Scanlations under the pump
It's not a good time to be scanlating at the moment. You're a pirate, and if you work on manga featuring characters under the age of consent in sexual situations, you're a paedophile to boot. To summarise:
1. Shueisha asks readers to stop scanning Shounen Jump. Some argue that it's not aimed at scanlators...but come on! It's aimed at anyone who purchases a copy of the manga - including foreign buyers who rely on a dictionary to read Japanese. No raw = no scanlation. But how many will comply? That is the question.
2. MangaUpdates loses Google Adsense funding because of TOS violations, widely speculated to be lolicon and shotacon listings in its database. At the moment there is a debate about whether such content should be removed. Either way, this is unlikely to restore them in Google's good books. If MangaUpdates does go down, then scanlations will be a lot more difficult to find in the future.
The same thing has happened to Mangafox...but since Mangafox has given a lot of unwanted attention to scanlations and scans of licensed manga, they were always on the thin edge of the wedge. Plus they mislead readers about copyright in their disclaimer:
Copyrights and trademarks for the manga, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law.
Perhaps it's true in China, where the owner of Mangafox, NOEZ, is based. But no scanlation group would dare make such an absurd claim.
3. ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is coming. Negotiations are expected to be completed by the end of 2010. A draft was released a few weeks ago. The wording has been softened, but the gist remains the same. There is ongoing debate about whether significant wilful copyright infringement not motivated by financial gain will be a criminal offence. Online service providers are expected to form mutually supportive relationships with rightsholders to deal with copyright infringement i.e. share information about users who infringe copyright, but criminal liability is again up for debate. Michael Geist has more details, along with some others:
- Balkinization
- ars technica
- itnews
- Public Knowledge
I'm guessing my country will implement ACTA mid/late 2011. So that's the looming deadline for me, unless the obscenity issue surrounding BL brings this date forward. The removal of Japanese BL locally is a sign that censorship laws are tightening here. If the bookstore is too afraid to stock it, then I wouldn't feel right about attempting to order it.
Either way, the end is near.
1. Shueisha asks readers to stop scanning Shounen Jump. Some argue that it's not aimed at scanlators...but come on! It's aimed at anyone who purchases a copy of the manga - including foreign buyers who rely on a dictionary to read Japanese. No raw = no scanlation. But how many will comply? That is the question.
2. MangaUpdates loses Google Adsense funding because of TOS violations, widely speculated to be lolicon and shotacon listings in its database. At the moment there is a debate about whether such content should be removed. Either way, this is unlikely to restore them in Google's good books. If MangaUpdates does go down, then scanlations will be a lot more difficult to find in the future.
The same thing has happened to Mangafox...but since Mangafox has given a lot of unwanted attention to scanlations and scans of licensed manga, they were always on the thin edge of the wedge. Plus they mislead readers about copyright in their disclaimer:
Copyrights and trademarks for the manga, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law.
Perhaps it's true in China, where the owner of Mangafox, NOEZ, is based. But no scanlation group would dare make such an absurd claim.
3. ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is coming. Negotiations are expected to be completed by the end of 2010. A draft was released a few weeks ago. The wording has been softened, but the gist remains the same. There is ongoing debate about whether significant wilful copyright infringement not motivated by financial gain will be a criminal offence. Online service providers are expected to form mutually supportive relationships with rightsholders to deal with copyright infringement i.e. share information about users who infringe copyright, but criminal liability is again up for debate. Michael Geist has more details, along with some others:
- Balkinization
- ars technica
- itnews
- Public Knowledge
I'm guessing my country will implement ACTA mid/late 2011. So that's the looming deadline for me, unless the obscenity issue surrounding BL brings this date forward. The removal of Japanese BL locally is a sign that censorship laws are tightening here. If the bookstore is too afraid to stock it, then I wouldn't feel right about attempting to order it.
Either way, the end is near.