Scanlation History
11 years ago
Posts: 226
I used to be part of the scanlation scene, and wanted to know what's up lately. Then I remembered about this awesome website called Inside Scanlation, which MangaUpdates was part of 😉
It's now 5 years since 2009, and I'm sure lots of things have changed since then. I'm really looking forward to seeing this project go on.
How about sharing what's been going on for the past 5 years?
Here's what I remember happening (if my memory is correct...):
In 2010, Mangahelpers stopped hosting scans and raws. That's also when I pretty much left that website (really sad). At the same time, they tried to launched OpenManga, which has been abandoned/on-hold, until now...maybe?
MangaStream became a thing near the end of 2009, and grew more and more popular. They worked together with Binktopia (was an avid fan of Bink) from 2010-2011, when the two merged (I think? Correct me if I'm wrong). Viz media threatened them in 2012, which is why they now remove old scans from their website after a period of time.
There used to be alot of competition for the big Shonen Jump series. Multiple groups would be scanlating at the same time, and you would get different versions of each release (speedy ones, hq ones, denoised, non-denoised). But since 2012, most are being scanlated by one group, Mangastream. So now it's more of a monopoly, which is good and bad I guess (I sometimes miss the non-filtered scans to be honest. Feels more...real and hand-drawn if you know what I mean.).
In 2011, Batoto became a thing in response to online readers commercializing on free scanlations.
In 2012, Mangafox's .com turned into .me, to avoid getting into legal problems with US publishers I assume. In fact, a lot of websites, including MU, had to make changes because of legal threats, such as when MU had to hide links.
In the past few years, Webcomics became a popular thing to scanlate, especially Korean ones thanks to Naver. (Some of my favourite series are webcomics: Noblesse, Kubera, Trace, Dear, Only You Don't Know!, The Gamer, Can't See Can't Hear But Love. Planning to read Tower of God.)
In 2012-2013, MU released their first mobile app (congrats). This mobile trend has been catching on for a lot of other groups as well, either through mobile apps or responsive websites.
Those are the main things I noticed. Anything else worth mentioning?
It's actually very interesting to me about how scanlation has turned into a legit business for some...I checked out some stats out of curiosity:
Mangafox: 5 million+ pageviews per day, 600 000+ unique visitors per day
Mangastream: 1 million+ pageviews per day, 100 000+ unique visitors per day
Now imagine how much they make from all those ads. I bet it's serious business.
PS - Anyone here still using IRC?
11 years ago
Posts: 167
Well... you didn't mention Mangatraders, a website that not only gave you the chance to read online but also downloading manga, but... early this month, they got hacked and the hacker released a txt file through their twitter (which he also hacked) which contained (almost) all passwords and respective email accounts of the users...
I had used a throwaway email and password so... I'm safe. But other people actually had trouble.
If you go to mangatraders.com you'll see their "maintenace message". It's a shame that happened...
Yes, you're worthy!
11 years ago
Posts: 226
Oh wow I did not know that. Pretty recent too - 10 days ago...
I mean, I understand hacking into websites like Paypal, but why MT? Why a manga website? :S
Then I found this comment on Reddit.
...Really? A subbing group? 😮
11 years ago
Posts: 167
Man it was a riot xD The same day I heard about that, there were also rumors about mangaupdates (I didn't have an account here back then) and also myanimelist having been hacked (which I think have been proven wrong), so I was like... FTS, I'm gonna change passwords everywhere. (I didn't have a throwaway email on myanimelist)...
Anyway, this was just to open our eyes as to use throwaway emails everywhere xD
But yeah, that's kind of shocking... If it wasn't because of mangatraders/mangaupdates I would have never come across the scanlator's websites... That's just stupid...
I hope they can pull themselves together. I don't like online viewers... So I found a way of downloading manga from mangafox and such so, I think I'm kinda cool with that.
But it's still a shame...
Yes, you're worthy!
11 years ago
Posts: 302
Dont forget when Libre sent out C&D in 2010 to a few yaoi scanlation groups, which made most of them either start closing their LJ community, go underground or create super secret password-only hidden releases. =_=;;
11 years ago
Posts: 208
In 2010, MangaFox also started pulling licensed titles from its site and One Manga completely shut down its online reader for the same reasons MangaHelpers stopped hosting scans and raws.
11 years ago
Posts: 226
Quote from tart
Dont forget when Libre sent out C&D in 2010 to a few yaoi scanlation groups, which made most of them either start closing their LJ community, go underground or create super secret password-only hidden releases. =_=;;
Oh shoot I completely forgot about LJ... but wouldn't it be okay if they just made the group private? Legally they would just be sharing the scans for private purposes, not really 'publishing' it out to the world (unless of course, people upload them elsewhere).
11 years ago
Posts: 8
Mmm, the stoptazmo incident might be worth mentioning.
11 years ago
Posts: 498
Quote from krytyk
Mmm, the stoptazmo incident might be worth mentioning.
It's true that Tazmo is an important footnote in scanslation history, but it is kinda old news. OP mentions happenings 2009 onwards and the Tazmo/Narutofan issue started.. what, a decade ago? (damn it's been a long time).
Amusingly enough, Tazmo was also the first thing I thought about when I read the OP.
If we want to mention something about that case, the It'd be VIZ seizing control of the NarutoFan.com domain in 2011, forcing Tazmo to relocate his scamming activities to a new website.
