Quote from gwkimmy

except scanlations have existed since the early 2000's (or earlier) and companies haven't done much since they half regarded it as free advertising. it wasn't uncommon for a wildly popular scanlated manga to be licensed in the states a few months later. of course they've known about scanlations. right from day one.

No matter how much you want to beat around the bush, fact is this is illegal.

In fact Japanese publishers and authors have asked to stop, we call ignore the pink elephant in the room but fact is, this is a violation of copyright law.

Fact it have not come down yet does not mean one day its not going to.

however, scanlations have never directly profited from their scanlations. mangafox and co do. huge difference here. while the largest action taken against any scanlation group is a cease and desist letter, we now see large legal action threatened against aggregation sites because of the profit they're making from illegal scans.

To start, OneManga was taken down by a C&D letter ...

Next comes the "directly profited" ... you see MangaFox does not directly profits from its online reader because there is no Pay-to-Access fee, their revenues come from adSense.

Also you cannot say scanlations have never directly profited, this is broad statement that fails to include H groups that work by commissions so there is a direct profit.

Also indirectly ... well MangaFox is not the only that uses adSense, also there is the case of donations.

Before MangaFox there was ... NarutoFan, DirectManga, before Noez there was Tazmo.

You see this is not new, it happen before (and more serious in Tazmo case) and it will happen again.

should a bunch of people attack mangafox and the authorities are involved, sure, mangafox might get into some big trouble (although legal action has already been threatened against mangafox and they don't care at all), but the scanlators? maybe some nice C&D letters, at best.

To start are you are willing to go for jail? you do realize a DDoS attack does have a prison sentence that can go as far as 10 years?

Now if the authorities get involved do you think they will just stop at MangaFox? if they target one online reader do you think they would just call it quits?

You are assuming the best case scenario were your DDoS group is ignored by the authorities (unlikely) and MangaFox will be prosecuted (unlikely as copyright infringement is usual a civil matter, unlike a DDoS attack that a federal crime) and they will just stop there, I understand the possible ramifications were drawing attention is likely to cause more harm that good.

You see, I do not want to get involved because even in the case MangaFox gets taken down it will be a matter of time until someone decides to have a problem with something and we all get dragged into this again.

What part of "Please do not put in huge images!" did you fail to understand?

question: how did you come to the conclusion that using ads network to earn money from those content, is not "direct" infringement? That's quite a bold statement, you know?
And, get your fact straight, mangafox is banned from google adsense. They use other alternative ads network.

@DDoS attack leads to jail? good job on being such a big criminal that deserves Interpol's attention.
FYI: it depends on he location where the server that hosts the site is, then the law there would apply, in the case of mangafox, it's China, too bad...

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Quote from Tran Linh

question: how did you come to the conclusion that using ads network to earn money from those content, is not "direct" infringement? That's quite a bold statement, you know?

Ok, this is simple ... when you use the bus or the subway there are ads over the place, now its revenue but its not revenue created by use of the services and so indirect.

Not the same as a membership fee to access content, whatever I look at the ads or not ... I can access the content with no charge to access the content.

At least that is my definition and if you are saying ads are direct revenue ... well ...

And, get your fact straight, mangafox is banned from google adsense. They use other alternative ads network.

I use adBlock plus, I knew they used adSense because at one point Google decided to to be Google and put a ban on certain type of content, MangaFox pulled several series down because of it.

@DDoS attack leads to jail?

Oh yes, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
I

good job on being such a big criminal that deserves Interpol's attention.

I would say shutting down Mastercard creates a bit of a problem ... also Scientology.
(In fact there were sentences on the DDoS attacks against Scientology)

FYI: it depends on he location where the server that host the site is, then the law there would apply, in the case of mangafox, it's China, too bad...

All information I can find points to them being US based, their IP points to Dallas, Texas and the ISP being SoftLayer Technologies.

Granted its not much (its just Google-fu) and I admit they be hidden behind a screen but still, its what I get.

What part of "Please do not put in huge images!" did you fail to understand?

whoah, whoah, no one said i was going to attack anything, lol. i barely know how to troubleshoot my computer XD

my point was that i don't see how there's ANY similarity between the legal action that has been threatened against manga aggregators (there being a COALITION between japanese manga publishers plus all their lawyers combined) and the small legal action taken against scanlators once in a blue moon (C&D letter sent from a lawyer from one company. boo hoo. game emulator sites get these all the time too.). add in the fact that should a scanlator receive a letter, they will almost always cease scanlation of the title in question or even shut down entirely. mangafox has ignored all warnings entirely and continued.

don't know anything about action taken against ddos attackers. only know that they're quite popular and...that they continue to be a quite popular solution for certain folks on the internet. the fact that people still do them all the time only says to me that authorities either don't care/can't trace them shrug

;D

Quote from khaledias

@wolfinthesheep, what a load of ...

How can be an opinion objective at all, ¿because it is yours?

How can you even compare Batoto and Mangafox? You harm scanlation when using Mangafox, you insult people that love manga enough to work for free, you betray your kind. This weird words of mine, are just a translation of my thoughts to a language which allows me to post them here without incurring in several forum regulations. Note that I didn't try to counter your arguments, so don't bother.

Once again, your argument is doing absolutely nothing but preaching to the choir.

Whining about how MangaFox is "killing Scanlation" does nothing but recycle the same tired argument on a forum where everyone has heard your complaints.

Here's a clue for you: I don't compare Batoto and MangaFox, hundreds of thousands of users across the globe do. And Batoto may be gaining some ground, but that doesn't change the fact that the "illegitimate" Readers are still the more popular sites.

You can stick your head in the ground and pretend that Batoto is so much better than every other Reader out there, but the page hits don't really reflect that, now do they?

Debating the pros and cons of Mangafox won't do anything since we're mostly all on the same side. I'm sure you don't want scanlators to be annoyed enough to stop translating and releasing manga because eventually english manga updates will slow down and unless you can read Japanese you would, if you were like me, be too bored to even turn on the computer.

Instead of coercing people to think like you do just let them be and you can continue with mangafox or batoto or scanlator sites and they can do what they want and what happens will happen.

I have been following this topic for awhile now. I too have been very alarmed by MF's recent behaviour with its bot and lack of respect to the 24 hour reuploading policies of scanlators, as well as the removal of its complaint section.

I remember when MF was the "good" commercial reader. Yes, they stole other people's work, both scanlators' and mangaka's, yes, they were in it merely for the profit. But, they respected 24 hour delays. They didn't strip credit pages or pretend they did scanlators' work. They listened to scanlator requests to take down chapters and they provided a decent and popular service, aggregating the dispersed manga onto a user friendly site, before other online readers really existed.

At least, they seem fine until one takes into account other Noez sites like mangahere, which T1 confirmed was more than just a rumour in an earlier post

And, I would like to clarify that it isn't only mangafox. I know, for example that mangareader.com, has been ignoring the 24 hour delay courtesy on releases from my own group which I see uploaded in as little as 2 hours from our group's release...

Of course, all this has changed, and now scanlating teams everywhere are scrambling to find ways to foil MF, whether it be viscious watermarking, delayed releases, even alternate online readers. It is a tiring game of cat&mouse though, scanlators and commercial aggregators, each trying to protect their own interests. It really is disgusting that MF is making approx. USD10 000$ per month when its server costs per month are only about USD3000$ and it relies on volunteers and copyrighted materials to obtain this income while scanlator groups that are working so hard, out of their own time and pockets (for raws) receive a very small part of that market. With that type of cash flow, some of the bigger scanlating groups might even be able to license manga themselves, for all we know. Perhaps the future will see such possibilities.

I think, however, that things might not be going as badly as everyone writing here seems to foresee and that is why I thought I should write this post.

In fact, I surmise (or at least hope) that the very reason that MF is becoming so much more aggressive is precisely because they are having problems lately.

If everything I read in this thread is to be believed, MF is
a) coming under sharp criticism from authorities (we have already seen the demise of other online readers, like onemanga in the past few years and they are MF too has had significant troubles these past couple years)
b) losing market share (very slowly, I know) to scanlator group's own online readers as well as Batoto; we all hope this might go faster but cmertb's statistics at least reveal that MF's readership is not growing while scanlators' are,
c) MF is losing any respect it might have had previously with scanlators, as we engage them in release wars, hosting rivalry and accusations.

I hope, at least, that my theory is true and we are seeing the end of the Manga Fox age, which I do not think was a bad one but I do think is a finished one. It is really a shame to see a community like that, which did have value and is evidently loved by many slowly torn apart by its own greed. I hope that sites like Batoto and Scanlators' own manga viewers will become a bright future for our creativity.

On that point, I feel I should point out that many of Wolfinthe sheep's comments were not far from the mark. Batoto still has a very long way to go. It is slow to load pages (partly because of the high quality) it has problems for full screen in chrome browsers (something I get annoyed with personally) and it doesn't have the same level of central aggregation that Noez does, which is not a bad thing, since I don't think we want Batoto to become the new MF in 5 years either.

And wolfinthesheep, I think you miss the point a bit. I don't think you are a "shill" with your ideas, in fact, much of what you say makes sense. But, the point is that scanlators are making an effort to provide a service for leechers to read the manga they like. In fact, most scanlating groups wouldn't even bother making readers if not for the leechers' ease of access since many of the members still prefer downloading batches. You claim that Batoto is not a centralised site but it is not that it isn't central but rather that it is still fledgling. If you say that MF is a better, more popular site, I can not disagree but whereas MF has a huge audience, a management with money to do what they want, buy servers that for this amount of material can cost up to $3000/month, a pittance for MF, a huge barrier for groups and batoto and huge volunteer assistance from a vibrant community that has done a lot for MF. Batoto is still trying to find all these, both the designers and managers as well as the audience that will also allow it to afford proper utilities. Once it does have such a community I don't see any reason why it shouldn't evolve in the direction that makes it the site you are claiming it should be. These things don't just happen like magic.

In the meanwhile, however, T1's transparent pages (which sounds quite ingenious, actually, I hope to see that happen), A-Team's watermarks and Cmertb's example of yaoi trolling will become more common, which is rather sad, I think, from both leechers' and scanlators' views.

Just read Cmertb's post on the troll for seishun get. I found it hilarious but at the same time I felt quite sorry that this was done to leechers who didn't know what it was about. Unfortunately, it is worth doing again, if only to inform leechers on Mangafox that their provider is making a mess of the community.

Thank you Cmertb for drawing my attention to the MF bot as well as your interesting statistics. I found this thread and everyone's opinions very interesting.

Reported multiple times, so, thread locked.

Im sick of threads like this as they always break down. Next person who starts one is getting a ban thrown at them.

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