Partial(?) List of Removed Covers

Apocalypse no Toride
Coppelion
Fairy Tail
Kami-sama no Iutoori Ni
Kimi no Iru Machi
Nanatsu no Taizai
Nazo no Kanojo X
Shingeki no Kyojin
Uchuu Kyoudai
UQ Holder!
Wagatsuma-san wa Ore no Yome
Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo

One guess as to what all these titles have in common...

That's right they're all done by Crunchyroll. Not only that, they're Crunchyroll's big series. You can almost imagine the desperation of whoever runs it screaming "Damn Manga Databases, They're stealing my money!"

For real cover art. Amazon should be getting a lot of DMCA then... 😲

Are publisher getting that possessive or their material. I thought cover art are mean to be display?

Server outside US is your safest bet, US copyright laws are getting manipulated every second by dumb publishers

Maybe you shouldn't announce CR releases, i think they were offended by that.

I can understand why the links to groups had to be removed, but this is ridiculous. I, for one, will not start a manga without looking at the cover art; the art style is a very important factor for me. I'm not going to look up the images.... Especially if/when there are so many. If I'm not reading the manga inline, this destroys any chance of me actually buying the manga. Also, shouldn't Wikipedia have tons of DMCA notices per day?? @.@ same with all the online readers....
Good move, publisher.

Could people that are saying this site is dead or should be shut down please either leave or drop dead? If that's your opinion, stop coming back...

On that strategic pov: most aggregator sites already have a new chapter before it is listed here, so taking down mu has no effect whatsoever on those. Tbh what would you as publisher prefer? People get information about manga from aggregator sites where they could just read it for free, or from mu that doesn't offer that service?

They can't touch the aggregators, so they piss off one of the few places with people that don't only care about releases and reading (licensed) manga. The only thing they are doing is driving people to those sites they can't do sh** about...

in need of romance?
uncommon, sad, sweet

Maybe it helps to switch domainnames the .com domain that mangaupdates is using is actually for commercial site, most people wouldn't even know it's a non-profit site. But it's the worst option for hosting possible licensed material. you don't have any protection with a .com domain. I would also recommend to use another country for hosting the database.
Anyway google hosts way more manga related material. (When you search some manga with the picture search, a lot of manga pictures shows up. All those miniature examples are hosted by google (someone told this to me). And wikipedia hosts more pictures anyway than MU.

Even after dead, we raise from the ashes for the sake of manga.

This is probably a collective act by publishers who wish to prevent manga distribution at the "source", and they believe that MangaUpdates is one of the biggest locations performing said distribution.

They (the publishers) probably allude MU to websites like file sharing forums or websites that, although they may not necessarily host the files directly, they provide possible locations for where readers may access the series in question. (Content owners are usually unable to shut down those sorts of websites due to them being located in some archaic part of the world, so they simply go to the file hosts and request for the files to be taken down instead.)

They likely justify targeting websites like MU as opposed to other "ordinary" information websites as they likely believe places like MU are seeking hits, and that technically does not serve in their own profitable interests.

Since the last few years, there have been other websites "rising" while MU is "falling", to continue this stream of release information, including but not limited to other "release information" websites as well as online reader websites themselves.

I'll state that, in today's society, piracy will keep going strong ("scanlation" is technically piracy). And as we all know how piracy goes, authorities will try to stop it, but they cannot stop people from continuing to do it (unless those who own the website are arrested and fined or jailed for whatever grounds).

But yes, now that MangaUpdates is building a reputation for being easily targeted by publishers, others will likely join suit. We will have to see what happens, both here, and at other websites.

Founder of Kirei Cake. We're always looking for new members regardless of experience, so if you're interested, seek us out @ http://KireiCake.com!

Well, Baka-updates kinda fuck themselves over with using in the "About Us" section writing
Content Rights
MangaUpdates does not own or imply ownership of any of the images used on the site. All images belong to their respective owners

Instead of saying the cover pictures are under fair usage law. What you have now is enough for publishers to force a takedown, you should change wording here asap!

Please dont pussy out and give them what they want with out a fight.. Pretty sure this falls under fair use.. If you give in to this.. whats going to happen next? They will send you DMCA's because you have the names of certain series listen on your site..

Thanks, I fixed the link

A just ruler amongst tyrants

If they did it without following the proper law-prescribed procedures, doesn't this mean that they have illegally breached their contract with you?

He've got some good reasoning over here. It is indeed written over their. It's better to ask someone that studied laws to check it.

Even after dead, we raise from the ashes for the sake of manga.

This is getting ridiculous first the DL links which is understandable.
then the scanlation groups links which is already pushing it.
But cover images? that's publicly available and under fair use law?
No matter how you look at it this is DMCA abuse, and your host clearly breached your contract for not notifying you.

Also as a temporally fix how about linking to the amazon/wikipedia cover images?

Quote from PROzess

I don't understand the commotion.
What's the big deal?
MU has been dead ever since the links were removed.

A work around were made.

For COVERS? seriously? That's childish.

And just like with Wikipedia, using the covers constitutes fair use.
Kodansha had no business issuing a DMCA. It should be ignored and your host threatened with litigation if it pulls that stunt again.

Seriously lambchopsil, you've got to stop caving to these legally dubious takedown threats. You're empowering them by complying. There's a lot of pro bono assistance out there in regards to copyright bullying, take advantage of some of it.

I hope you are negotiating with host for free hosting (x time) to stop you from litigating more serious penalties. (No clue where host is based though, but if American it should be easy right?)