Emergency Post

I’m freaking about. Seriously.

silverado writes: In regard to the recent anti-piracy activities in the film, music and manga industry I've decided to write this post as a warning to all website owners who are currently hosting scanlations or fansubs to think twice about a take down request!

The publishers made their move and it's now up the community and admins to make ours. Despite many rumors and confusion there is one thing we can tell for sure: Going to court is the worst of all possible scenarios!

If the scanlation community wants to survive and maintain the freedom they are enjoying now, it is of utmost importance that all US online manga viewing sites comply with the publisher's take down requests. Because it takes only one loss in court to create a leading case to make scanlations officially and forever illegal. For the first time in history is the creation and hosting of scanlations threatened. Do you remember Morpheus P2P or Kazaa? Winny or ShareEX2? File sharing was tolerated until it grew too big to be neglected by the industry. This is the same. If this case gets through, there will be no gray-zone, no tolerance, no tolerated hosting anymore! A loss in court will result in a wide spread trickle-down effect on all US webhosting providers. Scanlations will be seen as cancer that has to be cut out and pursued. Hosting scanlations, even unlicensed material will be classified as illegal software. Webhosting accounts will be banned, IPs might be given out to find the uploader. This is all a real threat and it pains me to say that this is legally possible and a very probable scenario. So if you all want to continue reading scanlations from your favorite group, stop whining about it and start supporting your admin's decision to take down licensed series! We all are carrying the moral responsibility to set the legal environment for future scanlations! So support your admins decisions to take down manga! As for the admins, think twice before you don't comply to a take down notice. The best solution for the scanlation community and the corporation is to cooperate exist next to each other. Don't force them to use legal weapons of mass destruction. It's a lose-lose situation for all of us.

"He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious." - Sun Tzu

silverado

I’ve gotten the warning message on OneManga, and today, when I finally came back to MU to check up on my updates and read La Corda D’Oro, it was gone. Licensed. This whole thing, honestly, is scary. I haven’t been in the community long enough to know what reading manga “underground” means or how to use an IRC site, but the whole thing’s just sad. If this goes to court, of course the publishers will win. I personally think that the publishers really have no right to bring this to court, because those who bought the raws bought the copyright, and all editting and translating and whatnot are from the actual scanlating groups themselves. The scanlating groups are like non-profit groups, and while the publishers are 100% legal and do for profit, I don’t see how scanlating is could become illegal if brought into court. Obviously, I don’t know publishers on which side—the home country or publishers like Viz? And if it were the publishers of the home country, then I have no idea what kind of rights they hold in this. But it could be both, so…

I agree with the idea that you reap what you sow.

Scanlations just became TOO visible through all those online readers. They're reaping what they sew.
If scanlations are just made IRC only, no one'll notice they'll still be around; and the people that have half a brain will still get to read their manga.

We’re getting used to the luxury of having (almost) all our manga in one place. I’m getting used to it. It’s a luxury that we all enjoy. And I think that if we had at least tried to sacrifice this, to not be too lazy, then we’d probably not be having this issue right now.

On a little brighter side (I mean, this is issue is the absolute LEAST of my worries) I don’t think MU has anything to do with it. MU only provides an online database on all published manga (how is this illegal? in fact, I think this is reallyreally smart) and allows manga readers to keep track of their manga. Though the latter does work hand-in-hand with scanlating groups, MU is really not muddling in any murky legal waters.

But perhaps I’m just being naive. I don’t know much of this legal stuff, besides what I gather from common sense (that some don’t even have—this can lead to a very long, and different topic I can go on forever about: how I absolutely hate how all people in this world think about is money, money, money. Greedy bastards.)

Sometimes I know that things are going to turn out okay. Because they always do for me (at least, between my mom and me). But I have to remind myself that this is the real world, where people are really greedy and care nothing about the general happiness of the public, where people work to get a salary and not because they like their job, where as long as people have good lawyers and take this case to court (especially against such an unofficial and unorganized community), they’ll win the case. Because in this world, as long as people have money, they’ll do anything to get more money (and also because they just can). They’ll lose all their morals, if that’s what it takes.

Anyways, I’m ranting now, and being a little harsh. Obviously, there are going to be exceptions in all my cases. But there are so many horribly, caustic people that I can’t help but overlook these mere exceptions.

I’m leaving you something to think about, at least, whether you agree or not.

-Julie.