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The Situation of Manga Hosting

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Post #535765 - Reply to (#535741) by Panda
Member

8:06 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 83


Quote
Editing is the serious drain here


Actually, it's not. Scanlators have to redraw the pages in high quality because 1) of problems with the raw scans (gutter shadows, dirt, blurry areas) and/or 2) removal of speech and SFX. When the editor for an English company receives the pages, they are 1) high quality scans with NO gutter shadows or dirt and 2) sometimes already missing the speech and SFX, because these are literally the raws from the original Japanese publisher. It is very easy for the English company to procure optimal quality raws from the original publisher/mangaka, so an official editor's job is much easier than a scanlation editor's job.

Furthermore, unless editors were paid on a per-page basis the way translators often are, then your whole minimum wage argument does not make sense. Minimum wage means you are paid the same amount per day regardless of if you edited 1 page for 8 hours or 24 pages for 8 hours. If I was getting paid to same to edit 1 page in high quality or do 24 pages in low quality, then I would hands down take the 1 page in high quality, and I'd imagine most people would feel the same way.

As for "good editors", I don't want to insult any editors here, but speaking from experience, it's hardly difficult to learn. If you want a guide, the one Storm in Heaven has is wonderful. With the economy the way it is, I imagine a lot of people would be willing to do this job instead of flipping burgers or waiting tables. At least you get to sit down and it looks better on your resume (eg. "graphic artist" or "computer design specialist" LOL).

The real costs are the licensing fees and whoever it was that did the crappy economics calculation and determined that MC = MR when P = $10. I think they need to sit down again and redo all their math and double check the price-demand curve because the current one does not seem to be working.

Post #535766 - Reply to (#535758) by drunkguy
Member

8:21 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 83


If they take MU down, I'm going to stop reading manga period. I currently drop hundreds if not thousands of dollars on manga (English and raws) because I can use the MU system to keep track of how far along I am, which are my favorite series, and look for manga of the same genre via the awesome search engine. As someone soon to graduate from university, I've had less and less time to read manga, and MU is the only thing that keeps my interest in manga alive because of how convenient it is. If MU is down, I will simply not have time to research which manga to read or continue reading, and probably give up on manga completely. I doubt that I'm the only one that relies on MU to keep our interest in manga alive. Taking down MU would be suicide for these companies because it's cutting off their greatest form of advertisement.

Post #535767
Member

8:48 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 4


saying that manga can go underground and the fight would play out like other file sharing has is wrong. music, movies, ect. nothing is really changed before uploading it anyone who decides too can upload files therefore its pretty much impossible to stop. the same is true for manga thats already been done by scan groups, its far too widespread for any legal action to kill it. the problem is keeping new manga and chapters being scanned, it takes a core of people who can translate to keep it going and if the coalition wants to hamper the scene it will strike at them hard eventually.
for things to keep on as they are the group of translators would have to stand under the pressure and not stop translating.... getting taken to court would set a horrible precedent but if they stop at request then companies will just request that all the scan groups stop then it is kind of pointless anyway. (yes i realize i left out editors, qc, cleaners, ect. in that rant but skills for doing those things arn't that uncommon a lot of people can do them, even if they couldn't do them as good as the people that are now)

in my opinion ideally all high profile targets would just shutdown now. (big online viewers, places where you can download lots and lots of manga) the people that do the translations would move away from release groups and just upload files with the translations in txt rtf files or whatever (would make the translators impossible legal targets, as far as i know in us law) and the actual release groups that would take it from there would move underground instead of all owning there own sites ect.

these things would make it many times harder for legal battles to ensue... in the end as long as translators are willing to translate (even if they just put the script up somewhere and don't affiliate with a release group) and someone uploads the raw somewhere (probably foreign upload sites) it will be impossible for the scene to ever really die..... but even right now all the series that are good arn't all being done because of lack of groups and mounting legal pressure and the scene going "underground" could cause a good deal of translators to leave. sad at the very least I don't see the scene getting out of this with the same number of series being translated... sigh. /rant

Post #535768 - Reply to (#535756) by drunkguy
user avatar
Member

9:45 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 28


I also don't see this as a problem since many of the new scanlators aren't really doing a very good job at it. No offense, but it bugs me to see how many unfinished series there are because someone decided to do one chapter and then decided scanlation was too hard.

Post #535769 - Reply to (#535695) by JustPassingBy
user avatar
Member

10:50 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 141


P2P is not as accessible as IRC, and from what i have seen in most circumstances the publishers are going after online manga readers and not groups (for now). if their crusade against Scanlation continues and they start going after groups manga updates could become a tool of the publishers. at that point it becomes almost impossible for the average person to find manga and they will have won. at this rate i think the best solution is to wait and see how far they are going to go.

Post #535770 - Reply to (#535704) by MewMan
Member

11:35 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 6


The only reason the copyright law in Asia is weak is because people actually buy and rent the manga. They don't have libraries here in Taiwan like they do in the US. For entertainment, everyone goes to a rental book shop and rents the volume or book for 30 cents each or less. And even if you were to buy a manga volume here in Asia, they would only cost 3 to 4 bucks USA dollars at the most. Used ane new manga costs like, 1 dollar. I've bought several series here and compared to the price in the US, they've at least saved me over 300 dollars.

The pricing in the US is ridiculous. 10 dollars a volume? Even a new paperback copy of the Catcher in the Rye costs less. No wonder they're not doing so well.

Post #535771 - Reply to (#535760) by bakasentai
user avatar
:D
Member

11:59 am, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 315


http://www.questie.com/manga/

honestly, a little google goes a long way. when there's a will, there's a way, and back in the day we never had http direct downloads. you learn pretty quickly if you're a desperate leecher ;x

________________
;D
Post #535772
Member

12:38 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 17


LOL!

I mean, scanlation IS illegal. There is no gray zone here. Even unlicensed does not mean "all bets are off, do whatever you want with it".

MP3 sharing is illegal, Movies and series sharing is illegal and some lawsuits were brought and won by majors. Did it stop the sharing?

Post #535773 - Reply to (#535767) by tesu
Member

12:41 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 17


Game sharing is very illegal and REQUIRES cracks which are far more difficult to produce than JPEN translations. Still they're usually out a wek after each major game release.

Sites openly distribute them anywhere.

Post #535774 - Reply to (#535765) by naikan
user avatar
Site Admin

4:17 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 162


Uh, sources please. Last I checked, it was per hour and editors had deadlines for chapters. And while some series have high quality raws, this isn't always the case.

Post #535775 - Reply to (#535772) by Hydex
user avatar
cy.fLaire
Member

4:44 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 6


The irony of the situation kills me slowly...... I want to read manga yet I have to support them taking it down...its not ok but its not like I can do something better... good thing I'm not a whiner... :/

Post #535776
Member

4:48 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 6


Does anyone have a link to an IRC guide for those of us who aren't tech savvy? I tried it in the past and was always banned because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I feel this might be futile. If the scanlation groups stop scanlating, won't be anything to download. Sure some will always scan the big series, but several groups who scan less known manga also quit.

Post #535777
Member

5:23 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 1


There are series i wouldn't mind buying even at today's crazy high prices (Seriously, $10-$13 per short volume for a series that might have like 20+ volumes easily?), but buying manga in the US just plain sucks.

1) Many manga, even popular ones, are not picked up by an English publisher and even if they are, there is generally a high amount of wait time.

2) Even manga that are completed in Japan are commonly dropped midway by English publishers, after you just handed them $13 X 10 of course, leaving you thoroughly screwed.

3) Obvious high cost.

I refuse to buy any more manga until #2 is fixed somehow (the easiest way being if you stop translating a series i've bought volumes of, i get a significant partial refund). A partial story is probably even worse than nothing. I could understand if the manga is dropped completely, but if it is finished, it is just wrong for an English publisher to sell me half of it and then tell me to screw myself.

Of course some of my favorite manga not being translated is another issue.

Post #535778 - Reply to (#535774) by Panda
Member

6:30 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 83


Sources: Friends who have been contracted as actual editors. You'll probably scoff at that because no one on MU can ever have this thing called "friends" and want to protect their privacy instead of giving out real names, but when you've been in scanlation as long as I have and have worked for that many groups, you get to know a lot of different people.

Never said it wasn't per hour. Just said that your argument based on per hour fails because if the publisher told the editor to do more or less pages in that hour, it doesn't change pay.

Quote
And while some series have high quality raws, this isn't always the case.

How about your source? They licensed this from the original Japanese publishers who do have the HQ raws. You're telling me that instead of getting those HQ raws with the licensing fee, they opt to buy and scan their own LQ raws? Right...

Member

9:27 pm, Jul 24 2010
Posts: 34


come on, do you think this will end easily. scanlation is like a drug, as long as there is raw and translator, as long as people like to share then scanlation is far from dead. yes, the community would go underground and laid low. No longer will people interested to make a mangareader sites or compiling all the release in one site, well at least for a year or two. One day another guy would be interested to do these thing all over again in a country unknown to us lol.
Once it started it wouldnt stop. A series that was dropped by a group would be continued by another group sooner or later as long as there are people that read those series.

Dont expect publishing companies today change their views, not in the long run. One day an unknown company will make online manga, cheaper or maybe donation based, and then those company will attract a lot of new mangaka and then boom online manga will be available everywhere. One day perhaps.

For now lets just keep ourselves low, the scanlator and leechers alike. It would return us to old days where people have to download to read and either use IRC or P2P.

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