Manga Scanlation Site Shutting Down
One Manga, the world's most popular illegal manga scan site, has announced that they will be removing all their scanlation content by next week. This decision is not just limited to titles that are licensed & released in North America, but to non-licensed series as well. So yes, it will be everything. According to the website's administration:
It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it.
We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July 2010).
This comes one month after all major manga publishers on both sides of the Pacific formed a giant coalition to unite against pirated manga. This coalition consisted of Japanese publishers such as Kodansha, Shueisha, & Square Enix, as well as American publishers such as Viz, Tokyopop, & Yen Press. One Manga's decision here suggests they've been having some success in putting a stop to illegal scanlations. Last month, another popular manga scan site- MangaHelpers- shutdown as well, & began work on a new site called OpenManga. OpenManga is designed to be a legal manga website that offers fan-translated manga with approval of the original artists.
While I'm all for stopping illegal distribution of manga that's licensed in the US, especially of titles that are so quickly released such as Naruto & One Piece, I can't say I support stopping all scanlations. Many, MANY titles remain unlicensed, & many of those will likely NEVER be licensed in the US. Having scanlations available is a good way of growing the fanbase, & while it has grown out of control in recent years (continuing to scanlate licensed titles, or even worse scan the actual English versions of licensed titles & just straight upload them), there's a lot of good that comes out of it as well. Anime & manga fandom simply wouldn't exist outside Japan without fansubs & scanlations. & while official simulcasts are replacing the need for fansubs, those would never have come along if fansubs hadn't existed first. Necessity breeds innovation, as they say. If the power didn't lie in the people, then the status quo would never change.
Source: http://www.onemanga.com