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OneManga shutting down
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Well, folks, the forces of Copyright have won another battle.
Scanslation site OneManga is to shut down this week. Read what you can while it's still up. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
bugger.
Awesome.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving group. If they'd stuck to comics that weren't licensed and being translated and published outside Japan, I'd have more sympathy.
Okay then, if you guys feel that way... what other sites do you think should be shut down?
Part of the problem is that once a manga starts getting any sort of attention the licensing groups are quick to pounce on them.
The only other site I am aware of like that is Mangafox, so it should probably be shut down as well.
I follow all my favorite manga coming out in Japan by going to dedicated review sites and through forum discussions. The occasional picture used for review purposes is fine as well (after all, that's Fair Use). But scanlation sites like Onemnaga and Mangafox are criminals, especially considering the sell adspace on their sites. It's not like these people aren't blatently pirating other people works and profiting from it. ---------------- Epsilon
There's that, Epsilon. And then there is this. WARNING: Sankaku Complex link - article content is safe, but not the other stuff!
Really, it comes as no surprise to me that the manga industry is now starting to react much the same way as RIAA. Let's see how far they take it.
Good for the manga industry. Hopefully they will take the lesson from this, and try to shift their business model to compensate for the demand OneManga filled.
Eh. One site with manga scans shuts down. So, people will get their scans from *another* website! However, now people will think whichever publishers are behind this are assholes, which probably isn't going to help their business any.
Epsilon Wrote:It's not like these people aren't blatently pirating other people works and profiting from it. Assuming that they make enough from the ads to cover their hosting costs. I have my doubts. -Morgan.
I dunno, J. The industry is behaving in a fairly reactionary manner. It wouldn't surprise me if they actually do turn against their manga-ka. Although I hope they wouldn't be so foolish to do something like that. It'd kill the company in question outright - first from the legal fees from all the lawsuits, then from the sudden lack of manga-ka.
And hell, I'd still buy the tankobon even if I had an entire serial as a digital archive. It's so nice to just be able to flip to the damn page instead of fishing through files! Really, the Big American Licensees need to get on the ball. They're missing out on something huge by not have portals for digital versions of their manga. And stomping out sites like One Manga and Manga Fox without providing a reasonable alternative is gonna look like RIAA vs. Napster all over again. (Napster may have lost, but RIAA took the worst of the publicity damage.) If I was in charge, I would have hit OM up for royalties. Each licensee with a manga licensed on the site gets a cut of the pie, size dependent on how many hits each manga gets over the course of a 'billing period'. Example: if manga licensed by Viz Media gets more hits overall than CMX, then Viz gets a larger cut of the profits than CMX, all in proportion to the difference in hits. Unlicensed manga represents the website's share, thus encouraging them to draw on more unlicensed material. Further more, the Licensees can caveat on what scanslation groups they approve of. That, or they can go through the trouble of paying someone to do it for them. Or even better yet, cut in the scanslation groups. This provides competition among the scanslators, because the Licensee in question is only going to approve of one, maybe two groups. And competition means better quality scanslations. Finally, OM would probably become a pay-site, but not evilly so. Unlimited access for as little as ten bucks a month, or an a la carte option for the really light readers - fifty cents a chapter or five dollors for a digital tankobon. So... Cons? Some legal niggles to sort out for certain, and we would have had to start paying for sites like OM and MF... Pros: improved quality (which is already comparable to the 'professional' stuff in some cases), and a lot fewer and less annoying banner ads. (Those religious ones were starting to make me sick.) 
A big difference will come in whether of not the companies are any less arrogant than the RIAA was when dealing with Napster. Consider that during the usual court requested 'please talk and come to a settlement so the court can reduce it's already considerable case backlog' phase, Napster made an offer to the RIAA.
Napster turned to the labels, pointed out that there were people with deep pockets who would like to get involved in the company, and offered a full billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) for past infringement, percentages of future gross revenues, free regular reports on statistical trends ("Oh, hey, searches for metal-polka are up 15% in the past month, think we can monetize that information?"), and agreed to negotiate further if the labels didn't think that was a good enough offer. The labels reply as we all remember amounted to, "Once we have finished killing your company we will first desecrate the grave, then throw a private party, then screw over our musicians, and perhaps then we will decide whether or not the public wants to download music. But we're pretty sure we will decide that they don't want to. So hurry up and die. K? Thx, bai." Sadly, both the RIAA and MPAA still seem to be too busy figuring out how to stuff the digital genii back into the bottle to really truly and seriously consider how to realistically make money by taking advantage of it. They have accepted that they won't stuff it back into the bottle overnight and that they might as well make a little money until then. But they haven't actually accepted it as a real market to fully enter into (I can't remember which computer industry person it was, who well before iTunes suggested that what the labels ought to do is hire some programmers and essentially put together a turn key digital music store product and then essentially say, "If you are willing to pay $X up front, $Y per year, and Z% of sales then here is our music catalog. Get out there and start making us money." If they'd done that Apple wouldn't have but a tiny fraction of the power it has gained by being the owner of iTunes.). There will always be people who will steal. But given a reasonable offer, most people will pay for a product. If that wasn't true Apple would have shut down iTunes years ago and called it a failed experiment. All trying to deny reality has done for the RIAA and MPAA is drag their dirty laundry into public. I won't claim to know what contracts are like in the manga world, but I do certainly hope their contracts and accounting are less objectionable than in the music and movie industries. That out of the way, I will say sites that while both may be illegal, I do see an ethical/moral difference between posting translations of manga and anime that haven't been licensed and continuing to do so after licensing. Heck, I recall ten or so years back finding a site (sorry, bookmark long since lost) by a guy who had started translating Inu Yasha before Viz licensed it and kept translating afterwards because he didn't like the official translation. Rather than post scans with the translations pasted in he posted only transcripts, and openly stated that this was to make the site most useful to people who had purchased either the original manga or licensed translation rather than a replacement for purchasing it. But if someone is posting scans of full volumes of licensed and published manga where the only reason to go there is to avoid paying, then certainly shut the site down. Little sympathy to be found from me. (and now I'll stop ranting for a bit, hopefully this is found to be polite ranting  )----- Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer. Morganni Wrote:Assuming that they make enough from the ads to cover their hosting costs. I have my doubts.How much money they make off of illegally sharing manga is not really the issue in how morally bankrupt it is.
Considering I could watch legally available translations of Fullmetal Alchemist: Bortherhood off youtube within days of it coming out in Japan... yeah, maybe people should give the NA manga distributors the benefit of the doubt here. Seriously, I love how people engage in reactionary rhetoric in response to what they call reactionary legal action.
If you want Viz, Tokyopop etc to make their stuff available online why not, I dunno, petition Viz and co to do exactly that. I'm certain if you have all this evidence which points out how much it would increase their sales you can present it directly to the distributers. ------------------------ Epsilon
Viz already does, at least for some titles. It's how I'm following Rin-ne.
----- Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea. "Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber." --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia. Ayiekie Wrote:Morganni Wrote:Assuming that they make enough from the ads to cover their hosting costs. I have my doubts.How much money they make off of illegally sharing manga is not really the issue in how morally bankrupt it is. To ignore certain things for a moment, I'd say it makes plenty difference if they are in fact *not* making money. But I'd argue that the long-term benefit to society of illegal sharing (as long as certain strictures are observed) far outweighs the costs. Which would make it... not morally bankrupt anyway. (And from a practical standpoint, as someone who works in retail, I feel my store is less hurt by a hundred people downloading something we sell than by one person shoving a copy in their pants.) -Morgan. Morganni Wrote:To ignore certain things for a moment, I'd say it makes plenty difference if they are in fact *not* making money.There are ads on the site. They are (or were) making money from them. That is indeed a distinction that makes a difference, which is exactly why it was pointed out. Your experience of working in retail is rather irrelevant, since "your store" and "the entire industry" are not exactly the same entity, particularly if you do not work in a store that exclusively sells pirateable material. That's aside from the rather obvious fact that stores are generally insured against theft, but not against massive numbers of people not buying products because they downloaded them.  Morganni Wrote:To ignore certain things for a moment, I'd say it makes plenty difference if they are in fact *not* making money. http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html#m2]No, it doesn't make any difference at all. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 
Legally, does is matter if they are making money: No
Morally, does it matter if they are making money: Yes (at least to some people) Were they making money: Yes, how much is an argument I don't think we need to get into. That said, I have little hope of any sort of response from the publication houses short of "Stop now, don't even think of doing this again, and give us more money than you made running the site." The wistful hope that they would take this opportunity to learn something about their consumer base (and offer things at a reasonable rate) has been killed by observations of how the US book publication companies have reacted to e-books. This may not be applicable due to cultural differences, but it is the closest thing I know, so I'm going to assume they are similar. If I have missed something please correct my ignorance. Electronic versions of books and comics (and manga) will never be offered at a substantially different/lower price. This is because the value of a book is not in the medium it is printed on, but the words/pictures that make it up. The paper is often seen as disposable, or close too it (if this were not the case consumers would be demanding higher quality books, and outside of a very small market this doesn't happen). To offer an electronic version of a story, at a significantly lower price, would decrease the perceived value of the printed works. Because, after all, it's the same content. Amazon is taking a loss on the ebook best sellers right now in the hopes that it will attract more people to the kindle platform. And that they will make up said losses over time with each person they attract. All that combined with the very real fixed costs associated with printing and distributing physical books means that any company currently in the business (depending on profits from physical sales) is not going to sell electronic versions of their books for much less (and kiss those profits goodbye). I don't have time to get into the tarpit that is international licensing, where a new deal has to be ironed out for each country individually (the EU being the only exception I know of). So I don't see a traditional online store working for manga/books/comics. I do see an itunes-like model working, where per-country restrictions can be easily managed, and enough drm is used to hinder casual copying. But I don't think that pricing is going to change any time soon. At least not until the creators start to cut the publishers out of the loop. -Terry ----- "so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today" TF2: Spy 
Just a quick thought on this. People are mentioning things not being bought because they are being downloaded...
It's funny. I bought the Black Lagoon manga precisely because I read it first on Onemanga, and thought it was quite nice. Actually, quite a lot of my animé/manga collection started out that way. Digital content is nice... but it's too hard to read on the move. A paper and ink edition is easier to read one handed on a bus or train.... and definitely on a plane. How much stuff have I bought because I either saw it first online, or got from a friend? Quite a bit of what's on my shelf, actually. ________________________________ --m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig? 
Similarly, I have been buying all of Negima as it comes out in paperback here in the US, precisely because I've been reading it online. I don't download it, and I don't archive it, but I do read it, and it whets my appetite for the dead trees tankobons with their little extras. If it weren't for OneManga and some other site where I first started reading it, I probably wouldn't have bothered. So at least in my admittedly anecdotal case, my reading the the illegal translations directly profited the publishing companies and the mangaka.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Ayiekie Wrote:There are ads on the site. They are (or were) making money from them. That is indeed a distinction that makes a difference, which is exactly why it was pointed out. Maybe we've got a terminology problem here. What I'm looking at is, are the ads shown on the pages with the manga making them more money than it costs them in bandwidth, storage space, etc. to serve those pages? If so, they are profiting from it, which is a bit more morally questionable than if they aren't. (In which case it's fairly similar to the old practice of distributing fansubs for cost of tapes and shipping.) Either is a far cry from sites which have membership fees, or distributing burned discs for more than their production cost. Donation support is probably a safer method. Quote:That's aside from the rather obvious fact that stores are generally insured against theft, but not against massive numbers of people not buying products because they downloaded them. The point is that it takes that massive number of non-purchases to equal a theft, due to the narrow margin on movies and games, and that most things people download they would otherwise not get at all. (The latter has some fascinating effects in emulation communities...) Arguably it might not hurt the rest of the industry at all, since the store still pays the rest of the chain for the item, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say things would be better off if each physical theft was replaced by a download. sweno Wrote:Electronic versions of books and comics (and manga) will never be offered at a substantially different/lower price. This is because the value of a book is not in the medium it is printed on, but the words/pictures that make it up. Seems to be contradicted by how often people who, given the digital version, go out and buy the physical version. Baen Books has seen a lot of effect from this. Quote:So I don't see a traditional online store working for manga/books/comics. I do see an itunes-like model working, where per-country restrictions can be easily managed, and enough drm is used to hinder casual copying. Wouldn't it run into the same sort of device compatibility problems as digital music? Even if you don't consider too many barriers to copying to be dangerous in the long term. (Also, per-country restrictions are an abomination.) -Morgan. 
I'll echo Bob's comment. I'd much rather have paper copies than read my computer screen. If To-LOVE-Ru, just to name one, ever becomes available in dead-tree, I'll buy it in a heartbeat, because I liked what I saw online -- and I've already read the whole thing. But I've seen no suggestion anywhere that it'll ever be published in English hardcopy -- and I've looked repeatedly.
Let me add a little anecdote about publishers: there was a manga called Enchanter I found intriguing. Ten volumes were published in English (and I bought all of them) before the publisher decided to cancel translated versions. The series ran to nineteen volumes, I've heard. I can't even find a synopsis anywhere to tell me how it ended. Edited to make clear who I was agreeing with. ----- Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING. 
I buy both Negima and Fullmetal Alchemist, and I'd never have started FMA if not for the scans -- the couple of times I picked up and leafed through the English manga before then it did less than nothing for me. Of course that was the point where the characters were discovering that the entire government was working for the bad guy, so it was one hell of a low point to come in on.
If Dark Horse would continue translating 3x3 Eyes, or if anyone would start Ushio and Tora, they'd have a solid customer in me. As it is? Scans or nothing. ...but OneManga had ads?! The things you miss when you're running AdBlock Plus. --Sam "Oh, there's crime here. I can smell it." |
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