Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga Piracy Site Manga Rock Shuts Down
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13549 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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I am not disputing the harms of piracy even though I frequent scanlation sites and have an active Crunyroll (which I hope has a select library of simulpubs). However, when they exaggerate the amount damage that piracy does, they are not helping the situation. Here's a tip: be honest about how much damage it actually does (with your best guesses), people of the industry.
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zabermega
 Posts: 4 |
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Mangarock Subscription service provides some benefits for the user s including auto sync favourite manga list for the app between devices, remove ads, and so on. The manga is completely free to read, there is no restrict on their site. They make money by putting up ads.
TL:DR: you dont need to subscribe to read the manga on their site. |
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SonicSP
Posts: 40 |
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Problem is there isn't a legal alternative that pretty much gives you all the manga under one subscription. Like a Netflix for Manga. Places like Manga Rock allows that. Frankly the way licensing is done these days is so byzantine that it encourages fragmentation of content across regions. You can see this in pretty much any digital subscription service with the exception of music, where Spotify very much keeps the old "Netflix" selection and value proposition alive. |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2416 Location: Germany |
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College students, who would be taught how citation and reproduction of intellectual IP works, didn't know what copyright is. Yeah, sure...
And to people here who think that piracy is going away or slowing down. I have a bridge to sell you. Most of big manga/anime piracy sites of the 00s are now down and piracy has now become even more ubiquitous. It´s easier to find scanlations/subs instead of official transactions when using google despite the fact that digital distribution of manga and anime finally managed to establish itself. There are more translation RIPs that even before too. Piracy site used to shun those. "Comic readers" for US or EU comics barely existed last decade but now flood the market. Monetized Youtubers just put scans on the site or read them aloud. That´s how little big tech cares about piracy. There was even a solid year or two when Marvel comics leaked from inside the company before the books were officially sold! Big manga companies as Jump now have the same problem due to day-and-date releases of chapters in I think Korea. The chapters leak somewhere during the process, which lead to Naruto 700 showing up on the web a few days before Jump went on sale. The same thing will happen to the finale of AoT very soon, mark my words. A dot com version of the site is currently accessible on my end, so this part of the report seems inaccurate: "The service's website is currently inaccessible". Dead ones live longer, i guess. |
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AutoOps007
Posts: 245 |
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What a load of bs nonsense. Even if they came from a legit source, they shouldn't be taking them and making money off them in the first place. Regardless of where they came from, just the act of taking someone else's work and profiting off it is just wrong. Even if they didn't understand how wrong their actions were when they began, they should've (and probably already did) come to this realization and shut down their site years ago. It shouldn't take 9 years. It wouldn't of taken them any more than a couple of years at best to realize what they were doing was wrong. Given it's been almost a decade, they are certainly not sorry. In fact, the disclaimer on their app; ""All manga, character, and logos belong to their respective copyright owners."", pretty much confirms that. They just thought that by having a copyright disclaimer they could get away with it. If they were truly sorry, they would give all the money they made back. It's not an apology when all you do is make excuses and then proceed to point out that there are others doing the same thing. |
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Kami-koto
Posts: 66 |
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Demanding money for stolen scanlations... Good riddance.
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Schadows
Posts: 13 |
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They reap what they saw.
Don't get me wrong, I was a a mangarock user because not all manga are available from legal sources (like the Manga PLUS app by Shueisha, the Crunchyroll Manga app, or some other legal stores) and was quite satisfied with the features of the app that I did purchase a Premium account a few years back to unlock all the features. But at that time, I paid (it was a one time payment) for a more useful app ... and just the app. A few weeks ago, they got greedy and decided to switch to a subscription base service, and I decided I was not going to support that way of doing things (as many already said, they don't translate anything and just host translation made by others). It seems that subscription thing was the last straw that breaks the camel's back for japanese license holders. Anyway, there are plenty of other websites and app doing the same things, and as history shown us, you don't battle piracy by trying to shut down illegal websites, but by providing good legal services instead (netflix, spotify and simulcast websites like crunchyroll are probably the best example). |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4074 |
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You just had to bring manga publishers into it, didn't you? To me, the basic issue is that Japan has a physical media problem and their answer is to ignore solutions in favor of keeping the books in print. And expensively in print at that. I don't know about WSJ's services myself as I tend to avoid their work like they're diseased... after Bakuman, I don't know why I use the word "like"... but my familiarity with pirates sites taught me it was the top titles that allowed the sites to host all the series no one gave a damn about. And the solution to that is.... Yeah, we're still working on that one. It's like trying to find A movie versus THE movie you're looking for on any streaming site. I suppose we'll just have to let the niche titles disappear, what a world we made.... I'm against aggregate sites of the form of just one site where you can find everything but there should be around four major manga sites going by publisher name alone... AND we're back to publishers being the problem... |
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Commander Cluck
 Posts: 123 |
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This is the main reason piracy is never going to go away. When the average person wants to watch anime they simply Google the show they want to watch and then click the first link that takes them to a site where they don't have to make an account to watch it and aren't region blocked. That's it. Sometimes it's a legal site, often times its a pirate site. People do not care what site they're watching it on it's really just whatever they happen to click on after that search. The other type of pirate, the collector, is the kind of person who wants a .mkv file of the show for archiving and collecting purposes so they don't use those streaming sites they just torrent or use a direct download. One of the biggest issues with legal streams is they black out the screen when you try to take a screenshot or clip a video from it, which is outdated DRM and just frustrates people, especially if the whole point of you going to a legal site in the first place is to get the best quality stream picture possible. So at that point you may as well just download the BD rip and use that for video and screenshot purposes since the legal stream is not going to let them do it. It's more of an issue for bloggers and YouTubers though. |
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Amethyst Alchemist
Former ANN Editor
 Posts: 312 Location: where it's always a good morning |
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We've updated the article to state that the website is currently still available though a "bug" makes it seem inaccessible.
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bsus1412
Posts: 24 |
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I have used Manga Rock for quite a while now. Before it was Onemanga and another, but it's always sad to see these sites go. I am not surprised, however, as Manga Rock has also been having a lot of trouble lately with its uploads with a lot of incomplete or Unable to Connect chapters being released left and right.
Now, I like to think of myself as one of those Good Pirates who buy the manga whenever possible but continue to read pirated manga. I have a collection of almost 2000 legally purchased volumes myself, but I continue to read pirated manga because that is the only way I can have an English translation available to read. My favorite series to re-read (Zettai Karen Children, Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, Addicted to Curry, Yumeiro Patisserie, History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, Umi no Misaki) have almost no chance of getting an official English adaption anytime soon. I have several of their Japanese print counterparts, but it just takes up too much space to collect every volume for a series that I can't read well enough to pick up on the subtle wordplay hidden away in the kanji (for some). Make these series available in English, and I'll slowly stop reading pirated versions. That worked for me with the Seven Seas imprints and it will work for others, I;m sure. Till then, these manga sites will ALWAYS be an intrinsic part of our community (whether the companies like it or not) |
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AkumaChef
Posts: 821 |
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I think you and Hinotoumei are talking about two different things here. In the case of Mangarock specifically, I agree with you 100%. It's not just "piracy", they were/are taking scanlations made for free by fans for fans and then charging money for them. That's incredibly scummy behavior any way you look at it. Hinotoumei, however, seems to be talking about piracy in general (not limited to Mangarock), as well as the state of the manga industry itself. Apples and oranges. The way I see it is that the widespread piracy of manga--be it from paid aggregators like Mangarock, or just plain o'l internet downloads and file sharing--are indicative of a much bigger issue: the Manga industry is doing a bad job distributing its product to its customers. Or, in other words, they have not kept up with the times. This is nothing new: the same thing happened with the music industry during the heyday of sharing MP3s online (Napster, anybody?), or how fansubs were pirated (initially with physical tapes, and eventually online) before the advent of modern simulcast services like Crunchyroll, etc. If the industry cannot provide a solution that will make readers happy then they will find their own solutions, just as they did with Napster and fansubs. The music industry figured this out and created easily accessible, reasonably priced, download services such as Itunes. They also put content like music videos up for free viewing on platforms like Youtube. Likewise, the anime industry also figured this out and now we have the vast majority of new anime being simulcast. If the manga industry wants to reduce piracy then they need to do the same. And it sounds like we're in the midst of that change right now given we have things like Shonen Jump's service, Crunchyroll Manga, Bookwalker, etc. But we're still in the early stages. Hopefully things will come together quickly as that benefits both the reader and the publishers.
Exactly. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Manga Rock's biggest problem is they were pretended they were legit, what with all the paid services they were offering. Industry isn't going to ignore that.
The industry's problem is they are not meeting western demand for their product. There is still tons of manga that will not be licensed anytime soon, if at all. Still hoping that some scanalator will complete Drakkun and Cannon God Exaxxion since Dark Horse won't. Faint hope there. Even reading scanalatons of unlicensed manga is a hit or miss thing, since some scanalators drop titles, if they don't get enough comments, or something new and shiny comes up and draws all their attention. Reading 9999 (super long title) and Isekai Meikyuu de Harem wo, of which the later will probably never be licensed. 9999 has been out for a bit, but by now it might be considered to old to license. Scanalators and scanalations are here for the long haul considering how much is not being licensed. Manga Rock just got too brazen. |
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dany_elle1908
 Posts: 50 Location: Romania |
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Hm, well seems the news been updated, but i never read on this site.
1, some webtoons were barely updated 2. my chrome decided to block it months ago 3. I always forgot that existed o.o 4. Never knew they asked a payment wow, this is the news for me |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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While I think MangaRock's paid services was waaaaay out of line, even as a legal user of all sorts of manga subscription services, I've still had to turn to piracy to fill in some gaps. For example, I have a sub for Viz' online manga service, but when I stumbled across Act-Age, chapters 7- 42 were removed from the queue. As far as I can tell, there's been no word of a physical release either to help make up the gap, which left me no real avenue to get from the staring chapters to the most current ones without resorting to piracy.
I don't mind this so much for things like Attack on Titan on Crunchyroll, where the manga is physically available to allow would-be readers to catch up while also preventing CR from cutting into Kodansha's sales, but for series that are in limbo or might never have a physical release stateside, there genuinely aren't a lot of options even for folks like me who like to keep things strictly legal. :/ |
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