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.
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.