Anti piracy war declared on scanlation sites by English/Japanese manga companies

[Davidizer13]

But I was extremely shocked to see that OneManga is shutting down. But I say, good job to them: way to comply to the law. I applaud you, though I mourn you.

If they really wanted to comply with the law, they wouldn't have started the site in the first place, let alone keep it up until the companies it was pirating from put the squeeze on it.

[blkmage]

I was reminded of this interesting tidbit this morning.

US visits to OneManga only made up about 25% of its traffic. That means that 75% of traffic to OneManga are from regions that are not affected by US licensing. In particular, the next 25% of visits are from Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Singapore.

And I think that this is something that's important that's always forgotten, and that is that US titles are not necessarily available in these other countries. And because of this, the debate on the legality and function of fan translations is often heavily US/North America-centric.

[Shao Feng-Li]

I rarely read manga online anymore, but that is a bummer.

[Bobtheduck]

The same thing that happened when Cruchyroll went "legit" All sorts of old, obscure, impossible to find became... well... Impossible to find. Onemanga was already on its way down, in effort to prevent this from happening. A huge percentage of their catalogue was already down. Even if manga publishers start doing ad based manga sites, it won't ever be the same again. It won't because of the clusterfudge involved with licensing, particularly when dealing with the multitude of nations out there wanting access to this stuff (even those that speak the same language... US, Canada, England, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand anyone? I bet there would NEVER be a site open to all of them, because they only license it for the US or something)... We'll never see a listing like Onemanga used to be. Ever again.

Thing is, even if this stuff were easily accessible in English in Korea, they still wouldn't be losing a sale from me. I don't buy manga... I'd read it in a book store, and not buy it. Same as I did before I found one manga. I may buy a SHORT SERIES I really love, but not the stuff I generally read week to week on onemanga. Paying 10 bucks for a book full of being shocked about EVERYTHING isn't a good use of my money. If Naruto were only available when purchased in the normal way, I'd just stop reading it. It's not worth it...

Not ALL of the manga repositories are down, though... That's all I'll say.

[blkmage]

I don't think Crunchyroll was ever as ubiquitous as OneManga. I can't say, because I've never used streaming sites for anime, but I've been able to find pretty much every obscure series you could possibly think of.

And that's basically what this is about. It's about reducing the ease of finding this stuff and setting that up as a deterrent, rather than going after the various groups that are translating the stuff. The really determined people already know their way around the Internet and already have alternate sources, while the casual reader will just stop and go do something else.

[Bobtheduck]

I don't think Crunchyroll was ever as ubiquitous as OneManga. I can't say, because I've never used streaming sites for anime, but I've been able to find pretty much every obscure series you could possibly think of.

Not sure if they were ubiquitous, but I've never again seen a site like the pre-legit CR. They had anime shows, anime movies, Japanese Dramas, Korean Dramas, Chinese dramas, educational shows, various asian movies, Asia related stuff from American and Candian TV... I've never seen a collection like I found at CR... To see what it became is just... sad (especially since I can't access most of it, not being in the US)

And that's basically what this is about. It's about reducing the ease of finding this stuff and setting that up as a deterrent, rather than going after the various groups that are translating the stuff. The really determined people already know their way around the Internet and already have alternate sources, while the casual reader will just stop and go do something else.

What manga publishers are behind this, anyhow? Is Shonen jump one? I just saw Shonen Jump's online manga attempts... Terrible... online volumes cost more (480 yen) than paper (380 yen, at least what I saw in Japan) and as of now, you have to view two pages on one screen, making it a bit difficult to read.

[Abi-chan]

That stinks. I like reading manga online. I usually buy the manga volumes afterward, too.

[blkmage]

What manga publishers are behind this, anyhow? Is Shonen jump one? I just saw Shonen Jump's online manga attempts... Terrible... online volumes cost more (480 yen) than paper (380 yen, at least what I saw in Japan) and as of now, you have to view two pages on one screen, making it a bit difficult to read.

I saw the big three (Kodansha, Kadokawa, Shueisha) on the list in the first post, so WSJ is owned by one of those.

[Fish and Chips]

While a subscription or ad-revenue based web-client for official Manga scans and translations is probably the surest bet to curbing piracy (not, however, stopping it), my only complaint is that there are so many Manga titles that will never be released over here, and by "Over here" I mean "In your country." I can't possibly think or expect Japan would endeavor to translate every single Manga in or out of circulation just to turn a modest profit. Similarly, there are other issues with domestic licensing differences.

Take for example my pet series I never shut up about, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is licensed by VIZ Media circa 2005, of which volumes 1-14 are currently available in print in English with volume 15 coming out in early August. Except that it's actually volumes 13-26 with volume 27 on the way because VIZ picked it up during the third arc, completely hand-waving the first two, and will probably finish with the third arc and be done with it by volume 16 (28) in December. In Japan, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is 80 volumes long, not including the SBR continuity which lengthens it to a whopping 100 volumes and running. I plan on owning all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure one day, but it's become clear to me VIZ has no plans to release it in its entirety, Japan would not officially translate the rest for a its comparatively niche English fanbase, and fan translations are, of course, technically illegal, which doesn't give me much room to do anything.

Perhaps a better example might be Fukumoto's works (Akagi, Kaiji, etc.), since I can guarantee with almost certainty they'll never be released commercially in English barring some sudden awakening interest in the Asian gambling circuit. Not to mention Fukumoto's universe being almost exclusively populated by very ugly middle-aged men, which doesn't lend it much marketability in our current industry climate.

What I'm saying is I can appreciate the need to crack down on the piracy of international licenses and certain popular series, and actually commend them for their efforts in reducing illegal circulation (definitely the removal of revenue-generating hosting sites). However, I think some modest concession should be made for the obscure titles translated by fans for fans.

[ich1990]

It always annoys me when companies try to crush a working business model in an attempt to get people to follow their outdated one. Rather than getting together and getting angry, this Digital Comic Association should have gotten together and made a legal version of onemanga, with all of their combined series available (in scanlated form until official ones are available). Then, follow it up by asking onemanga and others to kindly remove all series currently on the legal site from their own, and link to the official ones instead. If they don't comply (and most will) then you threaten and sue them.

There you go, Square Enix, VIZ, et. al. get their money back and fans don't lose anything or get upset. Scanlators have a place to put their work legally and the publishers get free labor. Oh, and there is still the original onemanga site for those series that will never get legally translated.

If you can't beat them, join them.

[blkmage]

Think about how long it was between the first inklings of digital music to the widespread acceptance of it as a legitimate business model and then a bit more if you want to get to DRM-free stuff. That was the American recording industry. Japanese publishers are probably a few orders of magnitude more conservative and unwilling to entertain the idea of switching to a new business model.

[Nate]

my only complaint is that there are so many Manga titles that will never be released over here, and by "Over here" I mean "In your country."

This.

I read one series that will literally never be released in America. And I don't mean "Oh, they haven't licensed it yet" or "If demand is high enough they might license it." I mean, quite literally, that the manga will NEVER be released in America. Shutting down these sites is kind of a jerk move concerning the series that aren't going to make it over here.

However, I think some modest concession should be made for the obscure titles translated by fans for fans.

This. Now how am I going to read Kamen Rider Spirits? :l

[Psycho Molos]

I think this would be bad for tight fisted manga collectors that are related to people that think that a personal library of books in general over a certain size is a "fire hazard" like me. I'd better get a move on and grab me the rest of the One Piece run on Stop Tazmo and Baby and Me too

[Rocketshipper]

aaaarg! this is so annoying. There goes Onemanga. And it looks like they already beat me to the punch. Bokurano is down!! I was actually going to go in and tediously save every single page of that manga before they took it down, but its too late now. *sigh* and the stupid official release of the series seems to be on a 5 YEAR schedule for bringing the series out, as there's a 7 month gap between volumes 1 and 2, and no news after that yet. *kicks manga publishers*

interestingly, <modsnip> doesn't have a message up yet about shutting down, like Onemanga does. hmmmm....

[Bobtheduck]

aaaarg! this is so annoying. There goes Onemanga. And it looks like they already beat me to the punch. Bokurano is down!!

I think Bokurano had been down for a while because the American publishers requested it. Same is true of the OTHER manga site I go to.

Off topic, but "no" is a separate word, darn it. Just because Japanese doesn't have spaces, English does, and there's no reason to treat particles as extensions of words... I call it Bokura no.

[airichan623]

If they really wanted to comply with the law, they wouldn't have started the site in the first place, let alone keep it up until the companies it was pirating from put the squeeze on it.

True that. However, they could have ignored the warnings and crackdown completely and kept on posting... some fansubbers have been just plain rude to the official companies.

I'm just bummed because (1) the manga of Kirarin Revolution is not available in English, I wanna read it, and now is not on <modsnip> and (2) the best argument for it is backed up by FullMetal Alchemist: when Brotherhood came out, I wanted to READ the ending before watching it (legally). My local library has all the available English volumes, which I read and will read til the end. But the US manga release will probably end AFTER the last ep of Brotherhood shows on Adult Swim. And that, my friend, really stinks for fans. Oh, and (3) my first anime was a fansub (Tokyo Mew Mew) on Youtube. The legal version had already been pulled from American tv, and the adaption was TERRIBLE. I had no idea it was illegal.

[AnimeGirl]

An easy way to up the sales of manga: MAKE IT CHEAPER!!!!

I mean, seriosuly, it's like $11 for a volume of manga at the bookstore. However, you can legally obtain it cheaper through Amazon Marketplace (even Amazon itself sells it cheaper, though when you count shipping, it's pretty close to the original price). But even though I can buy it cheaper from Amazon, sometimes ya don't wanna wait for it to be delivered, thus why I like buying it at the store! So just bring them down just a tad, maybe to like $7 a manga? I can deal with that! I also wish volumes came out quicker, I mean, if the Japanese are ahead in the story, and the material is there, it shouldn't take them MONTHS to translate it, or perhaps they do that just to make us wait. Oh well, if I learn Japanese, I can easily by the Japanese editions of the manga at Amazon XD!!!

But I'm not shocked they are finally tracking down on scanlations. As an artist myself, I can understand how it might feel to have your work put up somewhere without you knowing it.

[Yamamaya]

An easy way to up the sales of manga: MAKE IT CHEAPER!!!!

I mean, seriosuly, it's like $11 for a volume of manga at the bookstore. However, you can legally obtain it cheaper through Amazon Marketplace (even Amazon itself sells it cheaper, though when you count shipping, it's pretty close to the original price). But even though I can buy it cheaper from Amazon, sometimes ya don't wanna wait for it to be delivered, thus why I like buying it at the store! So just bring them down just a tad, maybe to like $7 a manga? I can deal with that! I also wish volumes came out quicker, I mean, if the Japanese are ahead in the story, and the material is there, it shouldn't take them MONTHS to translate it, or perhaps they do that just to make us wait. Oh well, if I learn Japanese, I can easily by the Japanese editions of the manga at Amazon XD!!!

But I'm not shocked they are finally tracking down on scanlations. As an artist myself, I can understand how it might feel to have your work put up somewhere without you knowing it.

From what I've heard, manga in Japan is a lot cheaper than manga in America. This is probably due to the fact that 60% of all books published in Japan are manga.

[blkmage]

A quick lookup gave: a volume of Bakuman, One Piece, or FMA for ¥420, Kimi ni Todoke for ¥410, issues of Weekly Shounen Jump for ¥240, and issues of Monthly Gangan go for ¥500.

[AnimeGirl]

A quick lookup gave: a volume of Bakuman, One Piece, or FMA for ¥420, Kimi ni Todoke for ¥410, issues of Weekly Shounen Jump for ¥240, and issues of Monthly Gangan go for ¥500.

100 yen is like 1 dollar, correct? I'm just rounding it off. If that's true, MAN THAT'S CHEAP!!!

[blkmage]

Approximately, yeah. It's actually a bit less, so ¥420 is just under $5 (about $4.8).

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

Since we've had all this talk of a "manga Crunchyroll", do we know how well RIN-NE has been doing for Viz, since they've been releasing it as it comes out in Japan? I'd imagine any hopes of that in the foreseeable future would ride on that.

[Strafe]

aaaarg! this is so annoying. There goes Onemanga. And it looks like they already beat me to the punch. Bokurano is down!! I was actually going to go in and tediously save every single page of that manga before they took it down, but its too late now. *sigh* and the stupid official release of the series seems to be on a 5 YEAR schedule for bringing the series out, as there's a 7 month gap between volumes 1 and 2, and no news after that yet. *kicks manga publishers*

interestingly, 1000manga doesn't have a message up yet about shutting down, like Onemanga does. hmmmm....

No, 1000manga is going down too, if you look at OneManga's forums, the post confirms this (Interesting to note that they use the same forum generator we do.):

http://forum.onemanga.com/showthread.php?t=86405

On another, much more positive note, and this was probably already mentioned, but the idea to have online scantalated manga legally is already covered. The extent to which it is covered is questionable, but Openmanga, a free manga platform website under development that claims to eliminate the illegality of scantalation, seems like a good idea. Read about it here:

http://mangahelpers.com/news/details/377

Most likely however, many manga titles will not be available at Openmanga for sometime. Probably not until Openmanga comes off as a roaring success, if that happens at all. At that point though, perhaps free online manga could be saved. So... does it sound good to anyone? I'm a bit hesitant about it myself. Seems like a lot could go wrong.

[blkmage]

Openmanga is essentially trying to do what everyone says that the publishers should do. They're offering a platform that pairs scanlators and publishers/authors to publish their works online. The advantage that a manga site has over an anime streaming site is that the barrier of entry to manga is much lower, so you have a better chance at to get amateur and doujin artists to sign on.

Thinking about it, this might be excellent for doujin artists, who aren't bound by the same corporate fears that publishers are. Most of the time, doujin works really are one-time affairs. They print out a bunch, sell them at a Comiket and that's that. Online distribution is a way for them to significantly lower the cost of publishing, while being able to offer their works for a longer period of time than a three or four day window at Comiket.

Whether this will get large publishers moving is a different story.

[Rocketshipper]

arh! I just realized...one of the series carried by Onemanga was Kingdom Hearts 2! The one that Tokyopop *stopped* releasing after only two volumes. *dies*. I'd only been able to find raws and totally random translations of later chapters on other websites. I was so happy when I saw post volume two chapters start going up on onemanga. And now its over...

[Atria35]

^ Thankfully, I have other places to read my unreleased and unlicensed manga. I will miss Onemanga for it's nice-looking database and ease of use, but they were far from the end-all.

[Bobtheduck]

My second choice site is down now, with no warning.

As for Manga in Japan, I bought some at a game store and it was all in the 380 yen range. I got a Ranma manga while I was there (it's a familiar series with Furigana, to help me learn kanji... Except a lot of the Kanji are rare, hardly ever used kanji because Takahashi's favorite pastime was making really complex kanji puns)

[MomentOfInertia]

They're not going to stop the scanlations, they're just fragmenting them over the net.

All that going to happen is that the centralized sites, like onemanga, that collect scalations will go down, the scans will continue to be made, they will just be posted willy-nilly all over the place, so that people have to Google for them all the time.

This will also lower the general exposure of manga to its readers, which will diminish sales, because making to people spend $10-$12 just to find out if something is worth reading will keep people from trying new or different stuff.
As opposed to now where I can hear about some thing and look it up online, read a few chapters, and find out if I like it almost immediately.

(rant/idea #1)

What they should have done is; keep the current sites up and talk with them, like "okay we're publishing this one in the US now, so would you pull all the chapters except for the first 3 and the last 2" thereby leaving just enough of a teaser to get people into it. And also have them put a link to the company's online store next to every page.

(rant/idea #2)

Or alternatively here is a list of webcomics that fully support there creators, these are comics that started as little projects by the authors that went from nothing to paying all the bills and some times more, and all of the profits of these enterprises come from ads and print editions of the comic.
Now, if this is what a guy can do with his blog, what can be done with the publicity power of Viz or the other manga publishers?
(end)

Also I think that having the printed version of the manga is way better than reading it online, I just can't always get the print volumes...
I would also like t get some of my favorite webcomics in print form too...

I'd like to see them go with the second idea but I doubt it'll happen:( We're more likely to see some variant of the first, probably a teaser on the company page and the latest chapters hidden on obscure blogs.

Oh, rant/idea #2 is the same thing as OpenManga more or less ... I should have read the page before writing all of this.

p.s. sorry abut the long rambling post.

[ich1990]

Yeah, onemanga had a nice layout and was quite speedy, but there are handfuls of sites just like it. I have even seen a couple of new sites pop up in the last couple of days, presumably to catch some of the traffic created by all of these other aggregators going down.

[blkmage]

They're not going to stop the scanlations, they're just fragmenting them over the net.

All that going to happen is that the centralized sites, like onemanga, that collect scalations will go down, the scans will continue to be made, they will just be posted willy-nilly all over the place, so that people have to Google for them all the time.

But this was their objective. The biggest problem is that the centralized sites are making money off of their work. The second problem is that it devalues their work. The third problem is that most people who visit OneManga are not the ones who are likely to buy anything.

They know they can't stop scanlations, nor is it in their best interests to stop scanlations completely. However, they also don't want to and can't just let their work be available that easily. And that's what this entire little exercise was. They are making it more difficult. They know that most people don't buy anything and they're just reading it because it's easy. Do you think people who are so lazy that they can't bother to look for scanlations are going to buy anything?

Not to mention the fact that a good chunk of scanlators despise aggregation sites anyway and refuse to let their translations show up on those sites.

Everyone speaks of these sites as if they're the source of scanlations when they're not. These sites are just a convenience. It's not like looking for stuff is hard, it's just more work than going to a site and knowing it's all there. I've gotten used to tracking fansubbing and scanlation groups for so long that I can't see why this would matter in the long run to people who aren't lazy.