed of fans vs. greed of publishers. I purposely exclude artists since so little of the revenue 'trickles down' to them. Enlightened self-interest does not seem to exist in either camp. Both sides seem to want to kill the golden-egg layer. Transitions are painful. Not only does the industry have to recognize that transition is needed, it has to figure out which form to go to and how to get there. Casualties happen. (Consider the plight of buggy whip makers at the beginning of the last century.) Paper companies, printers and binders, and companies like Kinko's are watching their markets and profits go away. My simplistic and likely utopian solution is 30% to the mangaka, 45% to the publisher and 25% to the distributor. My reasoning is 1) the mangaka should be fairly paid for the hard work of creating manga; 2) the publisher is responsible for scouting manga, editing and translating, advertising and legal issues; and 3) the distributors' must pay for storage and distribution whether physical or electronic. I personally love printed books. No matter how many times one reads them, they remain available for rereading. E-books, on the other hand, are restricted to a small number of downloads before one's 'license' runs out. That is not purchasing a book. The price of downloading the e-books is rising exponentially. The incentive of saving on the price of the book is quickly going away. When I can keep my e-books permanently, I will buy an e-reader. Nothing else is solid value for the money. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Most of the interest in current scanlation sites is reading bootlegs of licensed titles. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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How many people are going to sit through 25 streaming video ads per chapter? Or where are you going to put 250~1,000 banner ads where they will get click throughs? |
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noobiesnack
Posts: 34 |
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@paploo: no it wont stop them. But once you do have a legal place to send them to, it becomes easier to stop them with legal notices. Sure it wont stop them completely but you will take out a huge chunk of the fan base that drives these sites and put that fan base on your site making you money.
As for the artist not wanting it online, well it sucks to be them. Welcome to the information age. Everything is on the internet. If you don't want it there, don't have it published. It is not something they can stop just because they don't want it there. Either accept it how it is or pretend it doesn't exist. I agree that they should have the right, but lets face reality. Just because you say you don't want it there doesn't mean people will listen. Times have changed, you are 1 person in a world populated by almost 7 billion others. Saying you don't want it there and expecting the world to follow your word is extremely naive. And no. aggregators will always be there. They will just break up then reform under a new banner. So all thats going to come of this is lots of red from laywer fees since once the heat is on, the site breaks causing no reparation money and is then formed on a different server in a different country that is untouchable. Effectively wasting their time and money when they could focus on trying to save the industry. And yeah, it can only support what the people buy. Which is why it needs to go online since that is where people buy now. Many don't want physical goods anymore. The same thing happened to video games. Go to walmart or bestbuy and youll notice the selection of computer games has shrunk drastically in the past few years. That is because now people can buy their games through places like Steam or GameStop and have them Digitally downloaded right to their computers. And now for the big one. I don't know about your area, but the nearest Library to me is 35 miles away. And there are very few of them. I also highly doubt there is any manga in there given the area. And no we arent too cool for libraries, but people DONT WANT to go to a physical library. In this informational age, people want it on an internet library. For people companies to survive, you have to cave into the majority or just sit back and keep your mouth shut. Go back and look at history, far back in history. Go back some 100 years. You will find things that very few are willing to give in to accepting only for it to become a common use. It is only a matter of time before the companies will adapt to the change so they might as well do it now and save yourself some time. @ag: no.. I meant like a video ad at the beginning on the very first page. and no, the interest is in reading manga easily that is out the same time that it is in Japan. Scanlators work the quickest to bring the most popular titles in japan out in a matter of a few hours to the rest of the world, in English. People would still pirate it but only a smaller minority would if there was something to compete with that was legal. Last edited by noobiesnack on Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ArsenicSteel
 Posts: 2370 |
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I don't recall that being the point people here have been trying to make. A legal manga site would serve to take some of the interest away from the illegal sites. It would provide an avenue for people that want to support manga legally. With no such site now of course the illegal sites get a ton of traffic. An artist not wanting their work online? It is online now at least legally they would get a check for it. Checks have a surprising ways of changing peoples minds.
This addresses the lack of access to non-license manga, how? Even for works that are printed in the US going to the library to check them out is dependent on library size and publications. Libraries are not Barnes and Noble they are not going to a lot of any given title. There are too many factors for consistency. Still the library solution is just another lazy, passive way to pass the buck off of publishers.
People can't even prove the amount of revenue lost because of pirating or aggregators. Lawyer fees are a real cost on the books. Running around various courts filing lawsuits and debating the legal limitations of "infringement" and "copyright" for months is a proven money-sink, unless legal alternatives are made too.
Can't buy what is not published. In this day and age there are additional ways to generate income other than just consumer cash. It is obvious people like having a variety of manga to read online.
You mean copies have to be made first(cost) and then physically stored(cost). Electronic storage is cheaper and easier to maintain then physical storage. I never had to dust or fix a dog-ear on a computer file. |
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noobiesnack
Posts: 34 |
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@Arsenic: you said it really, really well. I give it a thumbs up post.
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Saturn
 Posts: 513 |
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It all boils down to the same pains the entire publishing industry is going through, I suppose. There's no easy way to admit it, but there's no stopping progress, so I imagine those of us who like to have a nice hard copy to dog-ear and read in the bathtub will have to give it up eventually. The problem I have with this, is that with such a small market, manga will be one of the first things that needs to be totally digitized. Best-selling novels and whatnot will be around in paper form for quite a while, I think, to help ease the transition; but I fear that the days of holding a graphic novel in your hands are limited.
It's kind of sad... that's not the way it was intended, right? But then, when people first started recording music, they never intended for the vast majority of people to listen to it through a set of earbuds on an iPod, bereft of any packaging or other additional artistic elements aside from a tiny square depicting the cover. But they did it anyway, and the music industry is still with us today. Change or be left behind, publishing industry! |
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noobiesnack
Posts: 34 |
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Well, I dont see the days of reading books on hard copy coming to and end if they do this properly. They can still live on hard copy and digital copies if they do things right. Now, companies doing something right are 1 in a million. and yeah, it is sad. but it has to be accepted. Complaining about your manga being stolen now is kind of pointless and people just want it. Also, I love that. It is the perfect comparison. If they can't do something now, I will see them on Kindle in a few years. They might as well make some fans out of the pirates while they have the chance instead of repeating history. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/43512-graphic-novels-in-the-spotlight-at-ala-.html Libraries account for 10% of the graphic novel market- for smaller publishers, they account for an even larger chunk of thier sales. I don't see publishers making hardcover ed's or marketing works towards the scanlation aggregator "market" Libraries are a real resource for publishers and authors, and in some countries, peoples taxes pay royalties to authors whwnever their work is used through the library system From the article- "The programming was organized by John Shableski, sales manager at Diamond Book Distributors. He estimates that sales to libraries account for about 7 to 10 percent of the U.S. graphic novel market, but those sales are influential beyond their numbers. "Libraries are like radio stations: You hear the song on the radio and you buy the record," he said. "They have a much greater impact on the market than most people appreciate." "Libraries are an extremely important market for graphic novels," said Rich Johnson, a consultant and writer who was a former v-p of book trade sales for DC Comics and former co-publisher of Yen Press. "Not only are they able to get books into a lot of hands, they actively promote the medium in their libraries and encourage kids to read."" All publishers send review copies to library journal too. It's a real market, whose rewards are visible in readership and actual profit, with data to back it up, unlike the vague claims scanlations fans make up.
You did listen to Ed Chavez's ANNCast right? Go check that out. animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2010-04-23 I'll get back on the other gobbledee gook later, since that stuff mostly just circular arguments. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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The nature of internet-based media is very transitory, which is why I don't think books'll go anywhere, even with Ebooks. It would be nice if publishers offered some sort of recall-number or backup system to keep track of which ebooks of theirs you've purchased, so you could go through an ID system with them to get new copies if your ebook was damaged/corrupted/yourkindleburstintoflames. I imagine they'll sort these things out as the market grows.... Disney plans on using an internet-based service for their digital video push where you pay for something, and you can stream it off any device. Curious how it'll work... hope it pans out, as that would be useful. Noobiesnack--- I know from fellow cartoonists who've had their work scanned that it's a very cruel thing to hear anyone say "it's kind of pointless to complain about it". It represents a very dark, unsettling part of fandom I don't care for- the fans who'll come up to you at a con and rip rudely into you for not updating the webcomic you post online *for free* for a number of months [I know someone this has happened to- trust me, people, if you do this you do not come off as anything resembling sane] while you do stuff like say, work at a dayjob or on a paying comic job. The fans who'll tell anime producers at panels that they totally downloaded all their stuff for free and have no intention of paying for it [apparently a variation of this happened at AnimeExpo at Nabeshin's panel- no this isn't the one from a few years ago on YouTube where he rants about fansubs- it's this year's panel 0_o] When did fans start becoming active jerks towards creators? A bit of a tangent, but it's so wierd to see, and kind of insulting. Whining to get free stuff online is a gentler, less unsettling version of this phenomenon [the aboves are more extreme[, but I hope i've communicated to you why this sort of stuff sets me and others off. |
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