ya i know... i just worry that translators won't be as willing to hang around under pressure from the industry as crackers are, of course if people stand through the mounting pressure no legal action could ever stop the overall scene, but that willingness to keep going through it isn't assured. also i would point out that game cracking scene requires a relatively low number of people (1 or 2 teams cover pretty much all major game releases and a lot are covered by more than one) where as a good % of the current translators quitting would stop a lot of series from being translated.

Some scanlators are even thinking its safe not to update their manga anymore here in mangaupdates for extra precautions...can't blame them....

As a member of the scanlation community I was never all that fond of sites like Narutofan or Onemanga, who take our work that we do on our own time free of charge, and attempt to profit off of it while often downsizing the quality and not giving credit where it's due. Not to mention that scanlations are themselves illegal anyway, so their trying to reap a profit just hurts all of us.

Silverado is correct in saying that site admins need to comply with C&D requests. Scanlators can not and will not win legal battles with publishers, because copyright law is not on our side. Those wannabe rebellious adolescent retards who ignore this obvious fact and say "fight the power, they'll never catch us" are oblivious to how judicial precedence works when it comes to stuff like this. The MPAA and RIAA won lawsuits against pirates and now the industry is doing its utmost to crack down on illegal file sharing through any possible means, practically unimpeded. What do you think they'll do if a for-profit site like NarutoFan loses to them in court? The corporations put a lot of pressure on ISPs to give up customer information if it means catching music and movie pirates, but so far the scanlation and fansub community has mostly managed to avoid that. This will change if some idiot decides to needlessly start shit.

I'm not overreacting and saying that the whole "scene" should go underground, because that doesn't reflect the situation at all. This is not PirateBay. MangaUpdates itself is not illegal because it doesn't host or link to downloads. We do this for our fellow fans, at the expense of our own time and effort. All I can do is ask that you don't make all that effort in vain by making this issue with the publishers more difficult than it already is.

ten dollars is the norm but the series I read are even more expensive. Berserk is now $15 a volume and Gantz is $13 so is Biomega and Future Diary is 11. I've also noticed a trend of increasing prices to use again as an example berserk was 14 another is Claymore which used to be 8 (one of the cheapest) but is now also the usual $10.

At these high prices and at the frequency (often being once every two months). I've had to drop many manga series. Keep in mind there's also a sales tax so $10 really equals $10.70 (at least in the state I live in)

Add to the fact that all publishers keep an eye on sales so they might also drop a series (shonan junai gumi and bloodsuckers as examples)

I now only collect three series due to the prices and the possibility of a dropped series. I used to follow ten until I left my job for school and realized how badly a little over 60 bucks a month hurt.

I don't even understand why the prices are this high, they don't have to pay for color. Some of the companies have even lowered the quality of paper yet increased the price of the book.

You could go to a library but they never really offer a quality selection of books and even when they do have a series you like, its either just volume 1 or its volume 23, 12, and 34. Never anything consecutive unless it's something short like Akira and you are willing to wait for a lot of library transfers.

A similar trend to what I mentioned above is also dogging the comic book industry. Price increases everywhere with series being dropped all over the place and others being constantly restarted. Soon I'm going to have to go through those and decide which of my comics to drop as well.

Bwaahaha... true. ^^ Also... Many scanlators don't host their sites in America. We are already underground. >.> Fansubbers can continue, and we will, too. And MU is not the only filesharing web out there. There are tons. New ones will pop everyday. ^^

I agree with this. Safe us, even for a little while longer. ^^ Delete all the IP loggings.

then what about the UNLICENSED manga? where would you BUY them?

Naikan, do me a favour and assume I'm not an idiot for a second. Please note that I've been working for a long time in scanlation too.


But that doesn't change the reality. I forget which publisher I talked to (think it was Tokyopop), but I personally heard per hour minimum wage. I can't debate the merits of this, but this is what he said.

Not a single publisher scans on their own. However, I debate your claim that all publisher raws don't have sfx and redraws; I'm almost certain that they do occasionally have them. Rosario + Vampire for instance has one page on which the English publication placed a white box with black borders over a redraw and then placed text inside the box: a clear example of skipping a redraw. If they had the original art without the need to do a redraw, why would they bother placing a box over it?

You're welcome.
http://tinyurl.com/3y6lwyz

Well, the real problem is in future generations of scanlators. Most scanlation groups invariably shut down/disband after a period either due to the completion of their major series or simply due to personal life changes. While many new groups fail early, it invariably falls to the next gen to take up the slack. Even in the failed groups, there is likely several members who would move on to revitalize aging groups and pretty much every scanlation group is always hunting for new translators.

Besides, less people reading scanlations means less visitors to scanlators to encourage new releases. At this point this may be desirable to the media companies but it certainly isn't for the fans.

Well it is a common sense. No scanlators who live in US will try to have a legal battles with the publishers. And that leaves the scanlators who aren't living in the US because in reality those people are almost totally out of reach of any C&D from US or Japan publishers and their lawyers and surely they wont even give a damn care if someone give them a C&D requests from any US or japan publishers.

Ironically, the overly popular titles will never be taken down. Bleach, One Piece etc will always have scanlators. It is the more obscure titles that could actually benefit from exposure through scanlation that would suffer as less translators will be willing to put in the time for something so troublesome.

dont forget to ALWAYS ALWAYS read the channel's rules in the initial announcement. they usually state all bannable offenses right there.

also, this might not be true in every channel, but if someone asks nicely, im sure there's a kind soul who will teach someone how to download. i know in my channel we get excited if its someone other than the same 3-4 people talking in the channel ;/

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So this is just a thought, and I'm not sure if it would actually be able to work in regards to the scanslation community, but its worth a shot. This is something that is used a lot in the hotel industry, so that hotels can avoid being sued. A lot of big hotel companies aren't owned by individuals. They're owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), basically what this means is that instead of being owned by one person the company is owned by many people (ususally over 100), who have all signed an agreement. For all intents and purposes, the signed agreement becomes the owner of the hotel company, so if anyone tries to sue the hotel company they are left without a target.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know all the details, but maybe something like this could be devised for a scanslation group?

I order unlicensed stuff from CDJapan.co.jp, which doesn't directly stock the books but has a very convenient book-request form on their website and has great, prompt customer service (on the book request form, you enter the title/author/isbn of the japanese book, and they'll find it and add it to their website so you can order it whenever you want). Compared to Amazon JP, which has ridiculously expensive shipping charges, CDJapan has VERY reasonable options (for example: I ordered 4 books at the original ~¥400 each, and with SAL shipping factored in it still came out around $7-8 USD per book. SAL says it can take up to a month, but my books got to me about 1 week after they shipped). I've also ordered from YesAsia in the past but not so much recently, and I've heard great things about Kinokuniya, which has a website as well as stores on both US coasts (unfortunately, I do not live anywhere near a coast). Whenever I get a chance to go to Chicago (a 3-4hr drive), I check out the awesome bookstore at Mitsuwa ( Japanese shopping center). I only know enough Japanese to read kana and some kanji, but I like seeing how much I can figure out from the pictures and the text that I understand, and having a series I want to read in Japanese is good motivation for me to practice reading the language. I've collected nearly 50 volumes in Japanese (less than 10% of my English collection) over the past few years.