"a) several books have completely missed translated lines" believe me man, I was pretty pissed off by that. It was the first time I bought a manga and when I got home I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I honestly can't remember the title of the manga since it was a long time ago (probably 5 or 6 years ago) but it did happen. And I do understand what you say, scanlation does affect the income of a publisher but what I don't agree is the percentage the companies say they are affected.
For example, I have bought every single volume of Black Lagoon (why did it have to go into hiatus mode... WHY
? and thankfully they didn't have typos or mistakes, that I remember seeing) but I refuse to buy manga such as High-School DxD (just to give you an example) because this last title only relies on echi situations and has a weak plot. Let's say tomorrow all the scanlation was over, would I buy any other volume besides the mangas I already know and which I already support the author? I would honestly NOT buy anything else. It would actually work against new artists really because I learner from personal experience that one should always "try" what they buy before hand (bought the war of the worlds dvd with tom cruise and after watching 30 minutes I was already bored... at the end I was questioning myself why did I even buy that... "thing").
All this to say that the authors have all the right in the world to demand their work not to be made available for free online but do they expect someone to simply go buy his/her work without knowing what they can expect? Because we all know how covers can be deceiving, right?
I think the manga industry needs a severe change in mentality because what's been making them lose ground is their fear of taking the next step towards the internet distribution. Someone already said something like an itunes app to distribute manga, I also said something like a huge manga reader site but one thing is for sure, the ones that have much more to lose with this move are todays manga distribution companies because they aren't needed anymore. I mean, think about it.. they are basically the middle man nowadays and they are the ones that get the biggest chunk of the profits yet, with the internet, they are kinda expandable since it allows for a bigger reach with lower costs. All it takes is the manga author and a team of IT experts to maintain the site (I know I'm being very simplistic but the truth is the author would have a bigger importance with this new distribution system) and it would leave litle to no space to nowadays middleman.
As for A-team scanlation group, and risking being called a fanboy, I agree with their attitude on this issue. Sure, they are also committing an illegal action, by scanlating the manga series, but they aren't the ones making a huge profit out of it. Hell, if it weren't for the big online reader sites I'm pretty sure many of these artist wouldn't find their titles so easily around the internet and yet we see someone like Prozess (or what's his name) calling me a hypocrite while he supports an online reading site (batoto)... how ironic is that? He is supporting what's basically killing the profit of the authors... oh, the irony...
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Quote from Kaitentsuki
And why are most/all Uchiha so quick to nerdrage with hatred?