[Dream Zero]

The 36 publishers in Japan's Digital Comic Association and several American publishers are forming a coalition to combat the "rampant and growing problem" of scanlations — illicit digital copies of manga either translated by fans or scanned directly from legitimate English releases.

The coalition asserts that "scanlation aggregator" sites "now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators' expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales." Google lists one site on its list of the 1,000 most-visited sites on the web. An unnamed spokesperson for the coalition also pointed to smartphone applications designed to read such sites as an escalation of the problem.

The coalition is reportedly threatening legal action against 30 scanlation sites, whose names were not revealed. The organization currently includes Japanese publishers Kodansha, Shogakukan, Shueisha, Square Enix, and the Tuttle-Mori Agency, as well as North American manga publishers Vertical Inc., Viz Media, Tokyopop, and Yen Press.

The Newly formed coalition of Japanese and US manga publishers has indicated it 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 (although at least one major network is managed by a shady Chinese company), 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.

[SilverStone]

I doubt I'll be seeing more people in the bookstore. People will probably just be spending more time on the internet looking for privately scanned work.

[Na Na]

My.

[linnyu]

That's been going on for awhile............................................... a lot of groups are scared/went into IRC.

But I think they're mostly targeting aggregation sites. Personally, I'm not a fan of aggregation sites in general whether they aggregate comic scanlations or news articles (Huffington Post can go die.), so I don't really mind.

[SilverStone]

Huffington Post should be murdered.

[linnyu]

Drawn. Quartered. And dragged through the streets.

[lovepanicy]

what is that huffington thing?

regardless, this really made things much harder to deal with.

[PonPeriPon]

I'd have no problem buying manga if they could ever actually keep up with the releases.

Berserk scanlation at Vol. 36

Berserk official release Vol. 7
(if this seems outdated that's because I haven't followed manga for awhile; the point is still accurate)

Why don't they like, change their half assed business model to compete instead of trying to shut people down. Do they never learn? They aren't stopping anything, they're just opening markets for less legimate people to host these things.

I remember a few years ago when torrents were usually very easy to find, and clean. Nowadays the big sites are full of ads, and scams, and BS downloads. They're helping people make money rather than stopping the files from being shared. They're forcing us to become smarter and better at avoiding them, which we've shown the we are very very good at.

Is it really such a difficult concept to partner with these sites that already have the fanbase, and legitimize them? Without the overhead of printing they can charge a minimal price and see a return on revenue, while massively expanding their purchasing fanbase.
People deserve to be paid for their work, but the customer deserves to have their expectations met. Look at Hulu, great example of how things can be done to satisfy both parties. It's easy enough for me to use and I have no problem watching their commercials. I'm on the internet for the convenience it provides; give me a convenient, simple, cheap or free way to do things and that's all I want. I'm willing to support industries that cater to my needs, that's what good businesses do, not alienate their customers with fearmongering.

[linnyu]

I know some sites do follow the Hulu buisness model, but it's actually more profitable for most sites to continue doing things illegally. Ultimately, there are a load of licensing fees and middlemen to pay. Currently, most aggregation sites get most of their stuff for free and reap the benefits through advertisements.

It's illegal, but win-win for them.

[SilverStone]

The difficulty is that the Internet spans international waters.

It is rare that sites would bother to come clean, since when some scanlation groups discontinue because of licensing, fans seek out other, illegal ways.

[Dream Zero]

your way off....Berserk is like on 34 now.

released in october last year and english hits in august.

The manga gap is roughly six month.

You're way off base.

[yui-chan]

In France, the editors are more "understanding" because, they see what readers like the most in the different Translation Groups and take it ! I don't know if it's understanding what I want to say...

[lovepanicy]

you know, fact is, when fan read manga they like and want to get it released as book, they would request publisher for it. and when a certain number of fans make enough request, the publisher would license the series. scalation groups actually advertise the manga quite effectively. plus, the publisher would have a stable fan base for the products without much risk.
although it is true that a lot of fan are simply leechers but those leechers would not buy the book whether or not it was licensed, they would just seek other ways to fill their need. so it does no good to just shut all these scanlation groups up and would only end up harming their own revenues.

on the side, i see no real harm in sites earn revenues by ad. if the publisher feel threatened that it harm their revenues, they should be smart and taken advantage of it instead. I would be offended, however, if the sites charge for manga viewing and membership when they got their earning from scanlation provided for free by good will scanlators to fans.

[SilverStone]

That makes a lot of sense, lovepanicy.

[Fuzzy]

lovepanicy, on 01 July 2010 - 04:30 AM, said:

you know, fact is, when fan read manga they like and want to get it released as book, they would request publisher for it. and when a certain number of fans make enough request, the publisher would license the series. scalation groups actually advertise the manga quite effectively. plus, the publisher would have a stable fan base for the products without much risk.
although it is true that a lot of fan are simply leechers but those leechers would not buy the book whether or not it was licensed, they would just seek other ways to fill their need. so it does no good to just shut all these scanlation groups up and would only end up harming their own revenues.

on the side, i see no real harm in sites earn revenues by ad. if the publisher feel threatened that it harm their revenues, they should be smart and taken advantage of it instead. I would be offended, however, if the sites charge for manga viewing and membership when they got their earning from scanlation provided for free by good will scanlators to fans.

You know that's a really good idea. Publishers should take advantage of the all the fans going onto these manga viewing sites.

Crunchyroll has done the exact thing. They have rights to put up certain anime series and through contract probably get some money from it.

[Na Na]

Onemanga's going...

[Dream Zero]

Yep One Manga is in its final week.

[Dysthe]

OneManga was pretty careful about keeping licensed works off too. Unlike Mangafox... who only keeps the biggest licensed series off consistently... animea... which has no idea... and mangahelpers... who doesn't even try.

I miss the old crunchyroll though. They should more series and more ads. Most people would suffer through them.

[Na Na]

I did respect Onemanga a lot...Mangafox is alright (since it has so many different titles), but you are right Dysthe, their consistency isn't really the best. I'm gonna miss you Onemanga.

[linnyu]

It's always the sites that try to be conscientious that get taken down first.