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.