About MangaHelpers and the future of hosted / linked scanlations & raws

i kinda saw this coming :)

anyway, no scanlations and no raws or any links to those. not really mangahelpers anymore.

me too. I guess we have to move on

We hope this is the best.
Thank you, MangaHelpers.

While neither condemn nor condone your decision, mangahelper should not remove existing files, even if they're just kept internally by staff member and not available to public. Not as an act against copyright enforcing agency, but merely to document and archive for the their own sake.

I looked but didn't see it anywhere. What will be the policy for your online viewer?

I really appreciate the initiative taken by MH. It shows how loyal and committed MH is to these mangakas, publishers, scanlators, translators, and most of its users. The effort made by MH are appreciable. Too bad these mangakas wont acknowledge what MH has done for them.

Anyways, lets be optimistic and support MH as much as we can.

Thank you MH and its wonderful team for everything they have done.

wow, this is a failure..
i guess we dont have to enter this site anymore =))

meh..

@Zetsubou - The same, we wont host anything on the site anymore, be they for online viewing or download.

yeah..that makes sense..just wanted to be sure..sangahelpers not being manga anymore :(

yeah..that makes sense..just wanted to be sure..sangahelpers not being manga anymore :(
Not entirely true; MangaHelpers will just revert to what it was before the hosting; being a Translator centric community :)

Nimloth is absolutely right. MangaHelpers has always been a hub for translations at its core, and I have no doubt that it will continue as so. I am fully behind this decision -- thanks for all your hosting and service thus far, MH.

All good things have to come to an end I guess. :( Still, I hope to keep posting translations here and hanging out at what has come to be my second home. :)

....Will this also be the end of the WSJ, WSM and WSS threads that have picture posts? Oh and the wonderful, wonderful, spoiler sections for each series? I hope that having those is okay~?

EDIT- I re-read the announcment and saw that they answered my question. :-P

lol you gonna lose like 90% of traffic

....Will this also be the end of the WSJ, WSM and WSS threads that have picture posts? Oh and the wonderful, wonderful, spoiler sections for each series? I hope that having those is okay~?
No, we were just talking about it today to maybe even extend that section. There's nothing illegal in keeping the manga fans uptodate with spoilers and tocs, so we'll probably move that more into the spotlight.

However, this decision today is such a big change to the website and came so suddenly that we need some time to re-think our concept and the stuctures we have so far. As Molokidan said, we want to take this change and get back to the roots together with the additions we made the past years. There are a lot of things thinkable from now. Maybe you want to make some suggestions too? Feel free! It's your community too afterall.

There are so many possibilities that I am really not sad about removing the illegal part of it. It was the traffic driver, sure. But also a magnet for a whole lot of trouble and I don't even mean the publishers >.>

I think we can do well without the downloads. And if that means that the membercount drops 90%, so be it. The more the merrier isn't necessary true for a nice community.

honestly among all staff here, how many of you are going to stop downloading raws or scalations for your favorite series every week, from other sites..

it really only is covering your asses against lawsuits, and sounds like hypocrysy to me..

@ eni

Sweet. To be honest for my favorites like One piece I really only read the spoilers and not so much the chapters when they come out anyway. Especially for series like Bleach where I really don't care enough to read the chapters in full.

Yeah, it'll be different without downloads here for sure, but I think we can make it work with some elbow grease. I'm aboard, and I'm sure others will join when they see that our community can work without the illegal side of things.

Understandable that this needs to be done, so I fully support your decision. And I'm grateful that you have left people time to archive their uploads. The largest annoyance I've had so far was that when the RAWs were pulled, I couldn't record my download stats that I had from them, since they were only hosted here. Later tonight I'm going to grab the stats from my other uploads, just for a record.

I'll miss being able to "Thank" people for their scans. I rarely used the online reading or download function here, but thanking them was easy, and I feel well worth it.

it really only is covering your asses against lawsuits, and sounds like hypocrysy to me..
Well, do you want to be responsible and the one who's having the court invitation in the mailbox? If you didn't get the news: they gonna go to sue site heads internationally, not just warnings.

There's a difference in keeping it low flame and rubbing it in publisher faces. Most websites, and we're no exception on this, simply went to far with their open service. No wonder the publishers start to act serious. The scene needs to go back to it's roots, imho, and that's not the comfortable easy direct download you can find via google search.

I'll miss being able to "Thank" people for their scans. I rarely used the online reading or download function here, but thanking them was easy, and I feel well worth it.
The tanks button works just as well as a 'thanks' in the group's IRC channel or a 'thanks' in the group's blog comment. You just need to go there and do it. Only advance of the thanks button is that it's more comfortable for the average leecher to have it all in one place :)

wiew...
as I though long long time ago...
I really hate this news
but,
what we can do?
since we should..or maybe must respect mangaka/ publisher legitimacy
creativity and "money roles" that we should or maybe must give that a big respect too...
Forums, News, Translations, Art Gallery will continue to operate as normal is something that we must celebrate...LOL
good news one...

farewell scanlations on MH...
thanks for our great memories between scanlator and others on MH
It's very very sad...but...yeah...^^

in other words:
we got no balls, this site is dead as of now.

it's fine, mh heads dont have to go to jail so we get manga xD

but it will end in everyone getting their fix from a .cn hosted site in a matter of months at this rate (with sites closing), and it will just divert traffic elsewhere without achieving much, or anything at all in the end

I'm just a leecher, but I think you guys are doing the right thing and there's not much you can do about it. Its just sad that the mangakas don't understand that so many of us don't have access to the manga. It's not that we DON'T want to buy them, we CANT. Especially RAW manga outside of Japan.

They really should be providing RAW and translated manga in more countries and states, or this ban wont benefit them at all. I study abroad, but when I'm in Japan I buy the manga, and I'm sure most of the people (who understand Japanese and live in Japan) do too.

I also agree with the post that you guys introduced people to manga. I found a lot of interesting manga that I've never heard of and even ended up buying the tankobons for the ones I liked when I went back.

Anywho enough of my rant. As I am not a translator, it's the end of mangahelpers for me. Thanks to all the staff and scanners, I really enjoyed reading the raw manga here! :D

This won't end me considering that I rather keep translating manga no matter how I do it. (outside...not having time anymore) Heck, that's why I'm in this anyway. (though...I may need to start spending again to start getting the manga I want to see out there get a script for this site...)

I expect at least 90% drop in traffic.

Truly disheartening. But alas, as some here have said, if one didn't see this coming then their dream just became a nightmare. Even so, I didn't expect the wigs to move so fast. I understand the situation...

But I'll be damned if I don't get my manga. Truthfully. Illegalities aside, this isn't something too get all that worked up over, especially with 'OpenManga'. But I will certainly miss my open world of cyber-manga. There's still that world...but now it has walls. And I'm a bit claustrophobic. So fawk. *Sigh*

But the forums will still up right? It's not like the site is going to shut down completely, right?

Thanks for selling out mangahelpers.

most people will stay..i didn't use the site for downloads anyway >.>

translations, spoilers and no jail(though it would've been just a huge fine) ftw :))

Woot!!! teaching aspect. xD
-gets ready to

Woot!!! teaching aspect. xD
-gets ready to

Thank you for the hard work that you have done. It's going to get much more difficult trying to find a good new manga to read now..

---

I wonder what are the other 29 sites that are going to be taken down... anyway, can this site become more like an encyclopedia or something? Show covers of the manga, character images, and a summary all that other stuff. If we get this site more informative that would be nice.

Can't say I didn't saw this coming. Sad anyway, though.

one is obvious..or so i think..it made google top 1000 sites so it drew a lot of attention

We all knew the golden age couldn't last forever. These past few years have really been the zenith of fanworks, both on the manga and anime side of things. A lot of passionate fans who produced so much high quality scanlations and fansubs.

But in the end, this is for the best. We cannot continue to act as locusts forever, greedily devouring everything these artists, writers and animators produce without giving anything back. It's a very positive step that the industry is evolving to better serve today's audiences.

I hope OpenManga is successful and you can bet your ass I'll be doing what I can to see that it is.

So thanks for all the great years, MangaHelpers. Thank you...

and...


OSSU!

hey, i got a good idea!
couldnt instead of hosting scans, just have a page with updates of the lastest scan that came out, like just the name and group and date it came out. it not like ppl cant use google or wat? it isnt illigeal is it?

@silent2nja
MangaUpdates already exists for that. No need for MangaHelpers to do it also.

Just go to MangaUpdates for the latest scanlation release information :/

Can't help but laugh at some of you hypocrites. Easy to talk crap about not havin balls when it's not your ass that's on the line.

How about the new manga shoutout and series information, are those going anywhere?

To be honest, it is increasingly difficult to find out about "new" manga in magazines you naturally don't have a subscription to.

in all honesty, the manga companies cant do anything and aren’t gonna. if they could, they would of a LONG time ago.
the only reason they gave out that "warning" was to scare people into taking down their scanlations. and it seemed it worked, which is unfortunate.
if they actually where gonna take action, they would just do it, not give out "warnings". Thats not how the legal system works.

in the end, I don't really care since I only come here for translations and don't read scanlations, but I seriously think all these scanlations sites caving in is really ridiculous and everyones scared of empty threats.

anyway, this little charade isn't gonna force anyone to buy manga. don't get what the manga companies are trying to prove other than that people are gullible.

/shrug

The main problem is that we don't have a legal option, i woulnd't mind paying for the chapters scans if they were easily available and for a reasonable price, i'm sure this will be possible in the future but right now this is not an option.

Thanks, very thanks Manga Helpers.

uh this is dumb @_@ Why would we need the translations if we don't have the scans to go with it! If I wanted to just read words I'd go buy a book/novel. What we come here for is to download manga so we can look at the ILLUSTRATIONS!

My personal tnx to all the people who works hard every day on this awesome site.
For those who are complaining: you do not risk anything, these "guys" worked hard for years. Now they face the total cancellation of their site.
Why don't you try to understand?
You have only to say tnx and nothing else.
I wish you all the best.

pussied out a la raw paradise. u disappoint mangahelpers. bigger disappointment is theres no option to delete our own accounts. thank you all members who in the past have uploaded many good raws. i hope you will continue to contribute elsewhere like i will. let me know if depussification occurs and you host scans again. until that day, i, like 90% of the ppl who come here, have no plans to return to this site.

i have seen it comin since the news about publisher against us comin out. But i didn't think it would be this fast. well after all of this maybe people will return to their old habit by lurking IRC for raws, scanlation, etc. Free manga shouldn't be that easy to get. if its get far too easy than we know that this kind of thing would happen. Publisher are loosing money and when they loose money they blame it on us.
I think this site is already on their hitlist, because you guys already get some warning from some publishers. If not why would you guys go to these measures right?

Aww :( Thanks for everything Mangahelpers. <3

@nycmango: you do know the scanlations you read are only because you have people translating them, right?

I understand very well this "solution" and I hope that MH wil be always here for manga Fan with translation and other...

Thanks for everything

it's a shame that millons of people won't be able to read anything anymore..
anyways, I wanted to thank you. I greatly enjoyed your site everytime I visited it.

lol million of people still could read manga, and the one that would make millions cry is when big sites like onemanga goes down. this site could still have their use as a hub for translators to work. without translators there wouldn't be a scanlation. but without so many raws in here, i wonder about the future for scanlation lol. One thing for sure, the not so well known title will surely have their release time in not so good condition.

Well , i thinks it an good idea the Openmanga thing.
Actually i want to ask if there are still the "New Manga Shout out" Thing ?

I am not surprised at what the manga industry is currently attempting to do. Threatening legal action to this degree would eventually happen one way or the other, especially with the manga industry slowly downsizing this past decade. I still think it's too late and somewhat pointless. For example, the music industry threatened lawsuits and attempted to stamp out mp3 sharing in order to stop online sharing/piracy/whatever. Did the music industry's efforts pay off? Hell no. Sure, the manga industry will stall scanlations, but it's impossible to stop. I doubt there efforts will even put a sizeable dent in the number of online scanlations.

P.S.: I wish the MH staff, translators, scanners, etc. good luck if and when "OpenManga" comes online.

You're removing every single raw and scanlation from the site, no exceptions? They want stop scanlations? They are unbelievably incompetent! Can these people even tie their own shoes? Vitrurally nobody who gets into manga / Japanese comics does so through advertisements or by visiting a bookstore. The scanlation community is their consumer base. Instead of trying to destroy it they should figure out better ways to make money off of it.

they can't do a thing , this is internet . There were so many same shit about anime, fansubs are gone? no

I completely understand. And I will continue to stick around for the training part.

I really can't see a big damage for scanlations if MH goes back to be a Translation-based website. It just get less easy to find the scanlations you are searching for and probably some new mangas will not be scanlated because only few people will know they even exist. But all the scanlations on MH were NOT provided by MH itself, the guys who did those will still do their work on their own website or IRC channel. Sure as hell MH was a big help for everyone, gathering most scanlations and raws, but this is juts a change of how things will be done in the near future.
Just search a little for the scanlation you have read until now.
Anyway, thank you for everything you've done, MH.

@Przymiot
Are you insane? Spouting so much nonsense because your ass isn't on the line. What fight? There is no fight. Once lawyers are being pulled out, it's serious business. It's not just American publishers this time, most of them are Japanese and everyone has banned together to stop this. If MH would have "fought", it would have been a back to back hit for not only hosting American licensed manga, but Japanese raws as well. This is a legal fight, and legally MH would have lost immediately. As much as you want to dignify it, this is illegal and everyone should know it. Torrents and moving servers wouldn't have done crap. It's licensed no matter where you live, and I've heard the FBI and Department of Justice is getting involved.

This would have happened sooner or later, but I'm glad to have some MH than no MH.

what legal fight you talking about, true its licenced material but hey so if 80% of all the junk on the internet. If you want to avoid being busted by legal issues open a site on a server in a bananarepublic and away go all your problems ^^.

Were talking about the internet here and yes its a free medium.

And whats realy going on is the governments + all the coorperations want control over the internet.

I am fully supportive of the idea of becoming a teaching/learning community. This is a dream come true for me, as a lifelong Japanese learner.

"There are no lawyers, there is only an article in the internet that the companies are supposedly going to act against sites with scanlations. And yet some people are shitting their pants, why even start a site with ILLEGAL content if you are such a coward?"

There most likely are lawyers, and I wouldn't run the risk of pretending like there weren't; would you? You can pretend to be big and brave but you're not the one who could be potentially sued. A coward? What are they supposed do? I'm curious. Moving servers wouldn't have helped. It's an international law, so you would have been turned over. And they're supposed to deal with it? MH would have been shut down immediately. And then you wouldn't have anything to be pissed at.

And the FBI does have an anti-piracy division, so yes, they probably are involved. We've been flaunting scanlations around, thinking no one was looking, and now they're paying attention.

The internet isn't a free medium, it's went unnoticed/nobody cared until now.

Whatever your views, it's copyright infringement - we have copied, altered and distributed to the public works that do not belong to us. If we are ever to be taken seriously in our efforts to get manga in our countries in our languages, we have to play by the big boy rules. Money wins always - welcome to the real world.

Whining like girls about 'selling out' and 'lacking balls' is childish, short-sighted and does not serve our purpose.

They will regret this. They don't realize how much sites like Mangahelpers spread the word of manga and actually help their business. They're killing the golden goose with this one.

Thank you MangaHelpers for being so awesome so far. I will continue to visit and support the site and i hope you'll be back in full force someday when these greedy publishers realize their error. Goodbye for now.

I'm just curious.. like MH hosts Japanese raws, there are a lot of chinese sites that host chinese scans of Japanese manga and they're even more notorious with their ads. I don't think they're licensed publishers so I'm just wondering... what are the coalition's stand for those sites?

Question, can I still post spoiler pictures?

It's interesting the parallels between what's occuring in the manga industry and what's occured in the music industry for years and years. The big record labels, RIAA, movie studios and MIAA, they spend big money targetting single individuals and sites in a vain attempt to scare people stop pirating their music and movies. It hasn't had any noticeable effect. Now the manga publishers are doing the same thing and it isn't going to stop pirating either. TV studios have had to wake up to the fact that consumers don't want to wait months and months before getting an international release, that they don't want to be forced to watch their TV program at a certain hour of the day, but that they want to watch what they want when they want it. Apparently manga publishers still believe that people want to wait months and months before a release, want it in paper back rather than as a file, and that they are prepared to do so ponying up $20 (it costs about the equivalent of $4 for the same manga in Japan), all the while people can access free, fast, convenient manga on the internet.

The other interesting parallel I see is with the news gathering biz, otherwise called journalism. Media companies all around the world are seeing falling revenue as classified move online and online ad revenue fails to make up the difference. Some newspapers (particular those belonging to Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd) are bringing in paywalls to try and make up the differnce. Hoping that those who are prepared to pay and do so will outnumber the loss of people who don't and are no longer able to contribute to ad revenue.

Perhaps the manga companies should be looking at the success of those parasites over at Onemanga. When you're in the top 1000 websites of the internet you start to get some serious ad revenue. If the publishing companies got together and launched their own free, ad-revenue-supported aggregator read online manga site then they might be able to capitalise on the millions of people who are otherwise visiting Onemanga.

But instead they think that legal action will win the day. The music industry has been trying that for 10 years and they're still losing.

And so mangahelpers dwindles into the obscurity from which it arose

this is really sad news. i was wondering why no updates since last week.

just... cowards ! What will it be next time? Translations and translators? And another? Art gallery ? And another? Please inform me only when you'll close ! I will give my friends a drink !

All you people who are saying MH are wusses because they're scared of lawsuits:

What are you smoking???!!!

If lawyers can bring down giant corporations like Pan American Airlines, just how much chance do a few people running a free website have? I agree, it's stupid for Kodansha and the others to call in the lawyers because scanlation is basically free advertising for themselves, but of course none of their lawyers is going to tell them that.

I can tell you from personal experience that fighting with a lawyer all the time is hell. I've been living with one for 22 years.

huh...as long as spoilers still are welcomes i decide to stay here, after all, the reason for mangahelpers IS a place for scanlations and spoilers. This place had potential to be a revolutionized website, too bad it doesn't work anymore.

Guys, just restrict the access to Japan and China. That's it.

I get that this is a step in the right direction in terms of legality but would it be possible for mangahelpers to still provide a way for scanlators to notify when they've released a chapter? No links, just a plain text list that helps keep people informed of updates. It'd help keep some of the traffic that the site used to have.

gg, MH. It was a good ride with you.

damn this sucks to hear. it was nice while it lasted.

Do you continue with the "New manga shout out"?

eh, whatever. the stories nowadays are just rehashes of the classic mangas anyways. i'll create my own manga and enjoy it on my own turns.

peace!.

~.~" Luckily all I ever really cared about here was One Piece spoilers, which I can reliably get at Arlong Park, but I hope the few scanlators that made this website their home can find websites to use as a new base. Luckily, all of these manga make it onto onemanga anyway, but groups like TDX have it a bit tough with everything being shut down so SUDDENLY.

I will miss you, MH. But not an incredible amount. Despite increases in traffic, you guys have been in decline in my mind for over a year now, with really shitty policy decisions. Though I'll always have nostalgia for back when MH was fun! I still remember WinterLion as MH's mommy ^_^ She seemed to be the best at decision-making =.=" I can even remember being a lurker for MH's 1st anniversary.... *sigh*

Bye, MH! It's complete BS that you think you'll be roughly the same place after this decision (not hosting, I can understand, but not linking to scans or even RAWs totally kills the site), but I certainly enjoyed being a part of the community.

MH is doomed without scanlation news release :(

Sad news. "MH is doomed". I don't think so. A new era ahead of us? :D

I have to admit, I only used to come here for my weekly fix of fresh manga raws.
I mean, after all, I only get to go to Japan once a year, and every time I go there I buy all the original mangas I like, but on the meanwhile I like reading them online. Too bad We won't be able to do that anymore. :(
Anyways, I'm a translator myself, but I never had the chance to work with you guys, and that's something I regret, so I will be contacting you to see how can I help with the openmanga project.
Wish you the best. Itsumo osewa ni natteimasu.

thanks for everything MH..i will still surfing in this site for latest news and forum....i knew this will happened..

Wow. Just... Wow. It's been fun, this almost 4 years, MH.

I guess mangahelpers is going back to it's roots. it did get too big :() when I read the news that this site was featured in a jap article about raws, I feared that our days were numbered.

there are literally thousands of chinese manga sites, how come MH got single out?

sad. I always buy the tankoubon version as soon as they are released but I was always happy to find raw chapters here, because I really cannot afford to buy Shounen Jump on top of buying the manga volumes. I was happy to see raw Japanese chapters, because waiting for the whole volume can be nerve-wrecking (written spoilers are not an option, I personally don't want to know what's going on without drawn pictures *lol* I always rather wait a few months for the manga release)
Thanks for all the great work until now!!!

Where do we move on to now....

Well usually i used all this links to translate to spanish... but i also chose this site for the fresh manga raws (although, every manga that i like i buy the original tankoubon version because i like to have it in my hands), but with this i have to move...

See u manga helpers, ty for everything, it was fun.
Good luck!

Oh, this is sad, But, what can we do? It's a shame...

Too bad these mangakas wont acknowledge what MH has done for them.

I agree

this is sad :'(

There is still Google to use for searching things but too bad MH is really mangahelpers but they should change it to Mangakahelpers ^.^

Why don't you rehost the site on some thirdworld country server, and tell them "sue me now"

I am so sorry...

well, after july 1, mangahelpers wiill not be manga helpers anymore, guys you gotta change the name XD, also i saw this comming, for now all those guys threatining manga sites can be punished to death for all i care =P

I don't know why people are whining and complaining about this. This is the most prudent move, would people rather MH disappear in its entirety? Personally, I always go to the scanlation group's website for the manga I read and either download or read directly from them. MH's job has always been and will continue to be to serve as a hub for these groups to come together and promote new project, discuss current projects, and work together as a community to provide for the masses.

i think some of the mangas will be translated but no one can read it or you have to buy it entirely man that is just BS!

FINALLY..

.. I can stop reading mangas! I really need this kind of sudden stop to free myself from mangas, TVs, FB, onlinegaming, smoking.. because I cant stop it by my own will =(

Thanks =)

Ah, what sad news. Thanks for all the time that has been then Mangahelpers. Good luck in the future! :)

This is the worst news ever!!! Well it can't be helped...where will I get my updates now? :(

im sorry ithink u are coward.. why must affraid with Idiot Japan's Digital Comic Association..altought we download free scanlation in here its not mean we not buy legal manga in my country ( indonesia ) ..im always support Oda sensei im alyways buy every volume one piece manga.. and many our ppl buy legal manga too..
i think Japan's Digital Comic Association its full with idiot and stupid ppl.. are them not understand how many times we must wait our fav manga release in our country?its very very long time and with horible translation..
very sad for u Mangahelpers..
just WTF for Japan's Digital Comic Association

FFS JUST GO ON A RUSSIAN SERVER WHERE THEY CAN'T TOUCH YOU NO?

What? I think you should continue until you receive notice of legal action. They can't take any legal action without asking you to take it down first. Until they ask you, I suggest you continue to host and do a great service to the scanlation community. I can't believe you'd go down without a fight like this!

It's sad but was always inevitable.I do hope,however, that foreign publishing companies raise their standards because of this.The town i live is only on vol 28 of Naruto and 23 of Bleach. I think when Viz decided to release 4 volumes per month of one piece,it was influenced by sites such as MH.

Yup i saw this coming too....

this website was my Bf4ever in the last couple years but i guess without scanlation theres nothing to do here:(. I really love this site and it sadens me to go. I live in portugal and we hardly can find any manga for same and the one we can find is so outdate that wants to make you puke.

sigh, their finally laying down the law
saw it coming, but didn't want to ....

i only just joined, and not for the scanlations anyway (just to talk about stuff, cuz i like talking) so im not really missing anything anyway, cuz there are so many others scanlation websites out there.

I would just like to add how much a lot of people, including myself, respect MH's decision to pull out from hosting scanlations and raws. I mean, there is no reason for it to put itself through that kind of mess and to be ridiculed considering that this place, as the name suggests, is to help people with manga by allowing them to explore their favourites and learn about new ones. As much as seeing an update saying that new chapter of my favourite manga is out, as much as I enjoy reading the weekly discussions, theories and reviews (sometimes even writing them :P).

Beyond TV Shows, Movies and anime, manga is one of the very few creations where the idea of a community really works. In most it is a community to share, send and receive (be it through the different P2P platforms). MH really has been a place where a community got involved with each other and provided us translations, made us understand the manga and even gave us the power to discuss our ideas and propose our theories. It is the language that allows us to celebrate this wonderful and unique creation.

My resolve to MH has certainly been strengthened by this decision and even further I am still looking for ways that I can get more involved in the MH community as I truly have come to consider this place to be the best reason to have an internet connection! Furthermore, the announcement of the OpenManga project really is an exciting and bold new venture that is getting lots of people excited about the new direction that Manga is taking (certainly better than the anime one ~_~).

All in all, great great effort MH! Well done and my best regards!

Nasuke

I guess i can keep getting on Info about mangas, and shoutouts, and just find them somewhere else.

No biggy.



I hope.

This is just the beginning of MH. Openmanga will start a new era.

that is..now mangahelpers have no meaning..

well this is rather disapointing u should get these dudes to back off yaknow? i mean without manga here their aint realy a point to this site no more? kinda lame how they come after scanlations now. i mean personaly i wouldnt even read them if the morons who get paid to make the manga english would make all manga avilibal in its orignal format and could do it fast it cant b that hard to mke it ready faster if the peeps online can do it in a few hours it shouldnt take months to change the launge and sell it. -.- i blame the stupid politics that make them have to redraw some stuff and edit others the reason my country dosnt have such a big manga base as japan is because they kiddyfie everything -.-

Here's an idea: MangaHelpers can keep hosting manga just as it's been... and if legal action is taken, ALL you naysayers who have left "You're just giving up?!" and "You have no balls!" comments can pool your money together and pay the millions of dollars of the lawsuit!

Nice and simple, right? :D

You guys are rich out the ass, right? ;D

SAD... SAd... Sad ... sad... RIP Mangahelpers that we loved.

I wonder which community will take the torch left behind by Mangahelpers... :(

dammit . . .

:( well may be is better for this way, I guess so

sad to hear

sad indeed but can't say this wasn't foresaw, anyways it will just go back to what it was before don't really see a problem with that ^^

Not necessarily an lol situation but I can't see this site being alive much longer aside from discussion post releases theres not much left to do here

It's pretty sad it had to end up like this, I hope mangahelpers will still remain the same (community wise)... guess it won't, no more discussions after each new chapters, no more new series to discover online...

Anyway, thank you for all you have done, and all that is yet to come.

Can't do much about it. The Japanese internet police is pretty hardcore, they arrest you for uploading a minute of commercial content on youtube.

I guess one way is go torrent. Perhaps, torrent with txt file containing links to megaupload or direct dl.

I understand 100% but nothing is going to change for most of the users. People who know groups and enjoy their work know exactly where to go to find it. Now I am a forum troll, I basically take part in discussions and what I enjoy most about this site is the spoilers. :P So for a lot of us very little changed.

Official scans take ages to be published, and some parts of the world never gets any manga. Online manga reading is the future and someday book publishers will succumb to it.

I agree. Thanks for everything MH, it's been a blast. You guys are awesome, and I still hope that you'll be here for the translator part! You are crucial for everything, even if you don't host. :D

i am sure you guys are taking this too seriuos, i mean it clearly says "JAPAN's Digital Comic Association" so they have no right to do anything with mangahelpers unless they have some kind of agreement with internet providers from the country that mangahelpers is being hosted, i think they are trying to close the japanese providers, i mean if they are closed how else would outsiders would get em... so Mangahelpers is not their target

Wish publishers would rage much more about their mangas not being released in my country. ^^

I mean, i understand their issue that people don't buy their stuff and read online instead, but for people like me they might age and die before their desired manga gets released in their country. There's no choice but to read those online. :(

Thank you very much MH, well it's still saddening.. oh well, I owe MH a lot and would still be here. :)

Pft. Everyone saying MH is selling out are bone-heads. This isn't selling-out. This is them avoiding jail-time and doing the right thing. If you'd like, why don't you lot create your own illegal website and see how it goes? See how hard it really is to maintain such a website like MH, or like onemanga or like any other manga website.

You think MH cares about the 90% traffic, when most of those traffic were just from lurkers and downloaders anyway? MH has always been a community website which started off with the idea of translating for the media. It grew into a forum where people discuss things, and the 90% came along just to download and not care.

I honestly doubt they'd miss that 90% in a beat if they still have people out there with a love for manga and discussing it daily. That's what this community was all about in the first place. Many of you probably didn't even know that.

Bye to all the people leaving because of this. :)

I'm a little skeptical but I don't think this will be so bad.

Manga scanlations shall survive. We will just go underground. We must now bid Adiue to popular sites. So long manga scanlations... for now.

Itunes for manga huh?. Well I miss the old limewire-ish mangascanlations where i get everything free but, hey, I guess good things end.

Quote:
do you want to be responsible and the one who's having the court invitation in the mailbox? If you didn't get the news: they gonna go to sue site heads internationally, not just warnings.
---------

I respect the decision to stop hosting this stuff but in the end it'll just drop into being more of a thing that is transferred via bittorent. The torrent sites will then be hosted on servers in Sweden where they can't sue them because it isn't illegal to host links to torrents in that country. Then they'll have to waste massive amounts of cash to track downloaders and if the music/video industry wastes the money they do on that I doubt these publishers will have that option.

Sorry capitalism, you lose.

So we won't be able to view mangas online anymore...
thats very sad ε-(´・｀) ﾌｰ

Finally, someone not so mired in old concepts and 'the way things are done' to be innovative. The ones who really suffer from new technology are 'the middle man', publishers are resisting the change because it could potentially ruin their business. Business should be fluid, catering to the changes in consumer habits and wants to keep business going. Many do... cell phone manufacturers, games, software, and most electronics. But publishers seem unwilling to try new things, far too buried in their own preconceptions to understand that they are so deep 'in the box' that thinking outside of it is impossible for them. Meanwhile, original content creators will find innovative ways to bypass the middle men who take a cut of the profit.

Copyright... an excellent idea, concept, or belief dragged to the depths by outdated law. Seriously, there was a time where copyright law was excellent and applicable, like when copying a book or music involved either hours and hours of manual labor or thousands of dollars worth of equipment. But now, any dude in his basement can make a copy with ctrl-c, POOF... copyright law violated. Current copyright is simply not going to hold up in the digital age, but the economics will have to change before the law ever does.

ok guyz im new to this manga helpers i just singed up today , can someone tell me watz going on??

On the positive side... we did provide a large channel for members of the Japan's Digital Comic Association to reach a large community and their work more well known... I guess the party just has to stop somewhere... it was probably acceptable to them when the actions of scanlators and websites like these could help these companies promote and generate more income but... after their work has reached out to a lot of people around the world and becomes well known, this manga for free idea starts to eat away the companies' maximum potential profit...

Personally I like websites like these... I will not be lugging all of my favourite mangas around with me when I fly between UK and HK, which is why I find these websites useful (Yes, I buy my manga and I prefer certain language editions over others). Not only do I not have to carry over 30 volumes of Tankoobans around with me, I also can keep up to date with weekly releases rather than 3-5 months of waiting before a new Tankooban volume to come out...

I'm not so sure what I will do now that websites like MH are now closed. I'll have to think of something else to keep myself occupied...

Probably... I should learn Japanese and think about moving over to Japan to continue to pursure my passion... otherwise it'll be many years before I'll be back in Asia and by then I'll probably be bored to death...

Sorry, ranting over... just a shame that we cannot read up to date manga everyweek anymore...

Well, when MH stops doing the things that made it MH, what does it become? A fansite or something? Pass. I'm sure we all came here for a reason, and that wan't to be a fansite.

If you wanna blame someone, blame the localization companies who refuse to localize the things I want to read. I'd gladly have bought them, but sadly I have no access to them outside of scanlations. Thus - not the scanlator's fault in my case. Now if only the publishers would realize this...

Man! that fucking sucks!

Worst part is, I don't have anything to do with translation, scanlation or any of the sort, but you guys provided a great deal to my interest in many of the series I'm following now, so I'm grateful for that. Gonna miss you helpers!

... Anyway,this is me, signing out of the website. Good luck to you all!

-N-

I'm not really sad about your decision, it's simply that you do not have any other options with the current copyright laws, which are outdated.

In ages like these copyright-holders should have several obligations and other restrictions so that they would not be able to abuse their rights. This is mostly due to the actual publishing companies who act like they own the entire material when they have only rented the rights to publish and translate the series.

For example trademarks have a nifty little rule about that obligates the trademark holders to protect their trademarks. If they allow someone to get away with a violation of the trademark, they lose the protection of the law.

This particular piece of law should be implemented into the copyright laws as well because of the erratic behavior of the publishing companies.

Currently the author of a series holds all rights to their work, they own everything from the characters to the plot to the publishing and translation rights. When for example a mangaka signs a publishing deal with for example a manga magazine like WSJ in Japan, the author is simply renting away the right to publish the story (Of course the magazine and company has the right to stop publishing if the series does not sell but in doing so they usually break the contract and have to pay a fee or a fine to the author because of it).

Licensing on the other hand is something that is usually done between the original publisher and the second hand publishers who want to sell the series on a specific language in another country. These deals are usually done between the actual companies but the author is often consulted as well just to make sure there won't be any issues later.

As I said before about the erratic behavior of the publishers, it usually concerns these licensed second hand companies. By the current letters of both domestic laws in different countries and global copyright contracts and regulations scanlations and hosting sites are illegal and the people who scanlate or run such sites are criminals.

Viz Manga for one is a company that is known to have hired scanlators and translators to work for them which in essence means they have been rewarding criminals for their crimes instead of prosecuting. There are other companies who have done this as well.

TokyoPop is notorious for another type of behaviour. Months ago they demanded that Onemanga.com was to remove all their licenced series from the site. Then a few months later they said, we don't have the time to deal with your site at the moment, you are free to do what you want with our series. Again they allowed criminal activity to continue yet again months later they were allowed to take actions against piracy.

There are plenty of companies who are quilty of either one of these inconsistancies or both but sadly while they may break several other laws and moral and ethical codes in indivitual countries, the copyright law does not hold any sanctions for the copyright holders when they actually allow the criminal activity to continue.

It defies common sense. By common sense if you allow one site to continue a crime or if you reward criminals for their crimes then you are giving all the other sites and criminals a silent approval and permission to continue abusing your products.

Like I said it isn't the author who does the bad decisions but the publishers so the copyright laws would need to be updated and tightened to make the publishers more responsible. The author should never lose protection for their works but a publisher should not be allowed to encourage crime.

The new law should hold a clause that requires the publisher to take action against every single offender they know about and should they decide not to or worse give a silent permission to continue the criminal activity then they should either lose their publishing deal completely (Or be banned from publishing anything ever again, after all a company that allows criminal activity to continue is guilty of aiding and abetting) And/or they should lose protection from all their licensing contracts as well as lose the right to persecute any offenders.

Of course this will not happen with the modern legislation or court systems because there's already too much corruption where big bucks talk and bullshit walks. But it's still nice to hope that the power that the publishers have would be balanced by actually setting them up with limits and requirements.

~Dan

This is extremely disheartening. I love reading manga and many of the titles are not available in where I live. I can only rely on websites like MH who provide scanlations.

It's really sad ...

This is a kind of sad news but I think it will happen to every site hosting this kind if thing. Recently two other sites I used to read online removed everything they had.

me too...thanks manga helpes