For those of you following the MangaHelpers events, they have released a FAQ explaining more details about the draft proposal. Head on over to give it a read, and learn more about the issue.

It appears that the leak caught them by surprise, and they weren't able to coherently deal with the issue in such a short short amount of time (with the release of the initial explanation post). I've read their FAQ and find their idea intriguing. Depending on how it is managed as well as the reaction of publishers, it could be a very unique opportunity for some in the community. I will reserve my judgment for a future date.

Also, the MU server was down for a few hours due to another bad power cable. As you can see, we are back up. This is not related to the downtime we will be having as we move our servers during the next few weeks, as discussed here.

Ah, so that's why I've barely been able to get on here lately...

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"Depending on how it is managed as well as the reaction of publishers, it could be a very unique opportunity for some in the community.'

it would be a unique opportunity for those who make money off MH and also those who are jonesin' for a job with publishers. The problem with their proposal is that once MH presumably goes legit, they will go after other scan sites such as this one, encouraging the publishers to send out C&D orders. Their plan would have no chance of success if people could go elsewhere for their scan/raw fixes.

Everything MH is putting out now, from these FAQs to the response posts of their mods/admins is just a sad attempt for them to save face after being caught red-handed trying to sell out. Their staff keep claiming their plan is "acting in everyones best interests" and that they "...are looking to make MangaHelpers faster, better and more accessible than ever before". Problem is their price for making the website MangaHelpers better requires the near-destruction of the scanlation community as we know it.

I don't like it at all, no matter how they decide to put it. And it's not just because of the money, or because of how they were going about their plan, or even the fact that most of the time I hate the official translations of both anime and manga. The fact is it's still a very dangerous idea. Publishers do not like scanlations at all, just like studios don't like fansubs, even in cases where they haven't been licensed. I can't believe that running that site they wouldn't understand this and have the common sense to leave well enough alone. In the end their true intentions and the quality of the plan don't even matter, because they're still throwing us under the bus.

What my concern is, what will happen with the Raws, scanlations etc. I don't frequent MH, basically I'm rarely there, I get my scanlations from other site, does what MH trying to do affects other scanlation group? and if yes at what percentage?
'Cos I prefer scanlations over licensed any day, and not because I don't want to buy manga, I have over 200, but the publishers are doing a poor job, practically they have killed Naruto, both in manga and anime, stone dead.

Try reading the FAQ. It specifically answers most of your questions, and the one that it doesn't could only be answered speculatively anyway. (Unless someone here has 20/20 foresight)

i don't really mind the money issue however i feel that they are rushing something that we don't need. i am happy with the way things are now. i feel that the manga community is close and prosperous partly due to the fact that we the fans are the ones sharing these mangas with each other. I bought a subscription of one year from crunchyroll and i find myself still going and dling HorrileSubs because i enjoy it more, once it goes to a company where money is the main issue things start getting less enjoyable. a perfect example is how we are blown away and worship translators who translate a whole volumes in a week(like they did with HSD). If it were a company doing it instead they first of all would take month at least to do it and we'd be like, "well it's their job, here's 10 bucks for your trouble." Not the same.

oh and don't you dare say "well we will get the weekly scanlations faster...." so what is the difference if i read Mahou Negima Sensei every sunday instead of every thursday.... if you think about it we are still going to wait a week in between releases

I don't effing get it at all. So who the hell cares if MH goes down in the process? Sure, it'll be a loss for the community, but there'll be a new site within one week to replace them.

"In the end their true intentions and the quality of the plan don't even matter, because they're still throwing us under the bus." Throwing us under the bus? Give me a freaking break. MangaHelpers is in NO WAY posing a bigger threat to scanlators than MangaUpdates or any other indexing site for that matter.

You think Viz doesn't know about these places? About how to find your puny little email addresses? If publishers CARED it would be raining CoD's left and right. Matter of fact is they DON'T, and that won't change anytime soon. Hell, even if it did change, look at the anime community. As one group goes down, prospers another.

I think it's a good idea. If had been done earlier Mx0 might still be around. If the author gets paid for us reading it it might save some of the series we love but the Japanese don't.

...which is why I don't intend to monetize MU. Our continued existence is completely contingent on our service being free.

I also am very skeptical about their success. I honestly don't believe you can take something like a manga scanlation website, regardless of how magnanimous your plans, and successfully turn around a legitimate and viable business. (Short of selling t-shirts or other paraphernalia)

My interest in this idea stems mostly from the fact that, in my case, I hate the fact that I can't give back to the industry. As much as I am proud to contribute to the community in its current form, I see this website as a negative influence to legitimate companies. Of course, part of this is mitigated by the undeniable fact that if MU were to disappear, another site would come around very quickly to replace us, but that still doesn't change that nature of this website.

At this point, I have mixed feelings. I would like to see a legal way for scanlations to exist, but naivety aside, I know that the underground will always exist in some form.

Put the FAQ and the proposal side by side and it's like night and day. To the publishers, we'll hunt down those damn illegal scanlation pirates. To the public, we'll politely ask everyone in the community not to steal from the nice publishers anymore. To the publishers, here's what we plan to charge our userbase. To the public, we have a number of options out there. The pay per view thing was just a mental wet fart. The only thing consistent is that it wants to be like Crunchyroll.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I'm guessing that they do realize it is a dangerous idea but the site is currently under the gun since the Kodansha C&D killed a chunk of the site. That said, they definitely were not considering the interests of the scanlation community in the business proposal.

What they are trying to do is control the flow of manga on the net. The original plan was to get licenses and hire scanlation groups to translate. Payment was essentially pay per view.

Changes in the faq include a pay for extra bandwidth, mobile phone compatibility and discounts on paperbacks or the current ads based system and openly providing legit raws to the community.

They claim they don't "plan" on hunting down scanlators or other hosts in the new FAQ but I can tell you the business proposal wasn't as reassuring. Realistically, they will have do do so in one form or another. After all, if other sites host the stuff they are licensing, you can bet they will be losing out on visitors.

More like there's already a dozen different ones in multiple languages out there ready to take MH's place. That said, while the threat MH poses may be minimal, I do agree with the idea that they planned on betraying the scanlation community. The proposal's comments on "illegal scanlations" pretty much summed up those intentions.

Personally, I do see scanlations as under threat in general since most publishers are focusing on online content. Fansubs haven't been as numerous ever since sites like Crunchyroll began streaming legit anime, at least in terms of the BT side of things, with the series they distribute being the least fansubbed.

Honestly speaking, I cringe whenever a series gets licensed. Publishers, whether they are Viz, CMX or Crunchyroll are too tempted to censor their stuff. Given the choice, MH most likely would too.