Just something to point out:

Scanlation isn't always gray, in some cases, it's downright illegal. (darn my inability to type coherently) And it depends on the laws in your country and blah blah blah.

All manga is copyrighted and already licensed in Japan. The rights belong not to the mangaka but to the companies.


Just some thoughts about manga in general:

I don't believe the Japanese companies were overlooking the issue of scanlations simply 'cos they felt kindhearted or anything. They just weren't interested for some time, I guess, 'cos they might not have felt there was much potential in the English market. Their recent actions are more related to that of "profits" and over-saturation of manga market in Japan which led to the bursting of the "manga bubble". There was a massive decline of profits and in the recent years, some of the Japanese publishing companies have been "taking back" control of their "intellectual properties"(series published in English). Why? 'Cos they want to maintain a profit margin or even think they can pursue even higher profits.

They've been sending out C&Ds and going after manga aggreggrator sites 'cos many of them are generally companies that pursue old school form of doing business. That is: they must maintain total control of their properties and often will go ballistic, if anyone even dares to step out of line. It's all about ego, power and control.

And finally, just a note: manga = mostly a sweatshop industry in Japan where people crank out pages for little returns or in exchange for debt just so they can get their works published. At least 85% and possibly more of the returns, never reach their pockets and if they fall ill, their works get suspended.

I wonder if the Japanese publishing companies will still pursue that direction... oh wait! How could I forget? Tokyopop started it off already by paying translators a rate that kept declining over the years. And then, the other companies picked on this trend too and started paying translators super low rates and made them "proof their own text(which all tlers already do), edit the images and redraw the sfx, prepare margins for printing and sometimes, even QC". Yep, I guess that's it: the companies are just gonna follow that direction too. I suspect that explains why many of the J-to-E translators I used to know, refused to translate manga and used their skills for working in companies instead.

Last edited by VampireBanana at 2:55 am, Sep 22 2011

Not really. Check the watermark on mangafox and then mangahere. It should speak for itself then.

Though... technically, it depends on the definition. We could say it exists now...

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The Company
[b]Batoto

What exactly do you mean? I read Btooom! on batato and found the watermark visually distracting but not bad enough to not read it. And when you mentioned that mangahere had released its own version I went and checked on it. It looked perfectly normal to me, with their own watermark (but less obtrusive than the Japazai one). Are you saying that they took Japanzai's uploaded chapter and changed it so that their own watermark was on it (if that is possible with the software), or are you saying that they cleaned, translated, etc. the chapter separately?

Completely false. I know there are lot of preconceived notions about Copyright law, but let's not make things up.

Copyright is not limited to money. Just because you're not profiting does not make it any more legal. Translating foreign content is not illegal, as long as it's purely for personal use. The moment you do any sort of distribution of the content, you have broken Copyright Laws.

If you're lucky, you might get away from a lawsuit for downloading copyrighted materials that were translated and not available for sale in that language. However, if you are distributing that content, a Fair Use defence will not protect you.

What are you talking about grumpy?

Dragon&Fly Scans

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"Officially, this machine doesn't exist, you didn't get it from me,
and I don't know you. Make sure it doesn't leave the building."

I'm getting to the point of I'm just gonna share with people i know and like and let them do what they want with it (direct peer-to-peer sharing) instead of releasing things in the wild. This is stupid and dangerous.

It seems like they are an "in-house" scanlation group for mangafox and mangahere.
The address to the readers are part of the watermark and the dragon&fly site links to them as well.So they're technically real but questionable nature.

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Mangafox and other online readers are capitalistic in nature. So, the only means to thwart their short-sighted goal of maximising profits is to go after their readers and advertisers.

Since some groups are insistent on effetely using unsightly and annoying watermarks in their releases, I'll propose a watermark that will be infinitely more effective at garnering results than merely asking the reader, "Don't mirror our releases!"

First of all, advertisers have terms and conditions in order for a site to have an account with them. Wholesome, family-oriented advertisers are especially picky about their ads appearing on websites that advocate profanity and adult imagery. Even among the more risque advertisers, there is certain content that they do not want to be associated with, either.

Considering that the average anti-intellectual individual is unable to distinguish fiction from reality, the type of imagery that would work the best would have to be drawn imagery of a taboo subject. Out of the list of taboo subjects, the one that would arguably strike the biggest nerve might be drawn imagery of explicitly underage characters in sexual situations.

So, for example, a watermark of a drawing of a visually underage loli character from an H-manga would effectively cause a reaction among advertisers and readers. Not many profitable advertisers would want to have an account with such a site, so the site is forced to do the following:
1) Manually remove the watermark from the page.
2) Copy the translation and edit it in a scanned chapter of a manga without the watermark.
3) Remove the offending page with the watermark from their site.
4) Change advertisers.

Also, since a lot of readers believe sites like Mangafox actually scanlate the manga hosted, this would cause the reader to believe that sites like Mangafox are immoral for associating itself with what they believe to be drawn "child porn".

Anyway, this is just a suggestion, since I'm tired of watermarks, and the suggestion in the opening post requires the ethical cooperation of a vast sum of people who care about very little. The poster, cmertb, also proposed that scanlators compete with online readers by using sites like Batoto, which might also be effective.

Many scanlators websites actually have their own manga readers on their own websites now, hosting only their own stuff. Its less convenient since you have to go to a bunch of different websites, but its better than using mangafox. Not all scanlators do it, but I have noticed a steadily increasing number.

On another note, do websites still make revenue when you have ad-blocked their ads? I read somewhere once that they didn't, but I have no notion if its true or not. If it is true, I suppose everyone could become super-leaches and block all mangafox ads while reading their manga at the same time.

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I suggest mangaupdates having a new link to the scanlators: "manga reader".

The main reason why people don't use mangaupdates, is that they don't want to do extra clicks to browse through the sites of scanlators. The only good reason to use aggregators, is that they have everything in one place.

Those extra clicks count, a lot. If you reduce the number of clicks necessary to get what is looked for, you exponentially increase the number of people who use a service.

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Member of FoOlRulez and head coder of the FoOlSlide project.

That was a really long explanation, but I like this one.

So your solution is to cut off the nose to spite the face?

What do you think is more problematic: that a site is hosting your work without permission, or scaring off your entire reader base because of intentionally distasteful watermarks?

They're not our reader base, they're Mangafox's reader base. They don't come to scanlator sites, they don't talk to scanlators, and they couldn't care less who the scanlator is in the first place.


I like this idea quite a bit. Groups that don't have their own readers can link to Batoto or any other online reader of their choice. And this seems like something easy enough to implement. woxxy, you should submit it in the official forum for improvement suggestions.

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You know what's a fun thought? Some of 'em even think that MangaFox is doing the translation and editing.

I would love it if MU linked directly to scanlator online readers, but don't they specifically avoid that so that they aren't in danger of legal action (eg. when Onemanga got shut down)? I'm pretty sure there is no way MU would ever link to scans. They are very strict about people not asking where scans can be found.