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Smiled a bit at seeing Kadokawa there. Want to combat piracy? Try selling your stuff digitally. And no, the lame “previews” in your mobile app don’t count.

There's something ironic about a pirate trying to prevent piracy.

Fluwm wrote:

Want to combat piracy? Try selling your stuff digitally.

Or sell it at a reasonable price. I believe the anime & manga industry are at a point where they have gone mainstream enough to allow them to be self sustained. No reason to overprice them so much anymore.

Hatsu95 wrote:

Fluwm wrote:

Want to combat piracy? Try selling your stuff digitally.

Or sell it at a reasonable price. I believe the anime & manga industry are at a point where they have gone mainstream enough to allow them to be self sustained. No reason to overprice them so much anymore.

First step is making it available at all. There’s a bunch of kadokawa stuff I want to buy, but due to my work I have way too many physical books to buy manga any way but digitally. Most, yeah, I probably wouldn’t bother spending too much on, but some, like Gundam The Origin, I’d buy at any price.

Very odd seeing Luffy there, why not Deku or Smoker?

another thing is LOTS of good ones dont even get translated :/

Or some are old as heck and no longer published.

Considering a lot of piracy occurs outside of Japan as well, I think they need to make that page available in multiple languages if they want to raise awareness globally.

crosswithyou wrote:

Considering a lot of piracy occurs outside of Japan as well, I think they need to make that page available in multiple languages if they want to raise awareness globally.

People's complaints about translations not being available or digital distribution in the west isn't the issue. They're talking about people pirating their works in Japan. If someone pirates the English version of One Piece, that's Viz's problem, not Shueisha's.

-Stuart Smith

"The campaign opened a website with detailed information on piracy's effects on the publishing industry and the various types of piracy"

Ah, so no actual facts about how minimal the damage actually is.

crosswithyou wrote:

Considering a lot of piracy occurs outside of Japan as well, I think they need to make that page available in multiple languages if they want to raise awareness globally.

This is the big thing these publishers still just don't get - that some pirates are in areas that have no access to legal manga or anime. If they opened up availability for a global audience, they will be making more than they ever had. Plus they wouldn't have to mess around with overseas licenses and censoring, because it will be an entirely Japanese product.

But them playing whack-a-mole isn't going to stop Piracy entirely, especially with some countries like Russia and China overlooking such activity. These Manga companies need to innovate and get ahead of the curve by focusing on the larger audience and not the small population that buys physical products.

How about using your advertising dollars on a Steam for manga instead of this crapaign. This will curb piracy once and for all.

Last edited by UltScorpion on Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:56 pm; edited 1 time in total

If they mean chapters before the official release of them, I get that.

But piracy as a whole, All I can simply tell them is The Rule of Gaben:

Gabe Newell wrote:

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

Comixology, Viz Media, and to a lesser extent BookWalker are getting there with manga, but it's still got a long way to go. For starters unlike anime, you can't just read the latest chapter of Dr Stone or JoJo an hour after it's printed. They're too behind for that unlike the fan-translators and pirates. Sure, some shows with higher demand are lucky enough to get that treatment it seems like My Hero Academia and Dragon Ball Super, but others, I find that fan translators are working harder with than the rights holders like Berserk. But my main issue that's preventing me from fully denouncing manga piracy is the boatloads of manga that aren't licensed at all. Prime example for me is Saiki K considering it's so far among my all time favorites, but I'm just waiting day by day for the people to translate more chapters to read. Not to mention those that flatout feel abandoned in that job like with the manga for Tanaka-Kun. More examples just to name a few on my MAL at least are Komi-san, Angel Densetsu, Area 88, The World God Only Knows, Kingdom, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, Shaman King, Strider Hiryu, Zetman, among others.

And that's not including the one's that are either out of print or only available physically like 20th Century Boys, Cirque Du Freak, Gon, and Trigun.

I mean I'm clearly not from Japan but I want to support the official release too, just make it less of a hassle for me will ya?

SWAnimefan wrote:

This is the big thing these publishers still just don't get - that some pirates are in areas that have no access to legal manga or anime. If they opened up availability for a global audience, they will be making more than they ever had. Plus they wouldn't have to mess around with overseas licenses and censoring, because it will be an entirely Japanese product.

And I suppose Japanese publishers just happen to have idle personnel who can provide quality translations, marketing/promotion, and customer service in all those different languages and time zones across the globe? That's the whole point of licensing to foreign distributors -- it's more efficient, and thus more profitable, to let a 3rd party pay for the rights and do the necessary legwork than it is for Japanese companies to distribute directly. Plus, eliminating middlemen (as so many have a bloodlust for doing) wouldn't eliminate censorship concerns; we'd just see more situations like what befell Steam in Malaysia, where one game ran afoul of the moral guardians, and the whole site got blocked until Valve applied regional restrictions on that game.

True, many areas lack access to legal versions, but huge amounts of piracy take place in English-speaking areas and as the campaign points out, in Japan as well.

Hoppy800 wrote:

How about using your advertising dollars on a Steam for manga instead of this crapaign. This will curb piracy once and for all.

The "I should be able to read and download any manga ever made for a couple bucks a month" crowd isn't going to accept paying for individual chapters or titles. (Sure seems like piracy is a pricing problem... Wink

) Plus, to truly be as successful as Steam, it "Steam for Manga" would need effective anti-piracy technology that can neutralize some of the most popular uses of piracy, e.g. reading new chapters as soon as they're released. What's that I hear...?

UltScorpion wrote:

But piracy as a whole, All I can simply tell them is The Rule of Gaben:

Gabe Newell wrote:

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

He says that, as Steam meanwhile has employed various forms of DRM and anti-piracy technology over the years, some more effective than others. And when it comes to the Western anime/manga viewerbase, "good service" has a suspicious amount of overlap with "service I don't have to pay for."

I’m not sure how much of this campaign even applies to English speaking markets. I doubt authors like Mitsuru Adachi would complain about people going out of their way to read his manga in territories that don’t offer it legally.

UltScorpion wrote:

Sure, some shows with higher demand are lucky enough to get that treatment it seems like My Hero Academia and Dragon Ball Super, but others, I find that fan translators are working harder with than the rights holders like Berserk.

I agree with this. There are many groups out there that translate and release series more because they love the series and not because they want to make a dime from it. What amuses me is that, when/if these series do get licensed, the localization company expects that you'll stop reading the pirated version. No, I'm sorry. I discovered this series long before it was licensed. I am not going to wait years to read new material. While I will often buy the localized release because I like knowing that the mangaka might have made a cent from my purchase (and this needs to change...no reason why the writer/artist/assistants should receive such a pittance from each purchase), I will not wait until the localized version is released to enjoy the new material.

Quote:

But my main issue that's preventing me from fully denouncing manga piracy is the boatloads of manga that aren't licensed at all.

I also agree with this, but I think the industry rebuke to this is "We can't afford to license new series if everyone is going to read scanlations". Guilt tripping manga fans in the hope that they'll stop reading scanlations altogether is not working. Clearly, the business model needs to change. Instead of expecting people to subscribe to every service out there, all companies need to get together and form their own website where people can read all the manga they want for a certain price. I pay a flat yearly fee to access Crunchy's anime and manga catalog. If Crunchy can arrange contracts between various animation studios, why can't some other service arrange something similar for titles from larger publications like Shonen Jump, HanaYume, Nakayoshi, etc.?

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INTEREST: Manga Publishers Team Up for 'Stop! Piracy Edition' Info Campaign