OneManga shutting down

[WengFook]

Valles wrote:

First presuming that there is and will be one, of course. Or that the degree of effort and money required for Japanese instruction is rated as less troublesome than doing without the reading material in question.

Another point for not waiting for the official English release is that sometimes the quality of the official translation is worse than what the scanlators offer. And to add injury you've paid good money for it. :S

Epsilon wrote:
 I've yet to see definitive evidence that fnasubs of MoHS masisvely
increased sales. I tend to assume the reason that good series are
successful is because (shock and awe!) they are good series. I have seen
evidence where available fansubs decreased the marketability of an
anime: the original Negima anime series flopped in the states because so
many people had downloaded the fansubs and decided it was crap. Then
there is the evidence of Taiwan and the massive illegal markets that
grew up when no copyright laws were enforced and how much damage they've
done.

I don't understand. I followed you to the point where you said people will like a series on its own merits if it is good, but then you said that because people didn't like the Negima fansub, the sales for it suffered. So from what I understand if lots of people buy an anime title then its good, but has nothing to do with the fansub people watched. But when sales drop like a rock, then its must be the fansub's fault. Somehow.

Ayiekie said:
People in these arguments always post their anecdotal evidence as if it
means something. It doesn't. You are one person, and the fact that
(according to you, who have a vested interest in believing that way) you
bought more anime/manga/video games/music/whatever due to piracy means
absolutely jack squat. In the real world market, piracy decreases sales
overall. This is readily observable by looking at markets (for instance,
software in China) where copyright is not respected at all - legitimate
sales collapse completely, and only software that can't be run without
legitimate copies (notably MMORPGs) sell in quantity. I'll take the
evidence of a billion people over your bookshelf (and China is hardly
the only example), and so will anybody who aspires to discuss the topic
with intellectual honesty.

You are correct. But until I see some numbers, its hard to use a wide generalization like all piracy decreases sales overall. In this case its entirely possible that it helps sales more than it hinders. I will admit it might be a romanticized viewpoint, but truth is sometimes stranger than fiction  
I think everyone is getting tied up in the legalese and morality of the issue. On one hand as was pointed out earlier, some of the original publisher's in Japan view scanlation as free advertising for their product. On the other hand the publishers across the sea try to paint it in negative lights comparing it to piracy and stealing. The bottomline is different business models work differently. Scanlations fills in a gap in the demand and until the publishers change their operating model they are going to be stuck with them
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.