One Manga Shut Down by Manga Publishers

Varik

A coalition of Japanese and US manga publishers is pursuing legal action against major manga piracy and scanlation sites in defence of its copyrights.
The Digital Comic Association, a Japanese publisher group supposedly formed to promote digital sales but fast turning into the manga equivalent of the RIAA, has partnered with 4 top English language publishers to tackle a short-list of 30 problem sites.
Starting with the US sites, those who ignore legal warnings will be sued for damages and subjected to criminal charges where appropriate.
With the sites in question maintaining substantial server presences in the US , it does not seem likely publishers will have much trouble shutting them down.
Publishers may be in for a rude awakening once they have taken down the major offenders – in lieu of a proper legal online alternative, a rush of freeloading manga fans to even more robust torrent sites seems the likely response, not a sudden rush to bookshops as publishers rather naively seem to hope.

This coalition have successfully forced top manga piracy site One Manga offline for good.
The site’s administration posted a statement detailing their decision:

One manga wrote:

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it.
We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site.

It probably comes as news to manga publishers to hear that they “approved” of scanlations in the first place, although the rise of P2P-based scanlation was most probably directly responsible for the medium’s huge growth in international popularity in recent years.
Publishers for their part have stated they are under no illusions about the impossibility of stamping out piracy completely, but that commercial sites hosting vast amounts of scanlated manga simply tip the balance of convenience too far in favour of free and online.
Whether they have the good business sense to now offer a superior legal alternative, or instead cling to the delusion that scanlated copies will translate one to one, or even a hundred to one, into paper copies, will likely determine the prospects of the international manga market for some time to come.

While this only so far applies to US site the Japanese publishers don't just have copyright over their creations in Japan, the previous opinion was that it was fine until the manga was released in English or got close to the Japanese release. This means now all manga scanlations are fully illegal, i'm going to ignore it and continue to buy what i want at release and downloading what i want.

To sum it up, Manga scanlations bad and alternatives minimal.

Who here would have cared about anime or manga to the degree they do now, if not for fansubs and scanlations. They think the same as the music industry that 1 download is 1 missed sale, have they been to a book store outside of Japan, while there are shops that have a large selection most of us get manga from normal books stores where they get little shelf space and are missing volumes. Even in Japan itself there is no good legal alternative with the digital copies costing more than the paper prints if available. Marvel and DC have digital systems that have many comics day and day, manga if they persist will simple run out of new foreign customers. This is not an hobby/pastime/form of entertainment that you just fall into, it is not present around us but hidden on a shelf below a winnie the pooh picture book and can easily be ignored if not given the chance scanlations and fansubs provide.

laurashambles

I actually gasped out loud when I saw this.

Varik wrote: »

Who here would have care about anime to the degree they do, if not for fansubs and scanlations.

Aside from Pokemon, DBZ, a few Ghibli movies and maybe Akira, I probably wouldn't have seen any anime at all. (or put any money into the industry for that matter)

I'm not sure how I feel about all this tbh. If it means anime and manga become cheaper and easier to buy because they've become more popular, then that's great but I have a feeling that won't happen. =/

Varik

laurashambles wrote: »

If it means anime and manga become cheaper and easier to buy because they've become more popular, then that's great but I have a feeling that won't happen. =/

Making it cheaper won't help gain new customers and they haven't any competitive digital alternatives even in Japan, this will only loose them customers and won't increase the sales.

I think Dragon Ball and the newer Studio Ghibli including since Spirited Away would be the only things i would have seen, and i would not have a single manga or DVD and may not even have bought those Ghibli films. it also means no linking of any kind to manga scanlations site now, i don't think anime will get this bad as many companies dealing with anime licences seem to be more forward thinking.

Konata

Hmmm, forgive my ignorance but how does this affect anime? Is it not just manga? (I've never used manga scanlations before so I'm not exactly clued up on the subject >.>).

Varik

Hotaru wrote: »

Hmmm, forgive my ignorance but how does this affect anime? Is it not just manga? (I've never used manga scanlations before so I'm not exactly clued up on the subject >.>).

Anime fansubs were only targeted for C&D when licences when gained for different territories and it was the same for manga, in this all manga site & translators/raw providers will be targeted even if no licensing will be done.why would any company stop just short, it's not far fetched to think that fansubs will be next with the same conditions.

Konata

Ah! Thanks, I get where yer coming from now.

Hmmm, I agree with ye so. Getting rid of fansubs would be detrimental to the industry. I've watched so many series online first, loved them and THEN bought the DVDs. Highly unlikely I would've bought the DVD without seeing the series fansubbed first.

Lets just hope they change their minds

Varik

Hotaru wrote: »

Ah! Thanks, I get where yer coming from now.

Hmmm, I agree with ye so. Getting rid of fansubs would be detrimental to the industry. I've watched so many series online first, loved them and THEN bought the DVDs. Highly unlikely I would've bought the DVD without seeing the series fansubbed first.

Lets just hope they change their minds

Anime and manga fan translations don't cost companies sales, if they didn't exist then there wouldn't be any sales, i've spoken to some older fans that remember when you need to share/copy/buy £100 vhs tapes with subtitles to get and only 1 or 2 episodes anime. Everything should just stay the way it was and maybe try to replace fans made stuff with alternative later when anime and manga have a much larger cultural presence.

DingChavez

Good. Those online reader sites are cancer. Thank God someone is taking them down.

Now maybe people will stop putting watermarks on their stuff trying to gererate traffic away from these mega sites.

Art_Wolf

I have to agree with Varik that I would never have gotten nearly as interested in the genre if not for the fansubs/scanlations. Memories of getting the latest episode of Scrapped Princess off IRC in the computer labs in college.. good times..

I wonder though if it will significantly impact the continued uptake today - anime is rather mainstream now and with YouTube channels, Hulu etc providing series maybe the initial. You don't need the latest series to get into anime *shrugs*

TBH I wondered about the 'approval' for awhile. I thought that if a company does not actively defend it's copyrighted works they lose that protection. Still the lack of alternative really sucks and the turn around time needs to be improved.

Varik

Open Manga, this seems to be getting somewhere. you can find more on the blog section of the site.

Funky

Tis a sad day, been using OneManga for a long time and it served me well. Manga Fox seems to be one of the better places left since Manga Toshokan got alot of stuff removed recently too.

Thomas-G

It's not going to stop scanlations, so meh, I prefer using comix to read offline anyways

Cy_Revenant

Art_Wolf wrote: »

I wonder though if it will significantly impact the continued uptake today - anime is rather mainstream now and with YouTube channels, Hulu etc providing series maybe the initial. You don't need the latest series to get into anime *shrugs*

I don't think the impact on anime will be too big, now that we have Hulu and Crunchyroll and the like. (Though outside the US content is limited)

I do think it will have an effect on manga uptake. Which disappoints me as I've frequently found manga with anime adaptions to be better printed than on screen.

Kiokia

I was never a huge fan of scans anyway. I prefer the tactile experience of a book, and although its hard in the recession I like to reward an author for his work.

Thomas-G

Kiokia wrote: »

I was never a huge fan of scans anyway. I prefer the tactile experience of a book, and although its hard in the recession I like to reward an author for his work.

You like the recession? Eats, shoots and leaves much?

K.O.Kiki

My guess is they're worried about how easy it is to access these sites on touchscreen devices (iPad, smartphones).

Plus I must admit, I haven't actually BOUGHT any Negima in a while.

Kiokia

Thomas-G wrote: »

You like the recession? Eats, shoots and leaves much?

punctuation fail on my part ;(

TheViking

Yea it sucks alright, hopefully we will find somewhere to continue getting our fix.

Zeouterlimits

Good thing really.
Know far too many people who have read every single chapter of FMA & Bleach on OM and when I ask them how many volumes they've bought they say "Uh.. one or two.".

K.O.Kiki

1-2 is still better than none.

Ask them how many they plan on getting in the future.

Varik

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

1-2 is still better than none.

Ask them how many they plan on getting in the future.

or would have gotten otherwise, if not for reading them online.

Zeouterlimits

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

1-2 is still better than none.

Ask them how many they plan on getting in the future.

Well none it seems.
It was a buy a volume in the store, like it, end read the rest online a few days later.

It's a mix, some better than others.

miccyla

Its been a good ride, One Manga

alastair_doom

So many websites making money off scanlations nowadays I guess it is hard to turn a blind eye.

I was really impressed with crunchy roll releasing Naruto (and a few others) just after it airs in japan. I wouldn't be surprised if they had something in the works for the kindle/ipad similar to crunchy roll for a lot of the mangas.

Would be fantastic if this lead to being able to download a translated Shonen Jump (or more likely individual chapters due to licensing) just after its released in japan

wayne040576

Can't really blame them. I imagine the majority of people using scanlations and fan subs claim they'll buy the official version when it comes out. But when the time comes to put their money where their mouth is, they suddenly have a change of mind.

Vojera

The only stuff I've ever read online are things that have never gotten an official translation, so I won't miss it that much. I find myself rebelling against the e-reader thing, I just love the feel of a real book (who cares how many trees die for my happiness?!)