The people who run these aggregate sites don\\\\\\\'t understand that if the original content creators go out of business, they won\\\\\\\'t profit either. They need to start creating their own Manga instead of mooching off the hard work of others!
Anthony L. / June 11, 2010 11:56 am

Sadly it seems that the mangakas and corporations, wait the corporations don\\\'t see it from the other point of view. With slow releases of the mangas and comics, it is a torture for the fans to wait, wait and wait for the comics to come out in volumes. It really doesn\\\'t help their sales when they start suing because it is causing more problem then it is fixing. Just because the \\\"world economy\\\" is in the slumps and sales are down, doesn\\\\\\\'t mean that it is the \\\\\\\"fan subs\\\\\\\", or as the \\\\\\\"corporations\\\\\\\" put it \\\\\\\"aggregate sites\\\\\\\", are to blame entirely. To me they are acting just like metallica and whinning about something that really shouldn\\\\\\\'t be a bother to them. If I were in their shoes I would try instead of going after the sites, try to rev up the hype and also try to have bigger releases in the foreign countries. In closing it will probably be a huge waste of time and it will only hurt the fans, which in turn will also hurt their sales. Let\\\'s face it, since they had a taste of the wealth they will only continue to want more and totally disregard the needs of the fans. Oh wait that\\\'s right the fans r scums of the earth.
anonymous / doesn\\\\\\\'t matter June 19, 2010 19:59 pm

The majority of the manga that I read is because of these websites. Without them I doubt I would ever have known about them and probably given up on manga completely. I also have to agree that shutting down public websites like mangatraders and mangatoshokan would hurt the businesses more than they would help them. First of all a lot of the mangakas who write these series are just starting out, so their reputations can only go as far as the publishers in the country will allow it. And even if their series are able to get authorized to be shipped outside the country, there is no guarantee that they will make it to all parts of the world. It is especially true for the smaller countries who may not have a strong publishing branch that allows manga to be imported. This could be due to very sensitive policies in which the people may find the contents unfavorable to their youth culture Second the scalation websites are a modern convenience for promotional usage. Getting a a manga licensed and translated in other countries takes years to accomplish-most of the popular manga series now would have taken at least 10+ years before they could be known anywhere outside the country, let alone within the county that distributes them. But through the free promotion like scanlations they are publicized on a global scale; a feat that can hardly be achieved through standard means. Take for example the ingenious creator of the "Hetalia, Axis Power" series by Himaruya Hidekaz. He was able to utilize his own series through the internet without charging his fans, and as a result it has taken the world by storm. The manga has already been turned into an official manga, obtained an anime series, official merchandising, a full length movie after a few short years of the anime’s serialization, and to top it all off licensing and dubbing in the United States while it is still in the process of creating more episodes. To say that these scanlation sites are "hurting" the manga industry is a huge underestimation of the promotional value and benefits that they can acquire far more easily and quickly than the standard procedures ever could. Another example is that while the manga is free on the internet, it does not necessarily mean that fans will not buy it in stores. Even I still buy the manga I read if it is really well written and drawn. But if the websites that promote these series are taken out, I’m not going to make my considerations on buying them as much as I did before.
Hal / July 22, 2010 22:33 am