QFT.

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Woah, woah, woah, cg, why all the hostility?


I'd like your case study and statistical information, pl0x

And grammatical errors don't mean it's a bad translation.

as for all the reader hubbub, oh well, tough cookies for us. We still will have scanlators. Do you have any idea how long and how much money it would take to track all of them down and issue a C&D? more money than their losing from piracy, thats damn sure.
The vast majority of sales money doesn't even go to the authors at the moment sadly. It goes to all of the middle men.

I don't mean to sound as hostile as I come off, but I can't deny I'm angry at my fellow manga fans.

I could go through the scanlations I've seen in the past but it would be a waste of my time, even if I prove that official translations can (and are often) better I have better things to do tonight.

I also can't deny that it would cost more money to start persecuting thieves but that still doesn't make it right. Just because you can get away with something does not mean you should go ahead and do it. It's not right, and I would think a fan of a series wouldn't fight so hard to justify hurting the things they love. I'm also interested in seeing where you get your information about most of the money going to the middle men, I haven't heard much on the subject and I'd like to see more.

I don't remember him saying the translations were perfect, just that they are higher quality and are closer to what the author was trying to convey in the original text. Putting words in peoples mouths doesn't help your argument.

Do you know how much the creators even make? Even the authors are starting to rebel against the publishers.

If they wouldn't ignore their fans then why would they pursue shutting down these sites which, what I gather from reading these posts, help people learn about the manga that they release and eventually buy, generating a profit. I personally don't buy manga and won't even if every viable source of reading online was taken down but I do buy manga related items from my favorite series. If it wasn't for scanlations I wouldn't have know about the series and wouldn't have bought the product.

Get off your high horse.

Ok,now I'm worried.
But I still think it's impossible to stop the distribution of manga/anime around,if one site like onemanga is closed,more two of that kind open.
that's what I hope though.

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actually, the music industry has been hit in some spots. some artists including christina aguilara and even the american idol cast cancelled their tours because lack of sales. and when i had a subscription to rolling stone magazine, there was an article that talked about decreasing sales from previous years because of pirating issues.
but the manga industry, and even anime, is by far a different scenario compared to the music industry. the two shouldnt even be compared.

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My horse is no higher than yours I assure you.

I don't mean to put words in someone's mouth, poor word choice on my part. But when compared to grammatical errors such as leaving the original Japanese sentence structure (which is what I remember the scans I would read would do) I'd say changing "shit" to "damn" or "I went to the store" to "I took a trip to the market" is higher quality. Which is what I see in the older translations. Not that all of them are perfect either, I will never claim that they are. No one can perfectly translate from one language to another, that's the reason they are two separate languages.

I don't claim to know what they make, and I ask of you the same thing I asked of kaerfehtdeelb, give me proof that they don't make much, or an article about the authors being angry and I would gladly change my opinion on scanlations stealing from the authors.

As for ignoring fans? Write to these companies and give your reasons that one manga and other manga viewing websites should be kept up and allow them to tell you their reasons for shutting them down. What they're doing is shutting down a site that is stealing many things they have legal rights to and posting them online. It's similar to a website that has bootleg movies streaming on it. As you said, you don't purchase manga and don't plan to so they aren't making a profit off of you. Who is to say that there aren't more manga fans just like you? Buying other merchandise doesn't necessarily negate the problem.

ETA: kaerfehtdeelb sent me a link, so I'm going to check that out right now.

Last edited by thecg at 4:04 pm, Jul 22 2010

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/06/22/top-mangaka-publi shers-are-the-ones-raping-us/

Here you go

And me buying merchandise does increase profit...

Gimme a break, the music and film industries love to blame pirates when the real problem is all the crappy music and films that come out. America is in a recession, we are not going to spend our hard earned money unless it really deserves it. It would be the entertainment industries that would feel the credit crunch first because that is one of the things people will cut down on. Its all lies propagated for greed.

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That's actually the same one I was sent! xD And I definitely have a different opinion on this after reading it.

And yes merchandise does increase profit, but even then it doesn't stop declining sales of manga which is what my main concern is. I feel that all of this (including the article) is just proof that we should be writing to the manga publishers and demanding change. Boycotting a product has no effect if you never say to the people you argue against why you are boycotting it.

Yes, there is no way in hell I am gonna wait half a year for my favorite series just cause some greedy publisher is taking their time so they can pile them into a collection and make more money.

The current model of marketing comics and manga is broken and is causing the downfall of the industry. You can blame the consumer's all you want, but the main people at fault here are still the publishers.


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I 100% agree and if someone wrote a petition I would fully support it. And I'm not boycotting buying manga its just to expensive for me to buy >.>

And that's certainly something we could add to it. If we all call for a reform in the industry or maybe ask for a legally approved version of one manga or mangafox then everyone would agree upon it.

I think it was DMP that had put its titles online for a monthly fee... (Though I don't believe those were new releases, just older scans.) I can't remember.

If everyone in this thread even were to contact them and write your complaints in an e-mail to the publishers the number would be enough to warrant their attention. And then if you were to tell a friend or two and they tell a friend and etc. If the problem is as great as everyone has been saying it should be no problem at all to bring the publishers attention to it and fix the problems. Though nothing happens over night.

http://www.viz.com/about/contact/
http://www.tokyopop.com/corporate/contact_us

ETA: http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=19904 A thread made for the purpose of asking people to contact the publishers so we don't over run this post.

Last edited by thecg at 4:40 pm, Jul 22 2010

I wish i could buy manga, i would go broke pretty soon, but i can't because the country where i live doesn't have a big market for it. And if i can't buy it from amazon or whatever then what should i do? It's not as simple as some people put it. Plus, these big online reader sites shutting down means i will never have the chance to read more obscure titles. Will the publishers pick every single manga up? Of course they won't. Will they ease the process and establish a true international market? I don't see that happening either.Were it not for these kind of sites i wouldn't have known hundreds of manga and sure as hell i wouldn't have turned into a fan. I understand the need to make money, but if you diss the fans then i don't see what's the point.
Look at my case: should i forget about manga altogether just because the market does a terrible job?

Yaay, proaction! Though, yeah, I fully prefer in petitioning rather than boycotting. If they don't pay any time to the petitions then that'd be a different pile of coconuts.

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"If those two were my sisters, I would spank them while scolding them all night long. They would be forbidden to leave the house until they turn 18."
-Granpa (Hetakoi - manga)