Manga Publishers Target Pirate Sites
on June 8th, 2010Don’t you hate it when I do the “I told you so!” thing?
Thirty major scanlation sites are the target of an international coalition of manga publishers which will be “…taking an aggressive interest in combating manga piracy outside of Japan as well as inside the country.”
A spokesperson said that “we are left with no other alternative but to take aggressive action. It is our sincere hope that offending sites will take it upon themselves to immediately cease their activities. Where this is not the case, however, we will seek injunctive relief and statutory damages.” The group is also aggressively reporting violations to the “federal authorities, including the anti-piracy units of the Justice Department, local law enforcement agencies and FBI.” While the group has yet to file any lawsuits and has declined to name specific scanlators, sites such as MangaFox and OneManga have long been identified as major scanlation aggregators.
Kurt Hassler of Yen Press makes the claim that the rise of scanlation site traffic coincides with a decrease in manga sales. Many of the sites are for-profit ventures, and are among the most highly trafficked sites on the web.
Previous posts on piracy:
A very long post on criminal copyright violation.
The pirate site is acting as a distributor or publisher. Only they are a distributor or publisher who pays no one but themselves.
We’ve simply gone from a print publishing environment where some gatekeepers used talent and didn’t pay them, to an electronic environment where some gatekeepers use talent and don’t pay them. Only they’ve created an ideological movement to insulate themselves by arguing that the only people hurt by the copyright violations are evil corporations. This enables the content user to feel morally superior about the situation.
Without copyright and the ability to make money on past work, creators cannot afford to create new work. It costs money to live while you are producing new work. That money comes from past work (especially if your publisher is Image Comics which pays no advances.)
Pirates are not performing a public service. Internet piracy isn’t just about wacky online hijinks. The pirates are making a buck.
And since bucks are tight, I fully expect more aggressive prosecution, and more aggressive laws to block content governments and corporations don’t like.
I think it is rather lame to suggest that if people read something online, they are more likely to buy it.
I believe unless the person is a collector, or simply must have a good edition of the book, they are LESS likely to buy. They’ve had the experience of reading that book for the first time. That experience can never be repeated.
And remember kids, pirates hurt creators like me by drawing traffic away from advertiser-supported online comics.
If you are reading them over there, the pirate gets paid.
If you are reading it here, I get paid. When I get paid, I can do more comics. If I don’t get paid, I stop doing comics.
Simple.
Wait, so you’re getting paid when I check in every day to read the new page of Distant Soil you’ve posted? YAY! I’ve been worrying about that.
Yes. I posted this to the other comment thread:
“Some quick math.
For the sake of argument, let’s say there are 150 pirate sites worldwide.
If each pirate website draws from the official website only 3 new readers per week, that’s 450 people.
If 450 people 52 weeks a year glom via pirate instead of via official, that’s 23,400.
If 23,400 people sit down to read your great novel or comics or whatever (remember, that’s only 3 people per site per week), that costs you 7,020,000 annual page views at your site, assuming a 300 page book.
Just sayin’.
It doesn’t take a lot per site, but the aggregate is huge.
That number of page views would pay for an entire issue of A Distant Soil, based on the current income per page view from my advertisers.
It costs the reader NOTHING to read my comic here. It costs me when they don’t.”
The only thing fans who do not have money need to do is come here and read A Distant Soil for free. There is no reason to read it at a pirate site.
I am grateful for every reader, because every reader here helps pay for the work.
And consider that A Distant Soil is actually about 1,000 pages long, pirate sites could cost around 21,000,000 page views over the course of the project, assuming just THREE readers drawn away from me per week per pirate site.
My current advertising rates have dropped a bit, but the more traffic, the higher the rates. 21,000,000 page views would make a huge difference in my bottom line, to say nothing of what they cost other publishers.
There is something particularly insidious about those who pirate webcomics. Many of these creators make almost nothing, and they provide their work online for free. There is no excuse for pirating it.
The rampant pirating of webcomics disproves the common excuse that pirating is about scarcity. No, it isn’t. Many works readily available in digital format or legally on the web are pirated.
Pirates make their money via aggregation. The more content they accumulate that they don’t have to pay for, the higher their traffic and profits.
It’s difficult for an individual website with one comic to compete with an illegal website which offers hundreds for free in one place, with no regard to those who created the content.
I agree with the crackdown on the pirate sites. I do worry, however, that the recent downturn in manga sales will result in less titles being available in the US. I hope the popularity of web-based comics might somehow result in MORE manga availability as distributors figure out some kind of business model.
@ Meredith: you and me both.
CMX just shut down, and the CMX manga were the only ones I was buying! I”m a fan of From Eroica with Love from years back, and now…sob…!
I’d put off buying Swan, but now I must grab them while I can.
I went to a book fair a few weeks ago: huge warehouse in the middle of a cow patch where books and book product are sold at remainder prices.
TONS of manga. Not one I wanted.
I don’t know if this is significant, but the manga on remainder was by western and Korean authors. Very little manga by Japanese authors. NO classic manga at all.
And I want to just drop this in here real quick: lots of fans complain that their fave books aren’t available, blah blah, takes too long to come out, blah blah.
If publishers cram stands with huge volumes of volumes, they glut the market. They have to be choosy about what they push.
I know everyone wants their fave book to be translated and available, but there is not enough of a market over here to support everything everyone wants.
I too await a digital solution. I don’t want to collect many of these books, I just want to read them. I would be happy to pay to do so.
IPad needs to stop censoring the books available on the platform.
PS: I can’t believe I did a “I told you so!”
My next post should start with “GET OFF MY LAWN!”
The Western and Korean manga was put out by manga companies to expand their selection of titles. The manga companies needed cheap titles to offset the large licence fees Japanese companies charge. I think Rich Johnston did an articale about Tokyopop’s OEL manga contracts. The creaters had to sign all sorts of rights away on work that was done for them.
Manga readers rejected these manga because they were not Japanese. Bookstores shelves swelled with books no one wanted. The manga fad died and company after company goes out of business.
I’m having a long debate with a comic collector, ’cause he defends pirate sites that upload scans from published comics, and manga.
I understand that without many scanlation groups, very few people would know of a lot of great manga titles, and many go and buy the translated manga, or the originals thanks to those groups, for offering the “taste” of that particular title.
Yet, if the websites upload already published titles that have been licensed, they affect greatly the sales!
On the Korean and Western manga topic, you might want to give a chance to “SHUTTERBOX” by a very talented female artist, Tavisha Wolfghart, and maybe, you will like “The Tarot Cafe” I loved both.
I bought Kazuo Umezu’s “The Drifting Classroom” series through Amazon. I also bought the Japanese series (which numbers less books though the same content. Why is it that the English ones are half the length?).
I also recently bought, from a Japanese bookstore, 1-3 Nodame Cantabile in English. All indications are that this was translated here in Japan. Kondansha Bilingual Comics, says the cover.
Plus I have the few lovely Finder manga that were translated into English. Nothing like a little um… not permitted to share with youngsters.