Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga Aggregator to Close as OpenManga Plans Launch
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RestLessone
 Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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4 volumes really isn't that much. Black Butler is a fairly good seller and it's still several volumes behind the Japanese release. 4 volumes could be released within 2 months. And, y'know, maybe VIZ wants to be careful with releasing so many series at a time because it affects the market? Releasing so many volumes a month and be detrimental. Also, I believe they have to license each individual volume. How about getting a volume to the printer that's only been recently printed in Japan? You have to plan these things ahead of time. How the economy? How about a million other little factors? How about VIZ's current condition (which isn't bad, but we really don't any details on)? Online rights depends on the original publisher. Seeing as we don't know if VIZ can even get those, the situation is moot.
Excuse me? First of all, I'm female. Second, no where in my entire post did I even mention scanlations. Don't put words in my mouth. I was explaining to you why sales affect release schedules (though there are definitely other factors), because you took a basic concept and only applied it to a top-selling series. Of course scanlation sites don't directly slow releases. It's people who give up on paying because there's a free alternative waiting on the Internet. I have met these people in real life. I know they exist. They don't buy because they found scanlation sites and encourage others not to buy because it's scanned online. Maybe you've never met them, but I have. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Assuming that if you were responding to a specific post you would have quoted it, you were responding to mine, LordRedhand and Paploo's as a group. Or you were responding to Paploo but taking him as some kind of generic representative. I dunno - its not very clear.
I feel maybe a tiny bit of sympathy for the "big" publishers, because they really aren't big publishers, but rather either small publishers or small divisions of bigger publishers. But my sympathies lie mostly with the artists. If the print publishers have to all fall over in order for a new system to get established that provides better opportunities for the artists to get paid for the reading of their work, well, I'll feel a twinge for the best of the lot.
Yes, the DMCA is set up more to protect the rights of big business, and it is much harder for niche business to protect their rights. There are overheads in having a team of IP protection lawyers on call, and the companies like Disney and NewsCorp that can parachute in a squad of suits benefit from lower legal cost per title, because the threat of legal action is so credible that the response often makes the legal action unnecessary.
As people keep pointing out, enforcement alone is only half a strategy. Its money thrown away without an online distribution strategy. The timing of this announcement, a few months before the ideal August or September timing for a legit distribution roll-out, is suggestive in that regard. Indeed, enforcement alone may be more than money wasted ... new groups and new, more clever ways of engaging in piracy will grow up after each sweep, so unless legit online distribution sources are growing up at the same time and starting to occupy part of that space, an enforcement sweep alone could be counter-productive. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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Four volumes is still a full year! The chapters that are contained in it came out during the spring of 2009 in Japan. To say that this is "not that much" because so many other books are even further behind is just a sign of how far the American manga industry needs to catch the hell up.
Yeah, it totally could. So where are they then?
If so that would be terribly bad business practices of them, I would assume that they would have some sort of flexible blanket agreement, licensing several volumes at a time, in advance of their Japanese release, and renegotiating after each block. There's no reason why they would have to wait for it to be released in Japan before they even begin the process of buying it up.
What about it? They don't have to wait for it to hit print in Japan, they could even print it here first if the Japanese were down with that. I doubt they would be, but there's no reason not to have a simultaneous release. I don't much care when the volume releases come out anyways, I just care that the chapter releases come out no more than a week after they run in Shonen Jump (J).
The situation is never moot. If Viz has trouble getting those rights then they just need to try harder, because they are absolutely necessary. That's what the competition is offering on those "aggregate" sites, the manga you want to read, when and how you want to read it. Viz needs to provide the EXACT same service if they want to take over that market share, because while some of these sites can be bullied into submission, it just moves the market elsewhere, and never towards them unless they actually nut-up and start competing on even footing.
Fair enough.
Well, they sound like jerks. Nothing can really be done about jerks, they've always existed and always will, just move on. If people want to buy volume releases, then they should do so, whether scans exist or not. If they don't want to then they shouldn't, whether scans exist or not. I mean, you can always just read the books in Borders if the only defining element is that you don't want to pay for it. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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You're overlooking something important; Shonen Jump USA. Like it or not, Viz ALWAYS puts their shonen jump titles in the mangazine first before releasing it in volume form. It's another form of income for them and it's their right to do so. Unfortunately for us the magazine is only released once a month, and that's not going to change. So add the time it takes for them to release chapters in Shonen Jump and THEN a manga volume, and you've probably put the release a month or two at least behind the Japanese release. It takes time for a manga to be released here. Sure you can point out to how fast scanlations are released, but the faster the release it, the more than likely the crappier the quality. Take for example this lifted from a scanlation: 
If I have to point out what's wrong with this speedy scanlation translation, then this argument is hopeless. But rough quality of scanlations aside, it takes time for publishers to also change things over into English, like sound effects. If you have never personally tried edit all the sound effects of a manga into English, and to attempt doing so in a way that it "blends in" you really have no idea how much work this sort of thing takes. It takes DAYS. It's why scanlators avoid doing it. It can make a chapter that would usually take a couple days to release to take up to a couple weeks depending on how much free time the person scanlating has, and the page count there is with the chapter. Now you can be one of those people who claims they don't need the sound effects of your Shonen Jump manga translated, but I'd tell you to STFU, and don't ruin it for the rest of us. I like the sound effects translated, thank you very much. Another factor in the time it takes for a volume to get out over here is the time it takes for a publisher to get good, high quality raws. There's a possibility they just scan a Japanese volume release like scanlators, but in this day and age I'm doubtful. If they get some sort of "masters" directly from the publisher, then that can take a while. I'm happy with the pace they're now releasing Naruto. I just wish they'd have an online pre-release of the chapters weekly, but maybe we'll get lucky in the future. For now I see no reason to increase volume releases in an attempt to compete with weekly chapter releases. We're getting a volume every three months or so, much like Japan, and I see no reason to speed things up with that. They could do another quick Ninja Campaign thing where they double the releases of their volumes for a month, but that'd only flood the market they already own, competing directly with themselves, as well as screw up their release schedule in Shonen Jump USA. |
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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But "being aware of it" is a red herring. Negotiation is far cheaper than lawsuits. And at the same time, the fact that they have to "negotiate" to get material taken down is proof that the people putting the material up are scumbags. So if they have found a way to convince the publishers holding rights in Japan to back an enforcement sweep - and the the second shoe on that just dropped today with the Bitway announcement that they are investing in Crunchyroll - more power to them. Viewers who think that getting away with it so far translates into some kind of right or entitlement to keep on getting away with it are in for a rude awakening. Bitway is not going to pay for international digital distribution rights if the copyrights are not enforced. {Edit: spelling} Last edited by agila61 on Tue Jun 15, 2010 3:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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While digital piracy isn't out and out analogous to theft (in that you are literally stealing THAT specific copy, but more that you're illegal replicating it), it's basically like this: Viz owns a shop full of lawn gnomes. Some are more expensive than others. While there are people who legally buy them, some steal them. Viz sees these people stealing, but never do anything. Except, wait, for one of their gnomes priced at a mid-tier level, they say , "Hold on, you can't do that" -- and thus, the number of people stealing that type of gnome severely drops. However, especially for the upper-tier gnomes, Viz still never tells people to stop stealing the material, despite having full capability to do so, and knowing that the number of people stealing their gnomes will be cut. And none of this really takes much effort. It's great that they're finally doing something, along with more legal options for online manga viewing opening up soon, but I don't understand how you can ignore or underplay how so many of these companies -- Dark Horse and Vertical have taken down illegal viewings of their titles online, for Christ's sake! -- have let this problem persist for so long. It doesn't absolve blame from these aggregator sites, but it also reflects poorly on the companies. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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"Just tell them and *bam* its taken down" costs money: money that the publishers we are talking about - who range from small to minuscule - would much rather invest in new titles. You have to pay the laywers and you have to pay the authorities investigating for their work. The smaller the publisher, the bigger the legal costs compared to their normal overheads. For Disney, the NFL, they can afford it as a small fraction of revenues, but its a major investment for a small publisher. That's how the system is rigged: it is designed to help big companies protect their interests, not designed primarily to defend small businesses, and this is a field where a "big publisher" restructures and they drop down into qualifying for help from the Small Business Administration. So, send a Cease and Desist to one of these dandelion sites, they ignore it, then you have to spend money and bring them to court. And if you beat them, they just shut down and a replacement site magically appears the next day. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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There's two holes in your argument. First, issuing a C&D only works if its respected. It is, after all, only a threat to bring a lawsuit. If the C&D is ignored, you have to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to actually bring the suit. And in this context, you can't get the legal costs back out of the party being sued, because they will be a shell with no money in the account. The site will just vanish and be replaced by another with a different name but the same content the next day. Second, in your garden gnome analogy, it would be absurd to suggest that somehow years of not taking action on the theft other than posting a sign, "attention: these gnomes are private property, not to be taken from the premises without a bill of sale", would entitle the thieves to anything at all. Each and every time they acted, they got away with something, but getting away with something for years does not add up to being entitled to do something. Each new theft is a new violation of an existing right. It seems to be that your position is that since they didn't take the people to court yet, they forfeited their right to do so. But that is not for individual bystanders to decide, in a society that operates under the rule of law ... its for a judge to decide. So your argument is not valid if, when the publishers bring these scumbags to court, the judge rules that the publishers have in fact not forfeited their rights. |
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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Look, I don't know why this isn't getting through to you. If you can show me evidence to the contrary -- that the case here isn't that it takes little manpower and money to send a C&D to these aggregator cites, DESPITE THE FACT that Vertical, Dark Horse, and Viz have already done so before -- I'll be open to that. But right now you have not. Also, furthermore, can you give me actual examples of these manga sites receiving C&D letters before and ignore it?
I'm not saying that "entitles" the scanlators or aggregate site owners and staff to anything. I am not arguing that the companies have "forfeited the right to take them to court." I just think it's bullshit that companies have taken a hands-off approach until just very recently, with the alternative of sending out C&Ds apparently being of very little cost to them. Also, there's no reason for you to do double posts. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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It takes a serious investment in money to bring a case to court. And for a business, either there is a return on the investment, or else it is a money sink that will kill the business if repeated too often.
You point to examples where the scumbag sites engaged in illegal bootleg distribution already required more than a mere message to take the material down. So you already established the fact that it takes more than a mere message to get them to stop breaking the law and trampling on the rights of the creators of the work. Why is there a "negotiation" at all when the scumbag sites do not have a legal leg to stand on? Its because the difficulties in attacking these kinds of sites piecemeal are well known, on both sides of the "bargaining table". You are free to pretend that they do not exist as a debating position in a forum discussion, but they exist in the real world. However, problem of knocking one down only for another to spring up in its place applies to piecemeal attacks in particular. Its a reshuffling of viewers from the site under attack to all the other well known sites. Relying on that to shelter against enforcement of the legitimate rights of the creators of the work is a strategy that falls apart if the publishers are able to organize for an across the board sweep followed up by a legal alternative to herd a substantial fraction of illegal site viewers back into the market. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Bullying? REALLY? The scumbags sites who are trampling on rights of the creators of the work are poor guilty victims, while if the publishers try to enforce their rights, they are bullies? If the only reason the release on that schedule is financially viable is because its a bootleg without any revenue going back to the creator of the work, then the implication of your argument is that Viz simply has to abandon the license. However, luckily your argument is a bit one-dimensional. That is, with piecemeal enforcement "some of these sites can be bullied into submission but it just moves the market elsewhere" is quite true. However, with an across the board sweep, all of the prominent sites that rely on hosting the material on site can either be forced to shut down or else scared into shutting down in a very short period of time, taking out the majority of "elsewhere's" that the less adept of the viewers would be likely to turn to. That creates room for the growth of legit online alternatives. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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Look, that's not my problem, it's theirs. I'm just telling it how it is, if they want to get rid of scans, they NEED to release the manga chapters within a week of the Japanese Jump. This is not a point of debate, it is an absolute fact. What it would take for them to make this happen is a problem on their end, not on the consumer's end.
The majority of the scans I read are perfectly fine, and I've noticed errors in official releases too (not to mention pointless censoring and overtranslation, something that causes me to drop my US Jump subscription years ago). I think that on the whole, the scanlator's output product on many of the bigger series is of no lower quality than the official releases. If you don't agree,at matters to you, then don't read scans, but for me, speed trumps quality by a longshot, and the quality isn't even that bad, so I have absolutely no problems with scans as a product.
One, I don't require them to translate sound effects. It really isn't a big deal. If it comes down to it, I'd be perfectly fine with them releasing "speedsub" versions of the manga online and then taking the time to do whatever fancy stuff they feel like doing for the later volume releases. And don't forget, a company like Viz potentially has a lot of advantages over a fanscanner. Most obviously, they can get ahold of the script before the issue even comes out, so they can have it fully and accurately translated before it hits Japanese news stands. A bit less obviously, if they worked it out with the Japanese artists, they could get ahold of "sound effect free" copies of the art, so that American effects could be added without having to scrub away the originals first. It would require a slight shift in how the artists work, but probably not too much. Whether they choose to leverage those advantages or not is up to them.
That's ridiculous. They should be able to get high resolution masters before the issue even drops in Japan, that's why they pay the license fees that scanlators don't.
Or that they disagree that they should have to take the works down at all.
What series does Bitway control, exactly? I can't find any evidence that they actually exist.
I'm just saying, if there are only two choices, 1. maintain the official status quo, slow releases AND remove the faster online alternative OR 2. Maintain the faster online alternative but give up on the officially licensed, but MUCH slower alternatives, I'd take option 2 any day of the week. I'd rather have the official manga industry in the US collapse completely than to have the scanlation community collapse, and would never buy from any company that made any effective effort at shutting down my favored scanlation sites. They don't have to enjoy it, but they do have to play nicely together.
Not really. Things just move on. Copyright laws are less strictly enforced in various countries which can host such sites, and the methods used to deliver the scans can just change forms. It's impossible to actually stop the flow, all they can do is be annoying about it.
Legit online alternatives have all the room they need. They just need to TRY. They don't need to shut anyone down, they just need to actually produce equivalent content themselves. People will use their legal alternatives, IF such alternatives exist, but they DON'T, so instead they turn to the less-legal options that ARE available. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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You imagine that the majority of people who continue to have access to the bootleg anime at the site they are used to going to will feel a sudden impulse to change. I imagine that the majority of people the majority of time follow their established habits, so that getting millions of people to change their habits is hard if they can keep doing things the way they have been used to. You imagine that a company will be willing to invest money into establishing a legal online distribution channel in the face of a massive and continuing system for pirating the same material that they will be licensing to distribute in that channel. I imagine that a company that was going to invest money into establishing a legal online distribution channel would be more willing to do so if it was assured that there would be serious efforts to undermine the massive and continuing system for pirating the same material that they will be licensing to distribute in that channel. You are, I must confess, far more creative than I am, since I cribbed my imagined scenarios from observations about how people normally do things in the real world. |
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Ohoni
Posts: 3421 |
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Sure. At the very least enough to make it worthwhile. It's like when the Naruto anime became available, ON TIME, via Hulu and other sites. It suddenly presented a viable alternative to torrents, and plenty of people jumped on board. Companies like Viz can NEVER win until they start giving the customer what they want, but once they do, they will get plenty of support from the community. Those that wouldn't, Viz has no need to worry about anyways. Those people are not their customers, those people will never be their customers. It'd be like a ribs joint being worried about PETA-member vegans, they just aren't coming in no matter what you do. Viz doesn't need to worry about them, they just need to worry about the people who might come over to their side.
A-yuuuuup.
I think that's just an excuse. I mean, consider that currently there are all these companies involved in the publishing of manga, which is a much more expensive and risky proposition than digital distribution, and yet you acknowledge that pirating online has been going on for years now, largely unopposed. If the high and mighties that you believe would be spooked away from digital distro over piracy are apparently fine with how piracy has effected the paper sales, if their friends are apparently fine with how piracy might impact anime viewing sites like Crunchyroll, then why would it prove to be such a dealbreaker ONLY when it comes to digitally distributed manga?
In my experience, it's far easier to be creative without my head crammed up my . . . you might want to give it a shot. |
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