Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Requiem For a Mangastream
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kakoishii
Posts: 741 |
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The simple answer would be once you factor in the licensing costs, productions costs, paying the staff, and then paying the original creators, the profit margin goes down considerably especially compared to a pirate who's only paying for the costs of keeping the site running, which in the case of a big aggregator site can become pretty negligible in the long run. |
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sokpupet
Posts: 133 |
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I bought every issue of US Shonen Jump (non-subscribed) and I have a subscription to Shonen Jump Alpha now. But I just want to know what's happening in One Piece, Naruto and Bleach when it happens. I have no right to expect to get to read them but I don't care; I MUST KNOW!!!
I can hardly wait for the day when Alpha becomes day and date, so I will never again have to go searching for a new group when the old has been obliterated. Also, the leeches and slugs will have run out of non-financial reasons to not sign up and be supportive of the industry. Double standard for the win! |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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A long time rumor, but no one other than WSJ editors and fellow manga artists can verify, and I believe they are not allowed to do so. Amano has never appeared in front of fans. For the article, I suggest using words in both genders with a slash. |
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danilo07
 Posts: 1580 |
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Listen say I want to buy a manga say I want to support mangakas I can not do that because I live in country in which nobody licensed any manga.So what am I supposed to do the only way I can actually read manga is through scanlations.
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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If you really, really want to support a mangaka you like, you could import the volumes, either from Japan or somewhere where they've been officially published that speaks your language. It's not that difficult to do, although cost might be a problem for you, I don't know. |
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danilo07
Posts: 1580 |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14790 |
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Some say DRM.
They should start asking for "donations" too, or otherwise the servers go down. And while they're at it, instead use "interns" that would work for free. 
Know anybody who has credit/debit cards? |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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If it should comfort you, the commentary within this week's column does not explicitly condemn the usage of scanlations by international users. What has been written on the subject here is the usual reminder of the legal status quo and the resultant fact that we are not officially 'entitled' to our objects of fancy. The personal censure of the standard means of access for persons in your situation is not made overt, which is as tolerant an attitude towards your habits as one can expect to be exhibited within columns such as these. |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1748 |
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There are two arguments I've never personally cared for -
1) The "If you want it but don't want to wait until it's licensed & localized, learn Japanese.". Really?! Because everyone who reads manga has the ability to learn another language without much struggle? That's great that there are some people in the world that can learn another language quickly, but there a lot of people who struggle with their first. Everyone has their area of expertise - some people are crummy with language, but they excel in math. For someone to use this crummy argument, I hope the next time you complain about your computer, car, or anything else remotely mechanical, a math whiz tells you that, instead of whining, you should learn calculus...and maybe then, you could fix your problem. 2) The "People who download/stream anime/manga for free refuse to purchase legit merchandise". I'm sure there are people out there who won't purchase legitimate goods for whatever reason, but, I believe that the majority of fans who use scanlation & streaming sites do support the industry, legally, in their own way. They buy licensed clothes, figurines, cards, posters, DVDs, etc. Some people buy artwork from shows that they enjoy (usually from second-hand sellers via Yahoo Japan or Mandarake), and while the studio and creator receive nothing from those sales, they are helping in the preservation of that particular anime/manga. But, I honestly think that the majority of anime fans do buy legitimate merchandise if it's available in their country. Another point that should be brought up is how much in royalties do mangaka and anime creators make from their products? While I'm sure a namesake like Oda can pretty much dictate how much he wants, other lesser known mangaka can't. Most Japanese publishers aren't known to give mangaka a stellar wage. So yeah, you could say buying the manga gives the creator money. But the next question is "How much does the creator receive?". Do they receive $1 per issue sold? $2? What if I wanted to directly give my money to the mangaka? What if I were so impressed by their recent work that I wanted to give them a $20 donation as a 'thank you'? Asking me to buy 20 volumes of their manga is absurd. Why are there no websites where I could send, via Paypal or whatever, a direct deposit to the mangaka? I'd feel a lot better knowing that the mangaka received the money, directly, instead of paying some Japanese distributor muckety-muck's Golden Week bonus. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4095 |
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Seeing how I do some of my initial reading/viewing/listening free through local libraries, I take it libraries are next?
Seriously (or not), this is a matter of publishers and not artists though I love watching people frame the argument that way as I'm quite evil myself. It doesn't matter what medium, publishers want you to know that you are taking money from that artist so support that artist by buying the publishers' online service {how is this not an oxymoron?} or physical product. I smell fear, I think... Songs being sold online, episodes being sold, suscribe to magazines online. What exactly is being purchased and how much goes to the artist? I pay for stuff I want but seeing how much I hate WSJ and their poor excuse of a product, there's not much manga I actually collect. Only three complete series with five more on the "will purchase" immediately list. Come on, Heaven's Lost Property... The other four? Not happening but I've come to terms with it. What a fun fandom this is {The question has risen of why not just buy the untranslated work but I would counter that by saying "Why not just print the translated, pirated work?" On an unrelated note, I also only collect dubbed anime and when that stops, I'm done. Buying consumer goods only in the form I want, that is just so selfish of me}. Art for the sake of product or product for the sake of product but never art for the sake of art as there's no money in it {Still, I would buy a bound oversized collection of Shopping Trip to Yokohama}. I love how publishers tell me what's worth it and what isn't. "But that's good!", I say, pointing to a well plotted, amusingly drawn monthly or an expertly crafted visual tone poem. "No, it isn't! Read your Naruto and like it!" Ultimately, I find it hilarious that only recently have publishers found out that the world was round. "The comic read around the world" and nobody saw that one coming? That the spoilers will circle the world long before its source even gets out of bed and fans wouldn't like it? I've heard the"spoilers!" phenomenon described along the lines of the the fan base itself being spoiled for wanting their product fresh, no questions asked, but I see it as a question of who wants to consume spoiled food? For me, if it wasn't for scanlation groups, I wouldn't have read these in the first place because I never knew manga I liked existed. It was so very depressing when I actively scanned the manga racks at book stores just to find, well, not much I wanted to buy. If the pirate sites go, good. I don't care because, sadly, the whole debate is far more entertaining then the manga they distribute, especially from scanlation groups whose sense of entitlement is just disgusting. Also, unlike One Piece, it can't be maintained indefinitely. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Learning a new language becomes a lot easier if you're motivated and work with the right material. For instance, my German used to be terrible. I had so much trouble with how it was taught in school I barely made any progress in over three years. Then I found out Inu Yasha, my favourite series at that time, was available in German and that those books were actually much cheaper than the (flopped!) English edition. So I figured, why not? Six months and several dozen manga volumes later, my passive vocab had increased tremendously. Sure, my active vocab was still nothing to write home about, but not only was I able to read the manga I liked so much, my grades improved. I didn't fail German four years in a row thanks to manga. I kept it up for a few years and now I'm able to comfortably read German literature. English is not my first language by the way. That's Dutch. Belgium and the Netherlands don't have much of a manga industry. There are some titles available in our language, but if you really want to get into manga, you need to be able to read a foreign language. For most that's either English or French. Sure, Japanese is very hard to learn because it's so different from the English language, but why not pick another one? Something closer to your native language? Both the German and French manga industry are huge? BTW I think a mechanic would generally be much better at fixing a car than a math major. Plus, it wouldn't hurt if you atleast knew the basics...
Why would libraries be next? They actually pay for those books. In fact, if a volume of manga is popular, there's a good chance it will have to be replaced on a regular basis. Libraries are valuable customers for publishers! Here, this will be helpful: Why libraries are not the same as manga scanlation sites |
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kushiel
 Posts: 94 Location: Saskatchewan |
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For me, what it comes down to is this. If scanlations and fansubs were not available and the series was not licensed in your region, would you condone hopping on a plane to Japan, walking into a store, grabbing the DVDs and leaving without paying? fudge no, that's stealing!
It's not any different with fansubs and scanlations. Just because you aren't taking anything physical doesn't mean it isn't stealing. Do as you will, but don't try to give me the sob story about something not available in your region. You're a thief because you're not financially supporting the creator. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Bear in mind that the implication is that the challenge facing the legit distributor is to offer a service that is sufficiently superior to the bootlegger's service so that there is a willingness to pay that generates sufficient revenue to pay the creators. (1) This means in part understanding their market: there is no existential need to "suppress" bootlegging or to fight a "war" on bootlegging ~ the need is to simply carve out a market. Before its a service problem, its a market analysis problem, because you need to know what are the services of value to the various market segments that you might target. (2) Building on that, it then means identifying the services that an adequately sized market values and delivering those services. (3) And if the fact that they are bootleggers exposes bootleggers to actions that degrade their quality of service to your target market segments, then it certainly can include strategic actions to degrade the quality of service offered by bootleggers. Like any other strategic action, actions to degrade the quality of service offered by bootleggers should be focused on best cost/benefit ratio. So "suppress all piracy" is rarely a strategic objective that makes much sense. There may well be some net benefit to an action to shake loose a large group of bootleg consumers clustering at a pirate bay, but its of most use if there are a number who would prefer some aspects of your service if they tried it out, but are clustering there by habit. So even when a strategic action to degrade the quality of service provided by a bootlegger makes sense, it makes the most sense in the context of a broader strategy to deliver superior service to a broad range of target markets. Viz is partway there ~ but they still have a way to go. One thing is their web reader is designed under an assumption that it is still 2005, and ignores the explosion of smaller screen devices perfectly capable of browsing the web on their own. Shaking loose MangaStream users won't do much to bring that limitation to their attention, since the bootleg consumers on smaller screen devices have tended to go the torrent download and CBR/CBZ reader software/ app route. That unbundles the choice of bootleg source and choice of viewer software. Viz can offer superior service to many consumers in that space, since the advantage of an online reader is that its "just there", with no distinct download step required ... but they don't seem to have realized it as of yet.
The difference is that if it is a legit copy, the original purchase of that specific second hand copy did support the creator. It may be called filesharing, but its not really sharing, its filepublishing. If it really was filesharing, if only one person at a time could use the scanlation, it would have far less potential to interfere with the market. |
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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That's because neither you or I or anyone here will have the expertise to create a model that will make the money necessary to appease your demands. Because if we could we would not be arguing on a forum about this issue, we'd be out solving it. But we're not business people, so we can only sit here and whine about our point of view. Fact is this model, whatever it may be, is feasible, and will happen. What won't happen is a consumer that is willing to pay for a degraded service that was provided better elsewhere. |
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