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NEWS: Weekly Shonen Jump Editors Discuss Unauthorized Copies

littlegreenwolf wrote:

wilco488 wrote: Instead of vilifying the behavior -- give people a reasonably priced, legal alternative! Exactly. Give me a legal option to scanlations and I'll stop reading, and you'll also get rid of the reason scanlators scanlate, and all the people who want something for nothing will no longer have a source to get their free stuff from.

It's a nice theory, and one we all believed for a time. Perhaps you yourself will stop reading scanlations, but people are torrenting free, simulcasted anime. There is a legal alternative to watching shows like Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Within hours of it airing in Japan. And the piracy has not stopped.

The industry is moving. Very slowly, but it is moving. The so called "fans" are the ones who keep changing the terms of the deal. Most won't be satisfied unless the companies provide the scanlations themselves.

I was talking about people who are buying raw manga with the purpose of using them for scanlation. People who are buying manga in the Japanese language for their own enjoyment should keep doing so.

Only certain series ever get licensed in English

The fact of the matter is, not every series out there will be available in English, so as an anime fan, I can't deny the necessity of fansubs, just as I cannot deny the necessity of scanlators providing manga that will never EVER be officially released in English. And who do we have to rely on to provide the chapters? The same Japanese otaku that Shueisha are now cracking down on.

Okay, for certain series like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, etc, I would say that Shueisha are well within their right to stop the otaku from uploading the raws, which of course would mean no raws for scanlators to translate into other languages, thus making the scanlation issue moot. Now, the only reason I say this is because series like those, that are already licensed and are readily available in English, don't absolutely rely on scanlations for non-Japanese fans to read them, unlike the vast majority of other, unlicensed manga out there. Yes, if a manga series I follow gets licensed, 99% of the time I'll go out and buy the volumes when they're available here because I want the added quality that comes with professional translators (the 1% of the time being for series that I like, but not enough to want to buy, but that's generally rare for me since I read so few manga; I'm only currently reading 6, and half of them are (or will be) available in English).

Unfortunately the best solution to all these problems would be responsibility on the part of fans: to only get scanlations (and fansubs for that matter) on unlicensed and unavailable manga (or anime), and to purchase things that they like as soon as they are available, to learn patience and to support the industry.

For everyone who says "But it's so slooooow to wait!", what would you think if you were producing entertainment for Americans, and people from a foreign country began to release full copies of your entertainment in your release's native language for the sake of translating that could make it out to the people of the country of the native release. Even if the intention is not to deal damage, it in all likelihood will.

ABCBTom wrote:

There is a legal alternative to watching shows like Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Within hours of it airing in Japan. And the piracy has not stopped. The industry is moving. Very slowly, but it is moving. The so called "fans" are the ones who keep changing the terms of the deal. Most won't be satisfied unless the companies provide the scanlations themselves.

That's exactly the problem. The continuation of fansubs by fansubbing groups after streaming became the new shift in the industry this year is proof of that- even with a free, legal offering, most fans don't care. There'll always be new things to nitpick, delude and whinge about.

Even with their extremely large subscription-based online service, there's still a lot of people arguing why it's okay to pirate. I think manga publishers money would be better spent offering a few online products where possible to see if the market really exists for digital content, and taking legal action against pirates offering material illegally, than launching a large, expensive free-for-all site that some fans seem to be asking for. Even that wouldn't the problem, and even then, there'd be many artist who don't want to have certain works online.

Scanlations: You get what you pay for.

Nice theory Arisato-kun, unfortunately it doesn't happen. It is hard to know exactly what positive effects are but it is easier to see negative effects (Comics/Manga are losing money and series are getting canceled due to low sales.) This is part of the reason I can't get behind scanlations/fansubs is that even if I bought everything that I read/watched through these means (and in fact would feel obligated to regardless of whether I really liked it or not, buy all that you took means buy all, no exceptions.) I still would not have given back everything that I took. For that to happen I'd have to stop immediately the use of scanlations and fansubs and even then I can't really give it back on what I already took, but preventing myself from doing so in the future.

Besides anticipatory excitement makes your fandom burn longer than being an impatient I want it nowz! mindset, and now is a good a time as any to practice, I recommend breathing.

sdhd wrote:

I was talking about people who are buying raw manga with the purpose of using them for scanlation. People who are buying manga in the Japanese language for their own enjoyment should keep doing so.

And I'm saying that, so long as the manga is 1) unlicensed and 2) the raws are never posted online, the damage from groups actually purchasing the manga themselves to scanlate is negligible to Japanese companies; if the manga is licensed in, say, English, then it's the responsibility of companies like Viz, TokyoPop, Del Rey, etc. to go after them. And indeed they should.

Unfortunately the best solution to all these problems would be responsibility on the part of fans: to only get scanlations (and fansubs for that matter) on unlicensed and unavailable manga (or anime), and to purchase things that they like as soon as they are available, to learn patience and to support the industry.

And unfortunately again I don't see that happening without sweeping legal action that may cost companies as much as they're losing to illegal copies. So I guess I'll keep preaching my message of responsibility on any forum I can until it batters through the armor of entitlement that fans wrap around themselves. I mean, I may like being able to read chapters as they come out in Japan as well as reading them in volume form when they come out in America, but I can give up this luxury if it helps the industry.

Only idiots blame the fans alone. Its just as much a business problem of not adapting to the changing circumstances. Its like if you were selling something by handing it out to people and hoping they come back and pay you later. Do you really expect that to be an efficient business model? Really?

ZiharkXVI wrote:

Only idiots blame the fans alone. Its just as much a business problem of not adapting to the changing circumstances. Its like if you were selling something by handing it out to people and hoping they come back and pay you later. Do you really expect that to be an efficient business model? Really?

I don't think it's any of our intent to blame the fans alone. I currently don't work in the industry, so I can't make any meaningful changes there. But I can convince fellow friends to do the right thing.

No anti-piracy person is against changes in the industry. If I had my guess, since Viz is doing a speed-up release of One Piece, and introducing chapters in Shonen Jump, that One Piece would be the manga that will have the first "simulcast" experiments.

Keep this in mind:

1) Probably due to obligations to advertisers, publishers, subscribers and the like, any "simulcasted" chapter will have to be delayed a day or more, so that people will still buy the magazine in Japan. I know that the entire magazine needs to move to a digital format, but that is an evolutionary process.

2) Region locking would likely be required, since Shueisha deals with a lot of different licensees, and they would not want their sales affected. This would also be an evolutionary process.

3) Advertising would be required. Banner ads, or maybe click-through ads. Maybe a small subscriber fee would allow you to read the latest One Piece ad-free. If the manga was provided for no money, how can the publisher stay in business? A publisher would never undertake any act that would knowingly destroy their profitability.

4) A translator would probably have to work with Oda, his staff, and the publisher in order to provide a ready, quality checked, accurate translation in time for a very close release. This takes money and effort.

Those of us on the anti-piracy side are simply saying that this wouldn't matter. Someone would log in, download all of the images, put them on their site, with THEIR ADS, and make money from content they didn't even bother to scan in and translate. Maybe they'd even try and hack into Viz's servers and pull the translations before the Shonen Jump issue even hit newsstands in Japan.

ANN would post something about how Viz's Shonen Jump site was hacked and the content was spread for free about the internet. We'd be on a comment thread like this, and this is how the comments would go:

"It's Viz's fault. They should have known someone wanted to hack in and steal the manga before even the Japanese could read it."

"Viz needs to get with the times! You can't expect people who want to read manga would want to view ads. Viz just needs to give it away for free."

"Why should I have to wait three days to read something I can scanlate now! Information wants to be free, Viz. You're using the old time business model, and that no longer works in this digital age."

"I can't support Viz because they region lock. Until everyone in the world can read it for free, I'm going to scanlate in protest."

"Viz uses a stupid font. They also call Zoro "Zolo". I'm going to keep reading my favorite scanlation that uses comic sans."

And the excuses and justifications would fly about how this just isn't good enough, and I would be there, once again saying that the bar keeps shifting and fans are playing a con game. I will even link back to this thread when it happens.

At that time, will some of you admit that some of this is just shameless theft? What will it take?

They add that manga creators and Shueisha will be dealing severely with unauthorized copies on the Internet