OneManga shutting down

[WengFook]

I believe in the social contract. That is, we all agree when we become members of society to abide by the Social Contract. Part of that social contract is agreeing to abide by the law. This is why theft is bad. It's not because it deprives people of their possessions (because otherwise taxation would be bad) but because it violates the Social Contract. Once you start violating the social contract you begin to break down society as a whole.

Ok pardon me for this is actually the first time I've heard of the concept of the social contract. (Learn something new each day! I think I've got the gist of it from Wikipedia so correct me if I'm wrong. Essentially the social contract is a set of unspoken rules or code of conduct that govern an individual's behavior in regards to other members of society to prevent people from harming the self-interests of other people in society.
I have a couple of questions then. If the law is used to determine what harms other people then what happens when the law is amended to suit a new situation?  Does one then have no objections to the new status quo? Also what happens when people exploit the letter of the law but do not break it?
If this was say a slightly different situation, like a group of local food wholesalers objecting to international aid workers distributing food away for free in a disaster situation what does the social contract say about the people claiming to be harmed then? 

Doug may pay for the original work, but by endorsing fansubs and
scanlations he is supporting an entire subculture who does NOT endorse
those actions. For every Bob that reads every issue of Negima at
Onemanga and buys the releases religiously there are dozens, hundreds of
people who do not buy the original work. There are people who are
selling the product of Negima without giving a red cent to anyone
involved in its production (and this is definite because Onemanga sells ads to their site). 
He is harming the value of the Negima franchise, he is putting money
into the pockets of IP pirates, he is using up bandwidth and energy that
could be used for other purposes, he is draining money from the
advertisers to support pirates. There is LOTS of harm going around, but
you don't see that because its all externalized. None of it hurts Bob
directly, but it does hurt.

I suppose I can understand your point of view about how the system should work except that the subculture you describe does bring benefits to the industry. Say for the sake of the argument that fansubbing did not exist in the first place. I think what you'd end up with is the pre-anime boom community in America. Very small groups of people that have limited contact with people outside their immediate group that share the same interests and almost zero interest in sharing what they already have. Which if I'm not mistaken translates to a drastically smaller market for anyone involved in this already niche industry. Ok I'll go another step further down hypothetical lane. Say fansubs were totally wiped out tomorrow. What would then keep the prices for this hobby in check? Other competitors? Maybe. After prices have soared to double or triple to what they currently are. It would then up as an even more exclusive hobby for really the really well to do people.  
The part about dozens or hundreds of people that do not buy manga is true, but assuming that this only harms the industry isn't right. Just because one hasn't bought any products doesn't mean that the situation might not change later. From another point of view this group are customers that haven't happened yet. I'll try to explain that a little more. Say for example you see a commercial for a drink. From it you've gained the vital information about the product but have not spent any money on it. So at this point the drink company has actually lost money because they've put the message out there. Later on one does indeed pickup the advertised drink. Cha-ching. Customers that haven't happened yet.    

This isn't comparable to the bookstore read or the library read
because we have agreed, through the social contract, that those are
acceptable ways to gain access to materials. If the bookstore owner
doesn't want you reading his work, he'll say so.

Please explain to me the difference here. It is an acceptable access to materials because... Nobody has thrown the legal hammer at libraries yet? At what point does the creator of the works put into libraries get to have their say?
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