Forum - View topicINTEREST: Webtoon Artist Reports Revenue Tripling After Piracy Site Shutdown
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Firefly251
Posts: 454 |
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thats the thing about piracy..it isn't tied to stuff directly like profit. "if piracy doesnt exist people will pay for it" is a common but misguided assumption. Piracy is (generally) the result of ease of access...major one being inability to afford something. Even if piracy isnt an option doesnt magically make people have desire to spend $ on something. sure, some might go to the legal route however most will just give up as not worth it to them. What "might" get you boosted is the publicity that piracy has as it brings specific stuff to forefront and people are curious and then look into what its about.More people could visit said site due to the news, find out they like it, and then support them leading to a source of increased profit totally unrelated to piracy. (example given is due to publicity) |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 844 |
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I really gotta question the reading comprehension here. Creator, whose work wasn’t on a piracy site, sees an increase in their livelihood once a pirate site is shut down and people are forced to go to legitimate sites and discover their work in a place that pays them. How you twisted this to fit your imaginary idea how you want things to work rather than reality is truly impressive. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2582 |
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I'm not strictly for or against piracy myself. It's logistical. I think it can both be detrimental and potentially helpful to entire industries, and I think it can be harmful to individual creators while being empowering to readers, and neither side is worth ignoring, among other positives and negatives. I feel like this falls into that complexity. I'm not a webtoon reader, but some of my friends (mostly coworkers) who started out reading webtoons officially found their services great to start, but over time, the apps, access to content, quality, etc. dropped, and the only alternative to get that unfettered service back was piracy. 2 of my coworkers who constantly discuss webtoons have told me they exclusively pirate now, of 6 who regularly talk about it around me, so it's not a numbers analysis, but it does suggest a need. Thus, I think this does point to a service issue. On the flip side, when piracy isn't available, many people will tolerate worsening service to get what they want, and spend money for access. Hence why this artist may have seen a rise in traffic.
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Nekbone
Posts: 212 |
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Does only 1 pirate site exist? There's dozens of ways to read pirated stuff for free. I feel like this is a case of correlation does not imply causation
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Aerdra
Posts: 555 |
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It might've had an impact, based on substitute good theory. Or it could be sample noise. Hard to say based on anecdotal data.
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Firefly251
Posts: 454 |
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except i wasn't twisting it I merely stated a fact of the matter. Piracy has been a thing since basically forever. (be you on the for or against side doesnt matter in this case) Publicity of the hostsite is likely what (mostly) rose the income becasue people might not of known of it until now. Most pirates don't pay period. Never will. If 1 site is shut down...there are dozens more to find it on. (just ask Nintendo and BOTW how that ended with many sites being shut down) Publishers who make news on shutting stuff down usually see the target of that go up instead of down ( as to see what was the cause and humans are very curious by nature) the "I made more $ randomly after this site was shut down that didn't effect me to begin with" is the same excuse the music/film/game industry has tried to claim for decades..and it always fails becasue the reality is you can NOT confirm a reduction of pirates = increased sales. That single bit of reality is entire reason piracy exists in a special area as in a court you can not state an exact loss because its physically impossible to tell who would pay and would wouldn't. (and if they wouldnt pay regardless that isnt any loss as no sale is same as being pirated as you make no $ either way) Again the site's increase was more than likely due to the publicity it got not anything to do with pirate sites being shut down. Again for or against piracy is a persons individual choice (I am not gonna tell someone to be either side) but claims of no piracy = more profit is a regular disproven connection. |
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cookiecutter999
Posts: 1 |
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Your problem is that you're approaching this from a limited, American (likely) point of view. This was Newtoki, the Korean manga/manhwa/webtoon pirating site and it was Korean webtoons being pirated by Korean readers.The Korean official sites are extremely accessible and affordable to Koreans, so Newtoki was basically funneling away all the lazy Koreans who liked webtoons but were too lazy to shell out for a subscription/account on any official site. Once Newtoki was down, those Koreans had to either make the decision to buy and read legally or not read webtoons for the foreseeable future. Considering how the official sites have huge catalogs and are easy to use, a majority of those people decided to suck it up and start paying for their webtoons. Even if that was just 30% of the piraters, that could be 1000s or 10000s of users suddenly now legally reading and being exposed to the other titles on the site's catalog. Of course other authors on the site would benefit like the author featured in the article (Note that other Korean artists are also experiencing increased profits, so it's not just this particular artist.) A more analogous situation in the West is if a highly anticipated animated movie came out on Netflix and all those pirating sites like watchcartoononline and just Piratebay suddenly went down. That would be enough for a good chunk of pirating Western watchers to just buy the Netflix subscription for at least a month since most are also too lazy to properly torrent or search for an alternative illegal download link. This isn't a situation like manga overseas where legal means of reading isn't particularly accessible or affordable. This is also the disconnect I see between Westerners and people against piracy in Japan and Korea. Taking down domestic pirate sites that upload works in their origin language in Japan and Korea shows noticeable increase in profits because the alternative legal methods of reading and buying are super affordable and it was actually just lazy pirates in their own countries not shelling out. Domestic pirate sites don't serve as "exposure"/free advertising in the same way that English scans do for manga, it just genuinely takes away sales in their domestic markets. Whereas if all the pirate sites with English scans of manga went down, there's much more room for debate on whether it would lead to increased sales in the English-speaking world since scans are a huge way that English-speaking readers remain hyped and tuned in to the manga they buy. |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5803 |
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Then it's completely unrelated. So what is even this article? The pirate site that didn't contain their work shutting down cannot possibly have any connection to their pay increase |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
Posts: 844 |
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Read. A piracy site shutting down drove up user numbers to the legitimate site, which in turn increased their readership due to new eyes. They’re remarking that it was a nice surprise to them since they didn’t think shutting down a site would effect them, but it turns out it did. |
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Florete
Posts: 462 |
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What I've often found is that piracy is not a problem, and can even be a net positive, for major companies like Disney and Nintendo, but is more often detrimental to smaller creators, and this story helps confirm it. A huge company can benefit from the simple exposure while they're still getting the common audience that doesn't even know how to pirate, but small creators are in that small space where not only is their work their only source of income, the people who find out about it are more likely to be savvy enough to know how to get around the barriers.
It would be hypocritical of me to criticize piracy in general, but I do still try to convince people to at least not pirate the works of individual creators, if the legal option is available to you. |
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-Matthew-
Posts: 1745 |
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Indeed. I also don't understand the connection. |
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