I have been in scanlation for roughly 11.5 years. This take down notice is nothing new. We received cease and desist letters like these back when there were only a handful of us doing this. Did we stop? Nope.

1. We either picked different series and moved on.
2. We simply changed our name, stuck up a new website, and continued on with what we were doing.
3. We made the releases harder to find and put them on IRC.

I imagine that many of the people who were working on this series will probably offer up their services to someone who is currently working on the series and we will see our beloved series start coming out just as fast with the same quality we saw with mangastream. It is the nature of scanlation.

That being said, I find it interesting the amount of people in this thread who claim to have never bought VIZ manga yet are saying their work is inferior. They are SLOWER but I can't say their work is inferior. I currently own the first boxset of Bleach (21 Volumes) and I've enjoyed it very much. I'm not ashamed to say I'm waiting for the next boxset so I can buy it too.

Would I like for it to be a bit more raw and there be more curse words? Sometimes but the same meaning comes across and mothers across America for some reason feel better buying little Billy his manga with out the curse words in it. Viz makes some sales and we get physical copies of the manga we enjoy.

You get annoyed with them for changing something small... well yeah it sucks but a lot of that is up to the translator who is trying their best to make it relateable to people who have no knowledge of culture in Japan. "But they are treating us like we are stupid and don't know about Japanese culture!" No... they aren't. YOU are not the person they are trying to relate to. They know you will catch on to what is going on and understand it. If you are looking for manga through scanlations... chances are you know something about Japanese culture. But little Suzie who is sitting in a Books-A-Million right now picking up her first manga from the shelf doesn't know anything about Japan. She doesn't even know it is from Japan... but she is falling in love with this little book in her hands and she knows that there is something special about it. Years from now she will be one of us but she will never forget reading that first story. THAT is who these people do these translations for and I'm immensily proud that they are trying their best to bring more people into our folds.

That being said, I do agree with mangastream on this issue. I think they made a very intelligent and reasonable statement. Until these companies see that there is a demand for these series to be released every week and quickly it will be this way. Take Funimation for example. They are pretty much on par with some fansubbers now. Given the chance I'll wait a few days and go watch it on hulu when they release it. I actually like the translations better on their subs.

One possible solution? These companies need to open their own manga readers. Make it free. Make us watch a short commercial before reading a chapter. Put some ads on the pages. Set up a monthly subscription service so you can read all the series with little or no ads. Make some of your older series premimium so you have to pay a subscription... but every so often make them free to draw some more people in. Make all your new series series free, or at least the last few volumes free. Basically make a hulu like mangareader.

On top of that... make great products. Use your reader site to poll the very people who are reading your series to find out what they want. I love big beautiful box sets with color inserts. Does everyone? No but they could find out right there what people think with simple polls. The market research would be so easy.

I love manga. It is my passion. Hell, I wanna go scan some stuff right now I'm so pumped about it. I want to see it do well in America and all over the world. Viz call me. Let's do this and make you some money and make some fans crazy happy.

your logic isn't faulty at all. but at practice, your statement is naive.

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grammar mistake is intentional, grammar nazis need their entertainment.

Oh god, you people all start to whine about how scanlators don't have the right to watermark their release since they don't own it, but when the company comes who actually OWNS the license, you go bitching at them too?
Jesus....
You just can't satisfy the greedy readers.

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I seriously hope other company follow suit.
That's the only way we can be saved!

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Indeed it is naive. Just until! We need more international pressure xD

Mangastream was the only group that I trusted, to bring me high-quality scans and trusted translations. But there are plenty of great groups doing the manga listed above, probably not in a timely-matter like Mangastream, but it's better than nothing

First like I pointed out before many times. You don't own anything regarding to the titles VIZ owns the right to release in America. The interesting part about this is that the VIZ media company is owned by japanese companies which release those titles in japan aka they own the series.

So when you complain...you are allowed to complain but you got no right to do anything about it. Why? They own the titles. They can do whatever they want with them. Makes you wonder, eh? Yes, just like even if you find ipads to be annoying you can't sell their software without asking them or share it for free...it's illegal. So even if they fuck you up...you can't do anything, well with the exception of not buying their product if you don't like it.

"I don't even go to MangaFox unless my duties as a release mod require me to do so." <---- ahhh another one of those. Your duties as a release mod. tsk tsk tsk I really hope they come after you. You do know that your ip address has been recorded on this server, now if VIZ comes to MU and tell them they will sue them if they don't give the address of the owner of this statement and then they can see that you are in one of the countries they can get you at...well, hello jail.

So even if VIZ is sourgraping....they have to protect their business. We do the same here in my country. You know it takes many years to make something but only a few weeks to copy it? That's a problem thus they made the stuff called copyright, patent and so on...

Oh and I agree with you...if VIZ were making lots of money they wouldn't take these action but they are not. That is a problem for VIZ, if it was free commercial then they wouldn't have minded it. It is not. Thus they are angry...which isn't that weird.
Still I can't watch it the way you do: If their service was satisfying then there wouldn't be any problems for them. lol sorry...that's so damn funny. You know the usual excuse for people not buying manga is:
I'm too poor
They aren't doing it nice enough
You can't get it in my country

So Viz should buy rights and release to everyone in the world, do it "nice" enough and make it so cheap so everyone can buy it? Pleeeeaaaaaaseeeeee, if you can't buy it then dont buy it. It's not like you can't live without comics...or are you really that lame? If you get caught you got no good enough reason to say that you just had to do it, since you would be dead otherwise, lol.

Company not being good enough doesn't equal stealing company's income.

dude we need china to join...it will be awesome if china join. We need japan to talk with them about their production being hurt by them and it would be great to get china to help them. xD

Indeed....but it always depends D:

Like titles dying out and never coming back again >.> I could give you examples but your 11.5 years should have shown you that.
There was no ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and EAR before...it's gone to far and online readers with ads popping up all over the place isn't making this all better.
When a rat is backed to the corner it bites the cat...you should know how those companies has started to complain more and more these years. They are just doing what they have to do to kill opponents and actually getting something for the money they used to license the titles.

Oh so the manga you are talking about is..............mangazone and....well that's it?

Like dragon&fly scans is related to mangahere which is related to mangafox meaning all are owned by the illegal NOEZ company in China, mangazone is related to mangareader which is no better than mangafox.

Gonna be interesting to see what the next step for Viz is gonna be

Well VIZ certainly has a right to do this, and I never went to MangaStream once they went online reader only, but this may limit some new fan exposure to the series.

I never would have purchased One Piece or Claymore if I hadn't had free access to them first. Initially I thought their art sucked, one was too kiddy, and the other too grimdark.
Of course once I really started reading them I started to love them.
I now own 59 manga volumes, 5 DVD collections and 8 movies of One Piece, plus 19 volumes and the complete anime series in DVD and BluRay of Claymore. Just on those two titles I've spent approximately $2k.

Now I can do this because I've graduated uni, have a good paying job, and a Den in my basement where I can hide my powerlevel.

Just because you get older, doesn't mean you start disliking the things you loved as a teen. There's adult gamers, adult sports fans, adult sci-fi geeks and adult manga fans, and they all have the money to blow on their love. The latter however is nascent and is primarily the result of exposure due to fansubbing and scanlations, as there's really no other natural western mechanism for creating the fanbase.

By stopping the primary means of exposure now without offering a decent alternative, they may be eliminating future adult fans who have the money to support them.

Couldn't agree more.

Viz as far as I can see did a good job already, releasing it 3 weeks after Japan. That was good enough pace, and unlike scanlation, I believe they need to have their translation and edit approved first which make sense of the delay. Now if only Viz can release it globally, but again, they only hold license for US market and a global release would probably hurt publishers on another country.

That said, while we are all hoping to see a same day release as Japan or a legal manga reader accessible globally, it just doesn't seems to be possible yet. I still hope there is a solution as there is plenty of demands.

you do know that another group just gonna go about on releasing those series anway. It not like it will be the end of free release, it also just means that there will be another new group that come out and make money out of releasing those series.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPNDqAF03V8

Jezz, I hope that the company goes to bankruptcy, but that's just mean of me... (but I still hope it)

No matter of how right Viz Media is for doing this , that doesn't mean we can't be less sad, I'm pretty sure most of us know that the whole scanlation system is pretty illegal, and we also know that it had given access to manga to people who couldn't even dream to get in their country/region (what, do you think some random girl in a south american country like mine can go and get the newest release when she wants? no, I'd be lucky to get it in two years). It's like with megaupload. I'm pretty sad about this (and I feel like crying) because mangastream is the best and the fastest, but at least is not closing down.