I am gravely disappoint.

[elementalhero]

I'm sure most of you guys have heard by now, but a whole bunch of manga distributors have teamed up to start cracking down on scanlation sites. They've already hit Mangahelpers, and Onemanga is soon to follow.

I think this is a really bad decision on their parts. Without online manga sites, a good three-quarters of my current manga collection (which has grown to easily over one hundred volumes) would never have been purchased. Manga is expensive, and that makes it hard to justify buying on faith. But being able to read series beforehand and decide that this is worth spending money on definitely has gotten me into the vast majority of the series I currently am purchasing.

I understand the concern over people just reading scanlation sites and not buying volumes at all, believe me. But what they should be doing is what Viz and other animanga distributors have already begun doing with anime - put it online yourselves. Viz now offers many anime series, both dubbed and subbed, for free streaming on their site. Why can't they do the same with a manga viewer? Think about it - going page-by-page refreshes ensures that they can make a hell of a lot of money in on-screen advertisements. And they can make this online manga available for download to a Kindle or iPad or hard drive for a lower price than buying the volume itself. And there will always be people willing to buy the print volumes. I love manga volumes. They're very visually AND tactile-ly engaging.


Don't shoot yourselves in the foot, manga distributors. Work with new media, not against them.

EDIT: shit mangafox took down all its Pokespe oh my god no I need this to survive work this summer oh my god fuck no

Comments

[admiral-yen.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you, in fact your little proposal is probably one of the most sensible things I've seen in a long time. And I think it makes sense to say that yes half of my doujinshi collection wouldn't be what it is today either if it hadn't been for scanlation groups or hosting sites. AnimeA is soon to follow too, they have banners posted on every manga/doujin page asking the public if they know whether or not something has been licensed and this senseless, "well you need to either buy it or you can't preview it" shit is ridiculous.

If I were you and that were my suggestion, I would probably write a formal letter/e-mail to company reps from big name manga distributors and try to explain your feelings (which I can say at least line up with mine and quite possibly a good majority of other peoples feelings as well) and see if you can get them on board. If you needed signatures or something I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to get 'em electronically especially if you write any manga hosting website to post a link to a petition website.

Lemme know how it goes, and even if you don't pursue it, I still think you have a great idea there.

[okroginator.livejournal.com]

The problem is not so much that I can't couch my objections in terms suitable to send to a company and more that I have no idea who I should be writing to. It's not one big company that's doing this: in fact, although I talk about Viz Media in this post mostly, it's actually most of the big name Japanese companies that are taking the initiative on this. I don't know which one to voice my complaints to.

[admiral-yen.livejournal.com]

WELL SHIT hahaha the Japanese companies want this then I have no idea. I'm totally clueless too on how to approach the subject with anyone for that matter.

It seriously sucks though, I know I've been out of the loop on most things internet-wise and now this is just ruining my online life too.. augh... keep me posted?

[okroginator.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, yeah, most of the internet is beginning to freak out about this... I'll probably post about it if any more information turns up.

[admiral-yen.livejournal.com]

Good. I'm beginning to feel terror tremors. This is just like that time when people threatened to take my internet pornography away from fanfiction.net, livejournal.com communities and mangafox.com's online vie- OH WAIT THAT SHIT ALREADY HAPPENED. >:T

Fuckin' stupid overly protective censorship for lazy parents and or institutions who can't moderate properly and unintentional copyright infringements on stuff that why does it even have a copyright in the first place on it if no one's making any money off the damn thing through personal use alone... this crap about publishing and rights to stuff not even being available in our country... I swear NOTHING is sacred anymore.

also ilu have I told you this recently? ♥