This Is War !!

"I'm hoping that the manga publisher team won't hunt down every online manga sites and shut them down as well or else, I won't be able to read my mangas anymore!" - Vaux

Yes, I've said that on my last blog entry. Looks like I'm right, again. The 36 publishers in Japan's Digital Comic Association and several American publishers are forming a coalition to combat the rampant and growing problem of scanlations - illicit digital copies of manga either translated by fans or scanned directly from legitimate English releases.

If that's not enough, the coalition reportedly threatening legal action against 30 scanlation sites just to make their point crystal clear. Few of the scanlation sites has been taken down, willingly or not.

My favorite site, One Manga willingly removes all their series content but not all sites are doing so, thus comes the legal action. Few sites such as Mangatoshokan already removes their licensed series just to be on the safe spot, for now. Nagareboshi that serves mainly shoujo manga already raise their white flag.

The coalition asserts that scanlation aggregator sites now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators' expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales.

Sure, we can just obey and start buying legitimate manga release but how many of us are actually willing to do so? As I always practice - why pay if you can get it for free? There'll always be a hardcore who'll find a way around, but the appeal of these aggregations sites isn't just that they are free, it's also that they are easy. The question is, will this just be aimed at the aggregators or will they also try and cut off some of the more popular scanlations at the source?



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It was a great run and it was fun while it last. Like those cliche' movie lines - "You can run but you can't hide".

They can't stop the internet, but they're welcome to try!