so you actually hope that all 3 companies for VIZ goes down and.....what would that do? Try checking out all the titles they release and you will understand how big they really are....jeeeezzz..

I'm quite happy megauplaod went down....and about that girl well she can't still get that damn shoujo she wants because no one is translating it. The End.

Another thing, the thing about everyone knows that scanlation is illegal...nah many people and ever groups thinks that it's okay to do it as long as it's not licensed in english....which is WRONG! It's illegal to do it as soon as it's released in the country where it's first released aka Japan. I just explained last week to a guy in my Japanese class, much better than me in japanese btw, that it was illegal and he wouldn't acknowledge it until I showed him how it really worked.

This is how sad the world is.

We the scan..well the scanlators just try to follow the gray middle line that says we do it cuz we love it and want to share the love with others so they can love it too. The companies shut their mouth cuz it was kinda "okay" and they got commerce here and there for free. Then we got online mangareaders and it became a problem...well not at the beginning but when the companies sales began to fall they got angry and tried to stop this process without anything happening. Now they just did it their way...hard to get it, right? Try putting yourself in their shoes and try understanding how you would feel if someone did that to your income, not to mention the staff you had to fire cuz people weren't buying your crap anymore. Yes, the world sux but that's how it is.

well if that continues and people keep making money then one day the companies will act in such a harsh manner than the next one who does it will go to jail. Kinda like how they did in Singapore and anime

Word!

The less the companies take the less their workers get. Not to mention how will they compete with scanlators who takes nada (in most cases)?

Salute to all ur works, Mangastream. I will wait for ur new series.
And wow to all these philosophy talk.
I guess adult have their reasoning. But i guess n i hope i wont turn into 1.
*well, onto my next manga to read*

When the sales dropped they should have stopped and think what made them drop. And the most significant reason was the quality of th series in itself. I'm completely stunned on how many series receive the green light to be published since all they have is echi and not a single hint plotwise...

And those that keep saying piracy is the thing to blame for the dropping in sales no nothing. If it wasn't for scanlator, for example, how would many of the people that now buy viz's translations know about those shows? And another thing, if it weren't for the scanlator groups Viz wouldn't even be here today because manga wouldn't be known outside of japan/korea region.

And one more thing, that I keep telling, and most people don't care to stop and think about it. Many say piracy makes people stop buying the books but the truth is, most of those who download/watch manga over the internet, and don't buy the books, wouldn't buy them anyway if there were no scanlated version and this is what makes me laugh when I see all those big companies complain about piracy. If only they stopped to think that maybe, MAYBE many people don't buy the books because:
a) several books have completely missed translated lines
b) many can't afford the money they ask
c) people have an easier access to the goods trough the internet

They could solve all these problems if they made a site, like a big online reader, where all the authors could gather their work but this would bring a big problem to the companies that distribute the manga titles... They would have no reason to be around anymore so that's off the table... And that site idea could also allow for the manga to be free/cheap since, from what one could tell when looking at mangafox, that site would make up a good revenue.

So yeah, piracy has an impact on the sale numbers but it's way smaller than the big companies try to make it.

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You cant really blame the guy not everyone that likes manga or lives in the US know who VIZ is and thats the problem not everyone can read manga in their countrys because of popularity or availability.

So a lot of people turn to scanlation

"c) people have an easier access to the goods trough the internet"

That's all to what it accounts.
Once you got something for free, why would you suddenly changed to the version you need to pay for?

And, seriously...
Stop complaining about VIZ...
WE ARE IN THE WRONG HERE. Even if it's a grey-line.
They BOUGHT the damn license. They are in the right.
I haven't seen any scanlator going buy a license yet...

Basically all you care about is:
A) Free Releases
B) Fast Releases
C) Easy to Access Releases

You're just a hypocrite if you start making excuse, saying it's otherwise.

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so basically you yourself are a thief but you're trying to sound self righteous. that's all i got from your long ass rant.

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http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z204/kmacfarland/PonandZi .gif

wow, hold your horses there.. no need to be offensive just because your argument has run short.
I exposed my point of view but if you can't respect it then please refrain from posting an insult as a reply. And how am I being a hypocrite by stating the obvious? Don't know about you but when I started reading manga online I was underage and didn't have a way to buy it, because there was no store in my country that sold it, and the only way to buy it would be using a credit card, which I didnt have at the time. Btw, I could also call you a hypocrite because I am completely sure you read most of your manga online so why don't you stop "supporting" the scanlating community and simply buy all the series you are interested? Right, I'm the hypocrite here...

And I stand by what I said. If you believe piracy is the only explanation to the drop in sales then ok... I'll just tell you that ACTA will put that into test very soon. And when everyone realizes that piracy wasn't the reason, at all, for the drop in sales it's going to be too late because, by then, the internet will never be the same.

For your information, the publishers will eventually vanish, being only a matter of time until that happens. I just hope that happens before the manga industry goes beyond the salvage point. And by that I mean that the hype outside japan is going to fade sooner or later because most of the series that are being published recently have a huge echi content but are pretty much lacking in every single aspect left. That may be appealing for the japanese market but if they want to make manga profitable worldwide that's also something to take into account. If they only care about the japanese market they shouldn't expect the sales to go rampant because that simply won't happen.

To conclude this wall of text, and like I said before, the huge manga reader would pretty much mean the end for all the online readers, which I agree with since they are making huge profits with other peoples work (both the author and the scanlation groups), and it would solve the "where to get" problem. Ideally, both the author and the scanlating community could work together to make this happen because, like I said before, the revenue of said site would be huge and could even allow for the manga to be free/very cheap and by working together with some of the best scanlation groups they could also learn more about their "environment".

As a reminder, if all you can do is bash other people as a way to express your opinion please refrain from doing so because that makes most people stop taking you serious.

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I play pirated games until I have enough to buy it. I pirate a album until I have the money to buy it, then I replace it. I like supporting my favourite artists. The same thing for manga, and etc. If something is good enough, I buy it. Simple as that. I have nothing to say on this issue besides that.

all the stuff mainstream did was popular before they picked up...

I can blame him, and I do. I'm that evil, muahaha

I don't live in usa and I like manga...well I like hentai much more. So there are no problem when you can order your stuff from amazon. Oh wait he's underage now, right? I had that feeling reading some of the comments.

Still...I bet he doesn't even know the company that releases his naruto either (or any of the other titles he reads at MS), does that makes it okay to not know them when it's them who make the title? After all it's theirs not the scanlation groups property we are talking about.

Now the one million dollar question is:

Who's the bigger fool, the fool or the one who follows the fool?

I said the same thing to the dude from HP about their touchpad, do you know what his response was?

"That's the reason why stopped the production line. We are losing money instead of making them."

The companies are doing the same shit.

Many says that piracy is bad...well it is. I'll be true with ya...

I buy many manga titles I do much more than the people on this page...cuz I'm great.
I just read a lot more and I refuse to buy crappy end titles or titles I've finished and found them to be so-so. Now what would have done with I didn't know the crappy end or found them so-so cuz I didn't read them to the end?
I would have spent more money of them.

Before we start a huge convo about if we should stop piracy or not....no I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that you should always do something in moderation.
The reason the companies accepted us 5 years ago was that it was commerce for them when people got to know the titles and the companies released faster so you'd just buy the book since you couldn't wait that long for the scanlation group to release more. This is a good way to get your titles promoted and have people buying if they find the titles to be good, right?

The world we live in today, you don't need to find the titles, there are archieves all over the net to find them. You don't need to buy the title since the latest chapter is being released. You can still keep blaming you being poor, not have access or some other lame excuse which won't work in court if they get really angry and start making examples of people.

Now...what you don't seem to get which I keep repeating over and over but it's hard for you to read the posts:
THE REASON THE COMPANIES ARE TAKING THESE STEPS IS BECAUSE IT AFFECTS THEIR SALES!
It didn't do it before but these days with ads all over the place to tell you where to read your manga for free on the net affects their sales a lot. Now that you talk about mangakas and manwhakas....please know what you are talking about. The authors of the titles are also damn angry at the scanlators since they can find their titles on the net meaning online readers. A-team has more than often told online readers to stop on their site, through their watermarks because the dude who makes The Breaker has complained about this on his blog. He doesn't want to be famous by the likes of you and me so why do we keep doing it? Blood lagoon, Negima, berserk, black jack and many other authors are of the same opinion, they don't want to see their stuff on the net for free. They are losing money on it. They've been twittering curses on the net for the uploaders.

Yes, your excuse is that you don't know about it since you don't look into these kinds of news but they still exist. What gives you or me the right to cut in their income and let others earn on their stuff?

We shouldn't make this a world where we become too selfish and start giving a damn about people who actually make things for us to enjoy. That would be a sad world indeed. If you still don't get it, then you probably are one of those who don't get it no matter what since it's your way or the highway....exactly what the companies are trying to do since they got enough.

a) several books have completely missed translated lines <---- seriously? First time I've hearing and I buy lots of crap >.> I know sometimes, rarely, I find a page with a missing bubble but those are small and aren't even translated in the raw. Still it's much better than those shounen chapters where the bubble text has been copied to 2 bubbles since the translator forgot the bubble and the group just wanted to be the first one to release the chapter.