You... don't understand copyright law? Something trivial enough would get thrown out by a grand jury before making it to "real" court. There would be no burden of proof necessary by MU for cases like that. I'm not saying this case is necessarily that trivial, but you can't just make the blanket claim "copyright violation until proven otherwise".

You're violating the copyright of autobiography because you are also a user of MangaUpdates, which is a site I am a user of! Now pay me $10k! See, that would never make it *to* court. It's just too fundamentally obviously not a copyright violation.

Well, how come Wikipedia doesn't recieve tons of DMCA?

You know what would be next? One day, MU will just stop reporting unofficial releases. If that's the case, kindly shut this site down.

Because suing wikipedia would result in a huge backlash of highly negative publicity.

In a slightly related side matter, instead of attacking wikipedia with DMCA or lawsuits, what some of the "reputation management" firms resort to is attacking the specific posters and specific defenders of the undesired items. In some cases, that works and the poster either removes their own post or simply gives up a "revert war". Note carefully, I use revert war in a colloquial sense because the reputation management firm knows how to perform a revert war without actually causing direct reverts which trigger wikipedia's protection bots. It's unfortunate that their organized attempts have managed to remove items from wikipedia without resorting to DMCA, copyright accusations, or triggering the "streisand effect".

Sorry for being a noob. By this logic, so if I read my friend's manga is that considered as violation as well?

Can some staff of MU pls tell us why is this happening? its really scary....

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Just in case someone stumbles into this thread and wonders why there have been no information from the staff. This news topic where made on October 30th.

Updating missing link to this forum post.

well said

My response to Kodansha et. al.: Why are you even bothering?

It takes me one second to highlight the title and right-click to google the cover image.

Why are you even putting time and resources into something so insignificant and petty? What you've done is mildly irritating - that's all.

You know what I'd like you to learn? That if you remove all traces of your mangas and animes from English-language fansites, your earnings would plummet.

I actually wish that would happen so that you can see for yourselves that the REAL currency on the Internet are eyeballs, attention, and awareness.

People pay millions for what MU is doing for you for free. In case you haven't realised, it's called 'viral marketing'.

If you have too much free time and money, spend it on producing higher-quality work.

Last edited by Bedouin at 5:54 pm, Nov 3 2014

There was a news post in regards to this situation.



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i wonder why they dont see reviews and ... text stuff as copyright material too?

Computer age is not the same. You effectively create a new copy of the image.
But sharing physical books don't create a duplicate copy.

Back in the old days, people would photocopy books, mostly expensive or rare textbooks/reference books. They were violations too but not as easy as nowadays. It was more time-consuming and cost more.

The covers are often well made to attract viewers to pick them up. It's as heavy as 50% of the whole book considering the promotion effect. But I think the cover arts of small size is more of fair use. You can find most of them on Amazon .jp anyway.

They may thank you for keeping some old out-of-print books' covers as well. As a side track suggestion, there's no need to use the latest covers but the first volume.

The provision of links to free translation is a far Bigger problem than a small cover. You don't see much with that cover but the translation means you can see everything inside. If they are going to sue here, they will target these info for sure. Seeing cover arts alone is similar to seeing books on display.

The fair use doctrine protects the use of copyrighted materials for the purposes of "commentary and criticism." Seeing as how this site is mainly used as an informational database and a discussion and review forum, a case could easily be made that it is covered under fair use. Unfortunately, for the cover pages an additional case would have to be made that they directly contribute to the site for the purposes of "commentary and criticism." Because these are manga and the cover pages are a direct representation of the art and thus the quality, they would probably fit under fair use also. Nevertheless, it is a separate issue that would need to be defended separately.

My best guess is that some company decided that having cover pages displayed detracted from their earnings for some reason and filed a complaint. The site, being reasonable, didn't want to start a fight with a big company even if they were likely to win and just took down those pictures. Hiring and lawyer and filing a civil suit is a big deal. It's a shame.

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Cynicism at its best.