Manga Industry & Piracy

[X-SOLDIER]

Kotaku just posted an article about the issues of former Scanslation Pirates attempting to go legit and having HUGE issues doing so. (I linked to a comment I found most poignant and also made a reply to): http://kotaku.com/1796557512

While it hits in on the issue of scanslation piracy Vs. the legit manga industry, and I think that it's really weird how dated the Japanese response feels. It's hard to imagine that in a day and age where iTunes and Netflix exist that the two simple parts of the equation aren't being addressed by them: Speed & Quality.

Scanslations are almost ALWAYS better than official translator releases, because very seldom do the paid translators passionately CARE about the series, and it shows in the translations. Additionally, if you can't release concurrently – the most passionate fans WILL PIRATE to avoid spoilers. There's literally no way that you can win this battle without taking advantage of the former-pirates, because they beat you at your own game – FOR FREE – for those two reasons.


Speaking personally, I read Naruto, every week, for a decade on scanslated websites. I also own every issue of the series digitally on ComiXology, because I wanted to support the official creators. I even bought them when they started doing simultaneous release – but I read the official releases MAYBE 5 times, because they were always piss poor versions when it came to quality.

It's so frustrating to see the industry keep shooting itself in the foot like this. Do you think that this'll always be the case or that things'll ever go legit and actually work?





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[T@ctic]

i also read this: http://okazu.blogspot.com/2010/06/solution-to-solution.html?m=1

i can say with complete honesty and no guilt that i support piracy and don't care how many companies complain, especially when they are so ignorant and refuse to make deals with the people who could help them. it's been suggested for years for scanlations to he hired by companies because they are far superior to the official translation. the same is for pirated anime. crunchyroll complains about piracy as well when their translation isn't up to par as pirated trans.

and that's only part of the problem. scanlations could have been the only problem in the early 2000s, but that's not the case now. the manga industry complains that its losing money because people aren't buying the books and reading them online, therefore they are losing money. that's not how it's happening with webtoon, and extremely fast growing business. the artists are paid by the company according to the amount of viewers read their content, which is usually free. therefore less money is lost because it's not people not having enough money or not giving up their hard earned cash, they can read their free stories at the official site.

that doesn't mean webtoon doesn't face any piracy. everything will have its piracy. but it's different from how books are facing piracy. for example just because webtoon is facing piracy doesn't mean it's dying, and if you look at the manhwa industry (korean books) it dies every year because of piracy and uninterest. so those are the two biggest problems that the manga industry has, although some magazines are stopping their physical publications and going virtual, so they have wiped the fog fron their eyes.