Manga scanlations a no-no

[Caspian]

If you hadn't heard, recently the Japan Digital Comic Association decided that scanlations would now be considered piracy and have asked websites to stop hosting them.

This leads me to ask if anyone has any experience with the english translation subscriptions to stuff like Weekly Shonen Jump. Nice thing about scanlations was that I didnt have to wait years for official translations in anime and translated manga compilations. I have no problem paying for them, but I really don't want to have to wait months or years to get caught back up with where I was already. Anyone have a subscription to shonen jump and know how far behind it is the weekly releases in Japan?

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!







...ah well, I'm sure you'll still be able to find them somewhere.

[Feba]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

And we should care why?

On a serious note, when I subscribed to Shonen Jump, it started most series from the beginning. This was years ago, at the beginning of its US release, but I doubt they've changed their model. They were about delivering the content, and they didn't do a terrible job of it, but they had zero interest in keeping up with Japan, or reflecting what was in the Japanese magazine. It was its own publication with its own features and its own goals.

It's not impossible to think it's changed, but I doubt it. Go find an issue on a magazine rack if you're curious.

But in all honesty, this will stop very few people. Maybe some of the sites that host manga on webpages (onemanga is the only one that comes to mind, though I've seen others) will start taking down lots of pages, but release groups and torrents have always been the way to go for people who want to be complete and up to date. Nyaatorrents isn't going to start pulling things, bakabt might.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

I like books, including manga, but there's something very nice about being able to get to what you want read in minutes of not in seconds, and never misplacing what you want to read.

Declaring war on bobbists putting scanlations up is inevitable, but did the manga industry offer the readers some comparable service? One Manga proved there's a demand for, well, manga on demand on the 'Net. Note that Japanese manga has been pirated for years and years in Taiwan before the Web was born. What the the Japanese publishers do? They manage to get the Taiwanese government to agree to enforcing the copy right laws while at the same time offer wider licensing so their manga became sanctioned and available legitimately. I see the first part being repeated now for scanlations, but having only a puny list of "selected titles" available online officially is just inviting people to try to get around the ban.

Don't have the manpower to translate all the manga in a timely manner? Why not enlist the scanlation teams? They love doing this as a hobby, so how about giving them a share of the revenue? Why not set up an inclusive system where the scanlation teams can compete for readers' and advertisers' Dollar/Pound/Canadian-funny-money by quality and/or title selection?

Apple proved there's a profitable (enough to make business sense) price point for the content producers to produce a la carte music for distribution in iTunes. Manga's NA/UK market revenue potential will probably match music's, but surely there's also a right balance of service/convenience and profit, waiting to be born online.
.

[Cotners]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

If you hadn't heard, recently the Japan Digital Comic Association decided that scanlations would now be considered piracy and have asked websites to stop hosting them.

This leads me to ask if anyone has any experience with the english translation subscriptions to stuff like Weekly Shonen Jump. Nice thing about scanlations was that I didnt have to wait years for official translations in anime and translated manga compilations. I have no problem paying for them, but I really don't want to have to wait months or years to get caught back up with where I was already. Anyone have a subscription to shonen jump and know how far behind it is the weekly releases in Japan?

I was sad when I saw this. I feel the same way. I would pay for up-to-date manga, but there is no way that the magazines will catch up with the scanlations.

[Caspian]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

Yeah, from what I've gathered reading new sites and reading in between the lines: Manga publishers used to be all for scanlation teams and sites because they were spreading it to places that wouldn't have seen it otherwise, as well as giving them the opportunity to test some titles and see if they'd be marketable elsewhere in the world. Now that manga and anime have completely taken off in the states and elsewhere, they've decided that scanlations have served their purpose and now they want to make the money directly.

Ifrit, no as of yet I haven't found any publisher supported sites producing scanlations for a monthly fee or whatever. I'll honestly be a bit surprised unless one or more of the bigger manga sites works out some sort of deal with the various publishers in Japan. Again, I'd have no problem paying a subscription fee for reading them, I just dont to have to wait 2 years to find out what happened this week. I started with english dubbed anime' until I got caught up here, then found subtitled anime' until I got caught up there, finally jumping to manga to stay on top of what was going on in the story lines. I'm certainly impatient.

I'm just glad FMA finished before all this went down.

[Aeni]

Re: Manga scanlations a no-no

If you hadn't heard, recently the Japan Digital Comic Association decided that scanlations would now be considered piracy and have asked websites to stop hosting them.

This leads me to ask if anyone has any experience with the english translation subscriptions to stuff like Weekly Shonen Jump. Nice thing about scanlations was that I didnt have to wait years for official translations in anime and translated manga compilations. I have no problem paying for them, but I really don't want to have to wait months or years to get caught back up with where I was already. Anyone have a subscription to shonen jump and know how far behind it is the weekly releases in Japan?

One of the manga hosting sites went down already and rumors that Manga Stream is being pressured to shut down (cease and desist letters went out to them apparently) I think the only place you'll get these in the future are from torrents and private MIRC channels.