I have thought about this too. what sense makes to be targeting yaoi scanlators groups. is a so small market and the gruops in general are so respectull, in my case for example, I'm a subcripstor of FFXI online and square enix is in the coalition, if i get angry and drop the game (and I'm getting reallly angry) they will give up in 240 euros that I spent along the year, I highly doubt they license 30 yaoi tittles in a year....Why are they doing this even when the damage could be bigger than the profit¿??

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That's all Folks

Heh, if Miyamoto Kano boycotted Libre, that would just make my day. Her stories are a level above most of the other stuff Libre publishes anyway.

Honestly, I can't help but believe that the first genre to be targeted is yaoi because us girls have always been the easiest to push over. Libre, and certainly the coalition, hopes to make an example of us as a genre to the whole scanlation community. Still, all in all, Libre's sales will be damaged greatly by this because, if anything, yaoi readers are loyal to their communities. For the most part...

In any case, as a scanlator for one of these groups, I'd urge you not to panic. We live in the Information Age, after all.

This is a very good point. It makes sense that they would hit upon a small niche to make examples, but what they've utterly failed at is 1) shounen/shoujo scan groups are not going to feel threatened when it's just yaoi groups hit, and 2) yaoi manga fans have always struck me as unbelievably willing to purchase the official versions of scanlated manga. Eg. In the Amazon manga forum, the ONLY thread that is updated very single day with people buying manga is the yaoi one.

P.S.- Thanks for your hard work, and hope you guys won't get discouraged too! I still remember 4-5 years ago when CT was hit with a C&D and they're still around today.

Please they are all my favorite scanlation groups, please don't disband!

A lot of you people fail to realise you should be blaming yourselves instead of the publishers. The publishers can do whatever they deem necessary to protect their rights and interests. Unlike them, we are not the victims and have no right to be complaining or have any rights to enforce. They owe us NOTHING. The immature ones are those complaining the publishers are immature. Also it is absurd to separate the mangaka and the publishers in this context - do you honestly believe they're happy about people stealing their stuff?! I THINK NOT!

Miyamoto Kano + Liquid Passion. Look it up.

i'm an art student so I can understand what people mean about stealing the mangaka's work but as people said before, these sites are actually good with removing licensed manga when it comes out which is great-because in many cases, i'll buy it afterwards and have my own copy. I think the C&D letters are a bit much in the regard that many of these mangas (about 80% if not more) won't get licensed..which is a shame because there is some REALLY good, unlicensed stuff out there, and the only way to read it is thanks to these scanlation groups. And I agree with some of the points about it not affecting sales - japanese people, who can buy the magazines with the raw versions aren't going to stop buying them and start reading the scanlated stuff,therefore resulting in less sales,and vise versa, english-speaking people can't buy the japanese versions because a) most of us don't speak japanese and b) it can actually be REALLY hard to get a hold of some of the magazines, so it's not like the C&D letters will lead to an increase in sales over in japan either.. :/
i think if a mangaka demands that her stuff is not scanlated then ok, but i think many of them will be ok with their unlicensed manga being available to people in usa/europe etc. And like others, I also find it really weird that out of ALL the [almost] infinite number of manga genres, yaoi had to be the one REALLY affected by these things..
oh no! the IRC stuff, its been such a long time since I've used it by the time I get onto it successfully, i might be 80 hahahaha!
and the person who made the comment about not caring if its not yuri- well done on wasting around 5minutes of your life for the most pointless comment ever we'll look out for your posts in a few weeks when all the yuri scanlators get affected ^^

i hope they work this out successfully, i'm sure there's other options which can give the mangakas their due credit whilst the unlicensed mangas are still available in english? :S

I don't yaoi or yuri but if it wasn't for these english translators and scans i would have never even heard of manga the only reason i started to read manga is cuz i was watching the bleach anime i only found out about manga because of these scanlation groups so that sucks for those groups even thou i never heard of them

I absolutely agree.
A lot of people are being ridiculous.

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♪MONSTARR~ will eat all your cookies and steal your bishies~♪ Φ_Φ

Since you're only talking about the magazines, I think magazine sales aren't that big a chunk of the publishers' profit, especially for the mangaka themselves. They only earn whatever is left of the mag sale after deducting the costs for all the people involved (printers, editors, assistants, etc.). It's really not that much. The main income is in fact the book sales. A mangaka gets a fixed 10% of the profit. (There's also merchandise which they get a part of the profits for.)

So if you really want to support your favourite author by buying their works, don't hunt down those rare mags but rather get your very own original japanese copy of the released tankoubon (which are easier to find anyway) ^^

You can add Nakama and Blissful Sin to that list as well.

The funniest thing is , most of the yaoi mangakas would never ever have their names known outside Japan if it wasn't for scanlation groups . I believe most of the people looking for scanlations want to enjoy the story of the manga and not only the smex scenes . In any case , they ( publishers and mangakas ) are only losing potential buyers of original stuff , fans and possibly a connection with companies around the world who buys the rights to translate and sell their mangas in other languages . Licencing a manga that no one knows of is crazy and not all the mangas that are popular in Japan might be in other countries and vice versa . I could say the same about animes and the likes - Back in the 80's there was a tokusatsu called 'Jaspion' that was VERY popular in my country but it barely made any success in Japan .

As someone pointed out , they owe us nothing of course but I wonder how many bucks imports shops and the like make out of readers who by chance found out a scanlated manga and enjoyed the stories and bought the original one . . . I'm an example , back in 2000 I was so in love with X/1999 that I went to the import store and bought 10 originals and years later bought the other 8 , I'm pretty sure the woman in the import shop was more than happy to have me buying and I put some yenes in the publishers/mangakas pockets as well . I know more people who does buy the raw mangas if they can afford too and many other people are like that too . If it weren't for scanlations I would never know that manga and wouldn't give the mangakas a penny .

Japan is an oyster and shunning out people who are interested in their culture won't help them at all to improve sales . As people have said already , most of those works will never get released outside Japan due to high costs to buy the rights anyway . And if only the popular stuff are licenced then we'll get stuck with only those pop crap and lose the opportunity to really find something that we would enjoy more than what is popular . Speaking of manga/anime as a whole I rarely fancy the popular kind because most are just too plain simple and doesn't have a good story , only 'cool' scenes and characters acting their 'coolest' .

So yes I think it's their loss if those and possibly others scanlation groups ceases to exist .

the whole mess about many publishers joining in to stop scanlations was started because of online reading sites and a certain app which can read manga from those sites in iphone and others. some people don't think scanlatons are illegal that they read them even in public places with laptops or mobile phones. thus it become so wide spread so that manga haters and others can easily get their way and publishers noticed it too. i even suspect that the shota/loli problem in april was started because someone thought the april fool joke on manga traders was real and reported to those child welfare organizations how shota/loli was bad.

I agree 100%. I would never ever be aware of manga, let alone any particular genre but for the scanlation groups. I highly appreciate their works and I will support them as much as I can.
I never liked popular licensed series. Because along with their unlikeble shoujo-like, plain storyline, the translations suck: It is like watching dubbed anime.