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NEWS: Japanese Government Officially Asks Internet Providers to Block Manga Piracy Sites


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hikura



Joined: 21 Nov 2004
Posts: 588
PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:22 pm Reply with quote
CatSword wrote:
I don't know how you can justify pirating manga if you live in Japan. Manga is like $4-5 equivalent a volume, and magazines for $2-3 equivalent.

If you could get those items for free,would you buy them?That is how some people think.Plus others want to get some titles and they can not afford to buy all of them hence why they do that.


Last edited by hikura on Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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#881434



Joined: 09 Apr 2018
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:06 am Reply with quote
Time to fire up the VPNs.
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Feli1



Joined: 25 Dec 2017
Posts: 196
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:45 am Reply with quote
yeah good luck with that
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SWAnimefan



Joined: 10 Oct 2014
Posts: 634
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 3:15 am Reply with quote
DeTroyes wrote:
Betcha an (ineffectual) crackdown on illegal streaming sites and video downloading is next. The FTC is already grumbling about it.


Indeed, but it won't stop pirates. They will move their operations into the deep web or even the dark web. Or move their servers to a location that they won't be so easily shut down.

WANNFH wrote:
Ah, they never learn. If they really wanted to go versus piracy, they need to do one simple thing - make the manga digital releases more accessible to the people, including the releases for foreign countries. Seriously, if Steam can do this for the games, including the boom on indie game titles (that go for the Japanese also) - why you can't do the same thing for manga? The services that exist now hardly cover 1% of the existing market, the other is purely related to fan translations.

What's the problem, for real?


I wonder if they view it as losing face if they capitulated to pirates than seeing it as a simple supply and demand situation?

I can't explain the situation in Japan itself. As someone posted previously, the prices for Anime and Manga in Japan doesn't necessitate piracy, unlike the rest of the world who have no legal access or find it too expensive ($100 box sets, multiple website subscriptions, etc). Like you said, these companies could put legal anime and manga on Steam (or their own dedicated website) and open it up to the world, then all their complaining about lost revenue is gone as they will have a whole new customer base. Especially if they even brought back old series.

Unfortunately, it seems the Japanese don't agree with such thinking. Sad
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AJ (LordNikon)



Joined: 14 Apr 2009
Posts: 537
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 4:57 am Reply with quote
Quote:
I can't explain the situation in Japan itself. As someone posted previously, the prices for Anime and Manga in Japan doesn't necessitate piracy, unlike the rest of the world who have no legal access or find it too expensive ($100 box sets, multiple website subscriptions, etc). Like you said, these companies could put legal anime and manga on Steam (or their own dedicated website) and open it up to the world, then all their complaining about lost revenue is gone as they will have a whole new customer base. Especially if they even brought back old series.

Unfortunately, it seems the Japanese don't agree with such thinking. Sad


Think of it this way Avex pulled Ayumi (Hamasaki) off iTunes globally a few years back because in the Japanese logic of things, putting digital music on the web opens up the door to more piracy.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1765
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 9:13 am Reply with quote
AJ (LordNikon) wrote:
Think of it this way Avex pulled Ayumi (Hamasaki) off iTunes globally a few years back because in the Japanese logic of things, putting digital music on the web opens up the door to more piracy.

Yes, it's kind of amazing how backwards their thinking is. Don't make it available digitally because it'll just get pirated! Don't make it available to foreign markets because they'll just pirate it!

...and so, I'm pirating a lot of music and CD drama because it's literally not available for me to buy legally, short of buying the physical CDs that I'm not going to do (shipping is either incredibly expensive or takes way too long and is way too unreliable, I have no storage space for these things, and it's not like I need the CDs for anything other than ripping the music from them so I can transfer it to my phone/cloud/etc). And even what is available digitally is often released months after the physical CD so I'll end up pirating the music before buying the album digitally.

SWAnimefan wrote:
I can't explain the situation in Japan itself. As someone posted previously, the prices for Anime and Manga in Japan doesn't necessitate piracy, unlike the rest of the world who have no legal access or find it too expensive ($100 box sets, multiple website subscriptions, etc).

Aside of the "why pay for it when you can get it for free" attitude (that I think is by far not as widespread as it may seem) I don't think it's all that surprising. Manga is getting more expensive as time goes by, and iIf you follow a lot of series then all that money adds up, especially if they're spread over various magazines. Let's say you follow three weekly series and three monthly ones, in different magazines - calculating with 400 yen for the monthly mags and 350 for the weekly ones (and these are the cheaper ones) it adds up to 5400 yen a month, which is sure, not necessarily a crushing amount (unless you're getting by on allowance or have no income) but it's not insignificant either. And add to it the tankoubon prices...

For what it's worth, publishers seem to be catching on (that, and realizing that print is less and less sustainable) and developing a model where you can read the latest installments of their manga for free on their websites. They usually have the first couple of chapters, and the latest ones, so it's available for free, but unless the series is just starting out you also need to buy the tankoubons. As a reader I think this is a pretty good model, although I'm not sure how profitable it is.
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sputn1k



Joined: 29 Sep 2016
Posts: 52
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 11:14 am Reply with quote
WANNFH wrote:
Ah, they never learn. If they really wanted to go versus piracy, they need to do one simple thing - make the manga digital releases more accessible to the people, including the releases for foreign countries. Seriously, if Steam can do this for the games, including the boom on indie game titles (that go for the Japanese also) - why you can't do the same thing for manga? The services that exist now hardly cover 1% of the existing market, the other is purely related to fan translations.

What's the problem, for real?


Manga is fairly easily accessible in Japan, where you can get the physical release of pretty much everything for like $2 per volume at second hand stores like Book Off. Of course the publishers want you to buy the volumes new, so they make the money, not Book Off.

Going digital basically meant shutting out Book Off and other second hand retailers out of the business, by not enabling the re-sale of the digital products. So the only competing offer for digital is piracy, which they need to curb in order to sell more legally.

Unlike what most people believe due to some known cases in mainstream entertainment, anti-piracy in niche markets, like manga and anime, actually works much better. Niche fans are actually more willing to invest in their hobby and the removal of easy to access pirate options actually leads to more legitimate sales, particularly in countries where the population is more law abiding on average in first place and actually has the buying power to sustain that hobby adequately and mostly only pirated because it was convenient, not because it was financially necessary.
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simona.com



Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 355
Location: Tokyo
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:23 pm Reply with quote
mangamura is a national disgrace.
I hope they arrest the bastard and throw away the key.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2673
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:47 pm Reply with quote
CatSword wrote:
I don't know how you can justify pirating manga if you live in Japan.


That is quite easy to explain, please bear with me a little while.

Imagine if the government and some companies executives legislated so that there were no more video web streaming "Go rent your videos at blockbuster" they would yell. The obvious answer from the public at large would be "But at blockbuster I have to pay for each title that I want to see, the popular ones are scarce and the rare ones are simply unavailable, etc.". In one word, in the 21st century Blockbuster is inconvenient, that is why they went bankrupt, people rather pay for netflix and/or hulu.

The japanese manga business model is stuck in the 20th century which is inconvenient for consumers that know better. Another example of inconvenience, I am paying a crunchy subscription but the manga they have I read at pirate sites, how come? Flash player is no longer an option, I have if disabled by default and their android app does not show manga. So until they modernize I would search for more convenient avenues.

So, the business keyword of this thread is convenience, a business that does not care for their customers is prone to go the way of the dodo. Unless of course their government becomes like the USSR, where consumers were to shut up and put up.
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simona.com



Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 355
Location: Tokyo
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:01 pm Reply with quote
You can get any manga in ebook or paper format at ridiculous prices here in Japan - there really is NO justification for piracy AT ALL.

80% of ebooks come out simultaneously with paper editions and a big part of the rest within 30 days. piracy is killing publishing.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2673
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:33 pm Reply with quote
simona.com wrote:
You can get any manga in ebook or paper format at ridiculous prices here in Japan - there really is NO justification for piracy AT ALL.

80% of ebooks come out simultaneously with paper editions and a big part of the rest within 30 days. piracy is killing publishing.


That mentality of "people have to buy everything they read" is what is really killing the manga industry. If the anime industry had cling to that instead of going the netflix way "people can pay too see our whole catalog" they would already be on an irreversible decline.
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simona.com



Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 355
Location: Tokyo
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 3:10 pm Reply with quote
mangamuscle wrote:

That mentality of "people have to buy everything they read" is what is really killing the manga industry. If the anime industry had cling to that instead of going the netflix way "people can pay too see our whole catalog" they would already be on an irreversible decline.


That's what Amazon Prime is trying to do here, but many publishers already pulled out of it.
I don't really want to pay a subscription to read stuff I cannot own.
Might work with the casual manga reader, not surely with the fans.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2673
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 3:46 pm Reply with quote
simona.com wrote:
That's what Amazon Prime is trying to do here, but many publishers already pulled out of it.


I can understand not wanting to give amazon control over the manga industry. I cannot understand why they do not make their own equivalent website with a library of digital manga available to read for a monthly fee.

Quote:
I don't really want to pay a subscription to read stuff I cannot own.
Might work with the casual manga reader, not surely with the fans.


Casual's outnumber hardcore fans, it makes good business sense to cater to casual readers necessities online while still supplying weekly printed manga to people that like to read manga on dead trees. Same thing happens in the USA with bluray discs, people still rent them at redbox kiosks.
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Paulo27



Joined: 22 Jan 2015
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 9:55 pm Reply with quote
>100 million readers monthly.
Literally everyone in Japan is stealing manga these days. Laughing
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#Verso.Sciolto





PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:19 pm Reply with quote
mangamuscle wrote:
I cannot understand why they do not make their own equivalent website with a library of digital manga available to read for a monthly fee.
Something like Comic Days, you mean?

animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-02-11/kodansha-launches-comic-days-app-online-service-for-6-manga-magazines/.127652

https://comic-days.com

... or like packages offered through Yahoo Japan's Online Bookstore, such as this:
https://bookstore.yahoo.co.jp/joshicomi.html

for example?

General note added:

Given the nature of the current Japanese Government, I find this aspect very interesting as well:
Quote:
The Mainichi Shimbun previously noted that there is no clear legal precedent for asking providers to block access to the websites, and that the move may prove unconstitutional due to violating privacy of communication and functioning as censorship. Article 21 of The Constitution of Japan states, "Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated."
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