Publishers To Collectively Fight Manga Piracy
The 36 member companies of Japan’s Digital Comic Association, Square Enix, VIZ Media, TOKYOPOP, Vertical, Inc., the Tuttle-Mori Agency, and Yen Press have formed an international coalition intended to combat unauthorized online manga distribution. “Scanlations,” unauthorized translations of scanned pages of manga or scanned and uploaded pages of commercially published translated manga, undermine “foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales.” The publisher coalition will initially specifically target 30 “scanlation aggregator” websites that “host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators’ expense.” The coalition will pursue legal action – including injunctions, statutory damages, and reporting offending sites to federal anti-piracy authorities – against sites deemed guilty of intellectual property theft that do not voluntarily cease their illegal distribution.
Source: Viz Media
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March onward, copyright/license holders, I wish you all the best.
Good thing I know enough Japanese to read RAWS!…in the super remotely case this actually succeeds sometime in my current lifetime, well, actually depends on what they wish to fight! Real scanlation groups vs sites that put everything to read online or download, with the later they have actually a good chance of succeeding.
They are on their right to fight, actually there are some really shitty online sites out there which need to die: ONEMANGA particularly.
Scanlations are similar to fansubs, they will hardly die no matter how much they fight. BUT in the remote case the do scare scanlation groups -at least momentarily- hope they dont cry like little girls when their licensed mangas for distribution in the US dont sell because no one knows of them.
Oh well, I will resume on learning at least 2 new kanjis a day to further increase my vocabulary 🙂 as I was doing some time ago. Seriously this is a really good way to invest time in your hobby and ultimately you dont have to rely on others, its not THAT hard, as long as you have the disposition plus while there are around 2000 kanjis with several readings the ones used on daily basis are not THAT many honestly.
1 hour a day and in a couple years you will understand a good deal easily. If you already know the basics just focus on increasing your vocabulary. If not the best way good be a beginners course and go on your own later if an entire course its not that appealing to you, but depending the person its not impossible to learn entirely online, even more if you have been a fan for a little bit and already grabbed a few things here and there considering you watch anime subtitled of course.
Square Enix don’t mess around. Look out!
There are far too many fans of both anime and manga.
Only when the thieves and pirates are expelled and jailed will we get any idea whether either is savable — here or in Japan.
Good luck with that sh-t. Has it worked for the music industry or Hollywood? Nope. Is it going to work here? They might shut down a few websites, but otherwise, nope.
Have similar efforts been truly effective in curbing anime fansubbing & piracy? Nope, but Crunchyroll seems to be doing well. I hope the anti-scanlation brigade has similar distribution models in place that can supplant the fan-translation community they seek to shut down, otherwise they’re not confronting the core issue.
The issue of pirating manga feels similar to when digital music was first pirated on Napster June 1999. Many consumers knew that digital music was the future, but the music industry didn’t jump on it. (Keep in mind iTunes didn’t start up until Jan 2001). Because of this, the music industry will never fully recover how much money they lost in revenue. If you don’t find a way to distribute a product consumers are craving for, they’re going to find their own way.
I remember several years ago a company called Antarctic Press’s offered their “Gold Digger” series in digital format on 2 DVDs. This got you most of the series up to that point as well as extras like desktop wallpaper, fan-art, and original never-released creator’s art…and they did this many year ago. Why doesn’t anyone offer this? If you don’t want to release the digital manga in a physical form like CD/DVD, then manga companies should have online sites that are easy to find and navigate to purchase and download manga.
To be fair though, the entire printing industry is crumbling (Believe me, I know. I studied Graphic Design for print in college and will unlikely ever find a job in it). We’re in this long transition where media like newspapers and magazines are phased out and digital takes over. Of course most of us know that tablets, like the iPad, will take over; but this will take several years. I think manga is being sort of caught up in all this too.
For the record, I fully support the publishers decision to go after pirated manga, but their in for a very, very hard fight unless they start offering alternatives to print that’s easy to find and purchase.