Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[Diraldir]

Man, the amount of people i've seen excusing piracy and saying that reading manga should be free to read completely after this is kinda yucky to me. I agree that having them online helps some authors, but at the same time, you're kinda being entitled to consuming free books and not supporting anything. I always support the official release, but obviously, a lot of them that were hit do not have an official release. But legally, it's theirs. It's definitely a very grey area, and one that is hard to discuss. Scanlations are what made manga popular in the US at first, after all.


If I were an artist and hundreds of my hours were put online for free i'd be very upset, though.

 

[Mugenman88]

Truly unfortunate, I'm an isekai/medieval fantasy junkie and a lot of the best stuff got hit.

 

[T-sama]

People being used to corporate exploitation to the point they just accept it is just... Horrific. We're already in an ancap dystopia lmao

At least some places are better than others lol, compare US worker rights against UK worker rights for example

Japan and US are basically becoming capitalist dystopias

Honestly, if I created something and was selling it, I'd be angry too if it was reuploaded elsewhere without my knowledge, for more of a moral reason. But, I'd probably also just be happy with just receiving credit. I'm adult enough to take a step back and look at the big picture. And smart enough not to make something unreliable like variable sales my main income. That's what confuses me most about mangaka, they rely purely on it often which puts them entirely at the mercy of others, be it fans or publishers.

Different values are funny like that, piracy like we do in the west is just not a thing in Japan, even countries where you can be arrested for piracy, like say US, it's still not a priority, after all who gonna try to arrest you for pirating some game or manga?

Japan though? They have draconian piracy, copyright and patent laws, it's why Nintendo easily got patent on fucking gameplay mechanics when trying to take down Palworld.

Unfortunately it literally all comes down to values dissonance.

 

[q0099]

Oh my, so pity, they took the most of manga that I liked.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to:
Harmless Monsters (Seitokai ni mo Ana wa Aru!)
Problematic Scans (RaiRaiRai)
Destoroyar_02 (Yani Neko)
Mesi ganga (Nichijou)
Palmtop Scans (Amemiya-san)

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Oh god, I don’t want to have to read Viz’s shitty error-filled translations… this sucks donkey balls.

 

[fulani]

worst morning ever

 

[RonBWL]

Man, the amount of people i've seen excusing piracy and saying that reading manga should be free to read completely after this is kinda yucky to me. I agree that having them online helps some authors, but at the same time, you're kinda being entitled to consuming free books and not supporting anything. I always support the official release, but obviously, a lot of them that were hit do not have an official release. But legally, it's theirs. It's definitely a very grey area, and one that is hard to discuss. Scanlations are what made manga popular in the US at first, after all.

If I were an artist and hundreds of my hours were put online for free i'd be very upset, though.

Literally nobody encourages piracy, we're just sticking to fan translation because of "service problem". I'm not going to even debate the excuse of "just pay up", because you can't expect to put out geo-block, MTX-infested and predatory monetizing and expect people to just accept it.

 

[Diraldir]

Literally nobody encourages piracy, we're just sticking to fan translation because of "service problem". I'm not going to even debate the excuse of "just pay up", because you can't expect to put out geo-block, MTX-infested and predatory monetizing and expect people to just accept it.

I am not talking about accepting predatory practices that the Japanese publishers use on the digital reading services, but that definitely does not help. I am talking about several comments online that i've seen saying that manga should be free to read - the type of people that don't support any type of release because they're entitled. I know manga can be expensive outside of the US, which is why I do think it helps to have this stuff online.

This is exactly why I think it's hard to talk about, because both parties are in the wrong. It honestly cannot be summed up in a short thread. It's a complex topic definitely suited for a long video.

 

[twily_vivi]

Wow, so many things happening in just a month

 

[Toastr]

RIP to the manga series hit by this DMCA.
I'll miss the comment section most. Although there were a few bad apples, the thread of each chapters are part of the reason why MD is the best.
If it is possible mods or whomever reading this, it would be fine to keep the chapters empty to comply with DMCA, but put the chapter number + read maker + comment section back.

the comments are still there from post histories but still a way to link to them and the read marker would be really helpful

 

[Angry_Panda]

the comments are still there from post histories but still a way to link to them and the read marker would be really helpful

Plan is to get the removed chapter markers back, which will fix this. No timeline yet.

 

[KATCRX]

‌‍‍‍‍‍‌‍‍‍‍‍

 

[Darklordkirby]

perhaps i was wrong to abandon the old ways, to have forgotten the ways of torrenting and putting off figuring out how to mass download from md since it still lacks a download button for chapters. maybe i should have continued the grind, archiving things i like and maybe even uploaded some of the 25+ year old scans ive hoarded. and that maybe there was a valuable lession taught here today?

https://imgur.com/a/Lyw0hra

no no no
i shall simply wait for a shadow of md to appear like panda to eh.

 

[Shamz]

Please make it so the "list" is filterable. Seems like theres a lot of series that got wiped and if theres just a list without quality of life filtering. Im might just die searching for what i actually read and liked. Early thanks.

 

[zymosan99]

Please make it so the "list" is filterable. Seems like theres a lot of series that got wiped and if theres just a list without quality of life filtering. Im might just die searching for what i actually read and liked. Early thanks.

in the settings, you can make it so series without chapters in your language don't appear

 

[Quarnozian]

Taking down stuff at this level probably hurts the industry more than it helps combat piracy.

Rather than combatting piracy, it encourages it.

At least MangaDex requires people to do their own translation work. Other sites will host both volunteer translated version (likely stolen from the group's website), AND the officially licensed and published versions (obviously stolen from the official site).

Instead of working against MD, they should use it as a way to find new talent to hire professionally. It'd be cool of MD's forums had a section only visible to publishers looking to hire, and members of scanlation groups. (While I'm sure there's plenty of scanlators that do this purely as a hobby and won't leave their main job to join a publisher's translation team... I bet there's many others that would LOVE to do this as their job.)

 

[Viper4lyfe]

Guess it is finally time for Mangadex to rest in piece

 

[no168_92]

For the chapters/series taken down from MD, are they just 'gone' gone or simply hidden to the end users but still in their database?

Can somebody ask the mod team about this...? at least clarify if it's outright deletion or simply hidden from us?

also a reply suggested that IF it's still in the database that the original uploaders be given a chance (even if the missing chaps aren't visible to reader) to recover their uploads within maybe a certain timeframe or maybe in private...

 

[Shamz]

in the settings, you can make it so series without chapters in your language don't appear

Huh? how does that help with making it easier for me to find series that i liked that got wiped from the dmca?

 

[Fireboy]

So when are you guys add a way for us to export our follows to a csv or xml?