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NEWS: Manga Piracy Site Manga Rock Shuts Down

Well SJ does have the newest chapters for free in English so that is a plus for those who do not want to pay. The thing is that illegal means you get the chapters Friday while Viz publishes them on Sunday and on sometimes on Wednesday. People want it sooner than later and will most likely read illegal scans than wait a couple more days.

Open Chrome.

At the top right, click More More and then Settings.

At the bottom, click Advanced. Under "Languages," click Language.

Remove Japanese and Korean language

As a result, we plan to shut down our scanlation website and app. We also recommend that similar scanlation sites (there are many) shut down as well. We are truly sorry for causing problems for the manga industry.

Takizawa-Shinzou wrote:

Piracy doesn't hurt sales/profit because most of the people pirating would never pay no matter what you do. There's no such thing as "lost profit" due to piracy.

Thats cool and all, but what if we're talking about a subscription service that sells pirated versions. Wouldnt you consider the money a subscriber spends on the service to be "lost profit" seeing as the money is going to the pirates instead of the rights holders?

Anyway, I believe scanlation is good but if they release them before the official released is pretty wrong.

Pirating will never cease until the market is truly global and simulcast/simurelease and companies won't quit trying to make things exclusive to certain platforms.

But you'd be surprised how many people who primarily read scanlations believe Viz is "late" on this because speed translating groups pump out low-quality scans earlier. Which is part of the bigger issue Zalis116 brought up - the current community standards of english-language manga is defined by scanlations and the expectation that you can and should read anything for free, and any legit service is stingy or a middleman.

However, when the publishers choose not to offer an equivalent subscription-based option, asking us to either buy physical volumes of every series (got shelf space?) or in many cases pay nearly as much for a digital copy - options that many of us would only take for our favorite series - then there is still no attractive ethical alternative to piracy.

Granted, there are people who are willing and able to individually purchase everything they read, and there are people who are unwilling and/or unable to pay for anything. But there are also many people willing to pay a low subscription cost for a convenient, high-value subscription service. That's why Crunchyroll has over 2 million subscribers.

Crunchyroll once tried to launch a separate manga subscription service, but it failed and was rolled back into their streaming subscription. They weren't able to license enough manga to make the price attractive to enough people to get the ball rolling. I subscribed to ComiXology Unlimited for a couple of months; it may be fine for western comics, but the manga selection is pitiful, and most ask you to buy digital volumes at nearly full price after the first two or three that are covered under the subscription price.

Say the industry can't survive on the model of subscriptions + occasional purchases of favorite titles. Then the industry can collapse as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy to pay to support it, but not on the existing terms.

I really wish there was a legitimate site to subscribe to a manga library similar to crunchyroll. Maybe there is one, but if so I haven't found it. I know crunchyroll includes access to some manga, but it doesn't include the entire series, just the first chapter and several of the latest. Manga is ridiculously expensive compared to anime, and I'm not going to invest in a series that I don't know is actually good. So most of the time, I end up not buying at all, though I actually will buy manga I know I like. It seems silly when manga is cheaper to produce and cheaper to host, being a bunch of images rather than streaming video.

meruru wrote:

I really wish there was a legitimate site to subscribe to a manga library similar to crunchyroll. Maybe there is one, but if so I haven't found it. I know crunchyroll includes access to some manga, but it doesn't include the entire series, just the first chapter and several of the latest. Manga is ridiculously expensive compared to anime, and I'm not going to invest in a series that I don't know is actually good. So most of the time, I end up not buying at all, though I actually will buy manga I know I like. It seems silly when manga is cheaper to produce and cheaper to host, being a bunch of images rather than streaming video.

Have you people perhaps not heard of Shonen Jump, or are you in a country not supported by them? It's $2 a month and has entire series to read and download on your phone to read offline. Of course it's SJ stuff only, but it's a ridiculous deal in my opinion. I use it all the time and I've been subscribed since it launched back in December.

Manga scanalation/ anime subtitles is not new. Most of these popular franchises only developed a following in the west due to fans. These greedy selfish companies (who pay the artists bare minimal wages to work so many hours a day that most of them basically get ill and die for it) wouldn't weren't willing to take the risk to expose a whole other country to their products..SO SOMEONE STARTED DOING IT FOR THEM FOR FREE; NOT TO MAKE MONEY, NOT TO HAVE ANY SORT OF POPULARITY, BUT SIMPLY TO SPREAD THE NEWS OF HOW COOL THEIR FAVORITE MANGA IS.

If it wasn't for them, NEWS FLASH , we would not have the majority of the franchises we have today; nor would niche video game studios such as NIS be taking as much risk as they are to bringing the games they do over here.

Yet, these multi million dollar companies attack this free industry, claiming it is bad for the creators. The only reason it is bad for the creators is because the creators are being scammed by the multi million dollar mega corporation. They are being treated, overworked and abused to the point of death all for measly wages well the mega company collects most of the money for minimal work..

SO HOW ABOUT WE FOCUS ON WHAT THE REAL ISSUE IS HERE.
these manga artists are borderline slaves. A lot of them do not even enjoy what they are doing. That is why basically every other week you hear about a series going on hiatus or outright cancelled.

Not because places like manga rock are taking away there money causing them to starve, but because the overall working conditions and expectations are extreme.

These companies should be worshipping those who have taken the effort FOR FREE to translate and distribute their products to another nation.

Ya, lack of money is the real reason berserk and hunter x hunter keep going on long ass hiatuses..right..sure mhmm..

piracy has really caused this

piracy caused d-gray man to all but disappear


ya, filthy criminal disgusting scum bag pirates

LegitPancake wrote:

meruru wrote: I really wish there was a legitimate site to subscribe to a manga library similar to crunchyroll. Maybe there is one, but if so I haven't found it. I know crunchyroll includes access to some manga, but it doesn't include the entire series, just the first chapter and several of the latest. Manga is ridiculously expensive compared to anime, and I'm not going to invest in a series that I don't know is actually good. So most of the time, I end up not buying at all, though I actually will buy manga I know I like. It seems silly when manga is cheaper to produce and cheaper to host, being a bunch of images rather than streaming video. Have you people perhaps not heard of Shonen Jump, or are you in a country not supported by them? It's $2 a month and has entire series to read and download on your phone to read offline. Of course it's SJ stuff only, but it's a ridiculous deal in my opinion. I use it all the time and I've been subscribed since it launched back in December.

That does sound like a good deal, and I hadn't heard they had an actual subscription, so I'll have to check it out, although it's still a little disappointing because I read a lot more shoujo and josei than shounen. Thanks for the rec.