Spotlight: The Great Big Scanlations-For-Cash Scheme: Pay for Free Manga!

[Eclipse]

The Great Big Scanlations-For-Cash Scheme: Pay for Free Manga!
-By Floating_Sakura

A month or so ago, I was approached by a group of angry scanlators who told me about sites hosting their scanlated work, taking out credits, and on top of that, charging a monthly subscription fee to download these scanlations. I found the situation quite interesting, and decided to investigate it a bit further.

So, to those who are living under a rock, let me give a brief introduction about these scanlation/anime fansub downloading sites. Basically, these sites host anime fansubs and scanlations and charge their users a monthly subscription fee for http or ftp downloads. Depending on the site in question and the bandwidth usage, subscriptions go for anywhere from $3 to $22 a month. One of the sites that angers scanlators the most goes so far as to remove or alter credits from the scanlators and claim the work as their own. The titles of these fansubs and scanlations varies; mostly they're just the most popular titles out there that has a demand for them, whether it be American licensed or not. Their users benefit from the simple convenience of not needing to use bit-torrents, go on IRC, or even walk to their local manga/anime stores, since they can download these titles through a speedy connection. Although these sites make most of their money off anime-fansub downloading, I'm afraid I have restricted my investigation on the manga perspective at the moment.

When I first heard about the anger and frustration of these scanlators, I found it extremely ironic; scanlations are illegal to begin with, and to further the irony, a lot of these scanlators scanlate American licensed titles. Are they in the position to get angry? The more time I spent with these scanlators, the more I realized that they're not trying to justify the situation by claiming legitimacy, but morality. Yes, scanlation is illegal, but scanlators, as fans of the manga series, scanlate to satisfy other fans who share their passion. They are by no means, intentionally, trying to take profits away from publishers or the artists. They simply want to satisfy and enlarge the fan base for these series of manga that they like. They put their work and effort in for other fans that do not understand the original language, to satisfy and broaden the fan base for free. Leaving the laws behind, I respect these scanlators for feeling so strongly about the "fan for fan for free" ideals.

Turning away from the scanlators perspective, I wonder what the publishers' reactions are to these sites. I have sent out emails to different publishers. Most of them responded with surprise to find that such a daring act of pirating exists. Most of them have informed me that they will be seeking legal actions against these sites that violate the laws, which protect the mangaka, the faithfulness of the fans and the publishers themselves. Dark Horse's publicist, Lee Dawson, was interested enough in the situation to have a long discussion with me over this matter. I get the impression that they were quite frustrated about the situation. Sure, they have found people on eBay auctioning scanlated materials, but that reaches only a small audience and the sellers often stop when they are given notice by these publishers. However, they seem to have no idea where to start with something so huge, yet, they have assured me that they will definitely investigate the situation since it goes against everything their company believes in and they feel that they have the responsibilities to protect the artists that own these copyrights.

I agree with Lee that no one who uses those sites is so naive to believe that what they are doing are actually legal, so to those people who actually pay to download these files, I question why they would spend the money to support someone who profits from neither spending the time nor effort into the work that they love. Furthermore, are we at the time and age where people are not grateful to the artists who actually create these series, the scanlators or publishers who spend the money, time and effort to bring them these wonderful works in a language they understand?

Written by: Floating_Sakura
Proofed by: Marlex
Edited by: Firedog