Manga Publishers Targetting Scanlation Sites

[Kaiten]

They have been doing things like the youtube arrest for years. Someone was arrested for posting anime raws to Perfectdark last week. The creators of Winny were all arrested. There is a law enforcement division in Japan's who's sole purpose is cracking P2P encryption in order to track down uploaders. This wasn't a case where someone was easy to catch, or they are going after the little guys. Anyone they can catch uploading will be prosecuted. And the kid wasn't just doing small time piracy, he was posting leaked chapters of Jump early, around the time we get spoilers. No one has any idea how he got a hold of them. He also announced that he was posting raws on twitter and his blog, directing people to his youtube site. He may as well have been asking to be arrested :l

[Asarii]

I'm lucky to be able to purchase tankoubons easily (both translated and raw). Other people though do not have that convenience. Sometimes scanlations are the only way fans can read their favourite series; especially if the manga is not well-known. If the manga publishers want to deal with their problem, then they should make manga titles more accessible to readers worldwide.

I try my best to support my favourite series but sometimes I just want to "rent". The few libraries that do offer mangas only have limited titles. Japan has manga rental stores, and it should be available overseas as well. Tsutaya has a small fee similar to how one would rent movies; this benefits both the publishers and the fan who may want to read but not purchase a series.

Before manga publishers claw at scanlations sites, they need to view things from a fan's perspective. Sadly I don't think they will.

Oh and if professional translators would stop Westernizing Japanese characters' names and such, that would be great.

[Newkerzy]

I read online and buy manga. As my money is limited I only buy series that are licensed but not available online, a surprisingly high number of titles these days. But the business community must never forget, anything that can be turned into data will be free. Find a way to profit from the upgrade. I can't remember ever seeing the manga industry ever promote their product. Before attacking the online community maybe they should try advertising in more places then just manga/anime oriented publications.

I think they're cracking down for one reason: Hitotsubashi Group, the conglomerate that owns Hakusensha, Shogakukan and Shueisha, wants to do legitimate online web sites to host translated manga and offer reader applications for the Apple iPad and Google Android-based tablet computers.

Before Hitotsubashi can create a legal online site to host translated manga and put the manga on tablet computers, they have to stamp out the fan-based scanlators first. Once that is done, then Apple and Google could approve apps that allow you to read manga legitimately on a tablet computer. In fact, don't be surprised that Hitotsubashi offers the best fan scanlators the chance to go "legit" and work on fast translation of manga from Japanese to other languages.

@Kaiten: Exactly. This is exactly what I do if the scanlators are lagging behind than the official ones. For example I buy Sakura Wars since the scanlators are lagging behind than the ones released in my bookstores.

@Sacto: Really, now that's an excellent concept that should've been done years ago. (it's free,right?:) hope this rumour is true though.

And, I have a feeling that MS will be safe for a while since they always take down the chapters that are already released in the tankoubons. To be honest, this is an excellent policy. If people want to go back and reread a chapter, they have to buy it, which is good.

BTW, if that iPhone app idea is true, let me say my advance congratulations to Binktopia/MS since they are the best around.

As for subscribing to something like Crunchyroll, I still don't trust something like that since I'm afraid someone may hack my account.

[Kaiten]

Looks like sacto was right, this was a pre-cursor manga being put online legitimately. Bitway, a Japanese ebook and online media distributor made a $750,000 investment in crunchyroll in order to "build a comic-distribution platform overseas". Crunchyroll claims that there are "negotiations currently underway with an undisclosed group of major Japanese book publishers" for more strategic investments. Who knows what type of distribution platform this will be. They probably don't either. And it probably won't go live to late fall, or even the winter. But the timing was just to good for me. Announced less than a week after the coalition for publishers rights was formed. Since it's crunchyroll, and they have said they will be concentrating on the U.S. and Canada, I wonder if whatever comes will be region locked.

Source: ANN

[Newkerzy]

Great. I sure hope OpenManga isn't region locked..... if they have the smarts, I hope they let scanlators do their thing until it launches. That way, there won't be a huge time gap in the releases of the story.

[jamjamstyle]

DMP Seeks To Collaborate With Scanlators

According to ANN, Sasahara Hikaru, the CEO of Digital Manga Publishing (DMP) confirmed the anonymous report on Yaoi Online that DMP is preparing a "legal scanlation" site. They plan to acquire manga from Japanese publishers and provide the fan-made translations via the website. The income will be divided among DMP, Japanese publishers and the fan scanlators. The initial lineups will be hundreds of titles mainly Boys Love (Yaoi) manga.

After the release of warning by the Japan-US manga publishers' alliance, MangaHelpers announced to stop posting commercial manga and shift their activity to doujin manga. MangaFox removed VIZ Media titles from their list. OneManga hasn't reacted to the warning, but the top page has been under maintenance.

Source: Anime!Anime!, ANN

[Waveblade]

^But MH will still do translations some of the commercial series anyway?

[blai]

We will still allow all translations, yes.

[Newkerzy]

DMP Seeks To Collaborate With Scanlators

According to ANN, Sasahara Hikaru, the CEO of Digital Manga Publishing (DMP) confirmed the anonymous report on Yaoi Online that DMP is preparing a "legal scanlation" site. They plan to acquire manga from Japanese publishers and provide the fan-made translations via the website. The income will be divided among DMP, Japanese publishers and the fan scanlators. The initial lineups will be hundreds of titles mainly Boys Love (Yaoi) manga.

After the release of warning by the Japan-US manga publishers' alliance, MangaHelpers announced to stop posting commercial manga and shift their activity to doujin manga. MangaFox removed VIZ Media titles from their list. OneManga hasn't reacted to the warning, but the top page has been under maintenance.

Source: Anime!Anime!, ANN

Oh, for..... I cannot BELIEVE this. Sure hope they at least release the big 3 out of all those Yaoi *shudders*

[Asarii]

Now that it's been mentioned, yaoi mangas will definitely be hard to purchase at an average bookstore. It's controversial in Japan as it is so yeah... Heh.

I would like to hear from the mangakas themselves about this issue rather than the publishers.

[Newkerzy]

Yup, that's right. They have more of a right to speak about this rather than the publishers. Y'know, I'm kinda hoping Bakuman's mangakas will bring this issue to light and speak their minds about this.

[Kizo]

MangaToshokan.com has pulled all titles belonging to publishers in the coalition.

Their statement:

We hoped it wouldn't come to this, but due to mounting legal pressure, we have been advised to remove all series serialized by the publishers in the coalition. This was a very difficult decision to make, and one we did not take lightly. Unfortunately this means we have had to remove the majority of our library, however we have been able to retain some manga, as well as most of our manhua and manhwa. We will be shifting the focus of the site more to manhwa and manhua (Korean and Chinese manga). For some of you, this may be your last visit to MangaToshokan, but before you leave we would appreciate it if you could fill out a short six question survey that we are going to share the results to the publishers. If nothing else, we hope it will make them aware of the consequences of their actions. Also if you could pass this survey on to other people we would appreciate it. Again, we apologize for this, but we don't have any other options at this point.

This is another major blow. MT was easily my favorite scanlation site, as they provided (in my opinion) the best mix of selection and image quality.

All this negative activity, and nothing positive. No further developments on Crunchyroll's potential manga division, no word (aside from useless hype and silly idealist banter) from OpenManga in over a month, and most upsetting, no word from the publishers themselves. Pathetic, really.

[Yusaku Jon 3]

I've just now decided to delete all Manga Toshokan links from my PC due to the recent move. Looking back at this, it was going to be a matter of time. Look at what MH had to do.

That being done, my only options for the time being are to keep an eye open on upcoming developments in the community and to prepare myself to take an occasional trip out to the nearest Kunokiniya Bookstore outlet to browse through their manga collections for the volumes that are of greatest interest to me. Given the state of the industry, it isn't any surprise that the coalition is looking after its bottom line. They might have a point against unauthorized distributors, even though I'd be one of those who'd follow up by actually purchasing the physical copies of the manga in question once they're made available.

This reminds me of an experience that I had with an anime fan club that I joined back in the 1990s. Prior to then, I had no choice but to collect pirate videotapes recorded off of NHK broadcasts overseas. The fan club had a strict anti-piracy policy which I followed as soon as they made it known; they made up for the lack of access to the original anime by giving fans an outlet through which to read others' articles on the anime in question through reviews.

It looks like I'll have to do this again, for current and past manga series.

[Alterno]

I think communities should assume the same position taken by bit torrent communities, we don't host files, "we just index links", Manga-Helpers and othe communities just took the movement of some early torrent communities after being targeted... "I'm giving up, don't want to mess with laws", I wonder if there will be an IsoHunt between the remaining communities.

IsoHunt after taking a stand in their own way "we don't host files, we just index links", have growth a lot and are even co-producing original series for bitorrent download.

I think this was an opportunity for communities like these, if not taken other project appear as alternative like OpenMmanga and some new others that are around the corner as said by ANMTV. Don't get me wrong... I'm grateful for the staff for becoming for a good time the savior of those who want to keep up with the releases in japan, but now thats part of the past, this is just "another discussion board" where we meet friends with the same interest and find summaries of upcoming chapter, which are mostly these days copied from Narutofan anyway.

MH have been losing a great deal of activity even before this attack from publishers, let's remember the "ONLY ENGLISH" Spoiler policy, other international trans should be hidden in spoiler tags. that affected a great deal the speed with received spoiler, because back them (2 or 3 years ago), most of the spoilers poster were internationals users, aways from the Good Ole states and england, although this policy seems to be softening with the time (I'm glad), the damage is already done.

"Remembering the past leads, to not make the same mistakes". I don't know if MangaHelpers executives might be in for a Mangahelpers that index links to raws/scanlations trough .torrent files, but it the day comes, count me in as donation #1. I don't know what's wrong, really the manga that I read, I end buying them and the laws of where I live allows me to have a digital copy of something that I own. I've alway seen shounen jump weekly as previous of the volumes, more than anything else.

Support your favorite authors by buying their volume, is really cool to be able to touch and smell the pages as they pass to another.

[Kizo]

... and there goes the biggest one of all.

OneManga announces that it is shutting down "early next week," citing now-familiar legal pressure as the reason behind the move.

One tiny positive recently has been the news that Square-Enix will be opening an e-manga store in North America and France. The best part about this is that it shows that a publisher within the coalition is focusing on online ventures, but there just isn't information to be fully satisfied yet.

Still waiting for word from the coalition, OpenManga, and/or Crunchyroll on a legal way to read English translations of current major-market Japanese releases. The wait grows more ridiculous by the day.