BlackAeronaut:
The situation I related is in no valid way different than scanlaters-vs-publishers (or license holders, if you wish). The only difference is that scanlation groups, presumably, do not have profit in mind farther down the road. The *effect* of what they're doing is, as I see it, exactly the same as the situation I described.
Honestly, you can't just say "apples and oranges" and wave it off. If anything, this is more like tangelos and nectarines.
I've already pointed out I've found an article that shows a publisher (ero manga, which may or may not apply to this war) who is in general well-disposed towards scanlation, even though he notes that it has the same effect as piracy. He's a niche market, though, and one that in the US probably won't have the sort of wide appeal that publishers are looking for when licensing manga.
This is hardly a rousing endorsement, no matter how nice or polite the scanlation groups are. At best it's a situation where they're tolerated because the alternative is worse, but there's always the threat that when it DOES get licensed and distributed, people just won't buy it because they can get it for free.
That's a hard act to fight, and it doesn't matter what the motives are. I don't care about the morality of the situation -- is it wrong? is it right? is it justified? who cares! -- I'm just trying to determine if the general trend is towards net benefit to the market, or detrimental.
I suspect the latter.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
The situation I related is in no valid way different than scanlaters-vs-publishers (or license holders, if you wish). The only difference is that scanlation groups, presumably, do not have profit in mind farther down the road. The *effect* of what they're doing is, as I see it, exactly the same as the situation I described.
Honestly, you can't just say "apples and oranges" and wave it off. If anything, this is more like tangelos and nectarines.
I've already pointed out I've found an article that shows a publisher (ero manga, which may or may not apply to this war) who is in general well-disposed towards scanlation, even though he notes that it has the same effect as piracy. He's a niche market, though, and one that in the US probably won't have the sort of wide appeal that publishers are looking for when licensing manga.
This is hardly a rousing endorsement, no matter how nice or polite the scanlation groups are. At best it's a situation where they're tolerated because the alternative is worse, but there's always the threat that when it DOES get licensed and distributed, people just won't buy it because they can get it for free.
That's a hard act to fight, and it doesn't matter what the motives are. I don't care about the morality of the situation -- is it wrong? is it right? is it justified? who cares! -- I'm just trying to determine if the general trend is towards net benefit to the market, or detrimental.
I suspect the latter.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs