Mangadex gets hit by DMCA - more than 25% of chapters gone | staff FAQ update

[Doedoel]

On the Copyright Claims FAQ, No. 15; who are the content creators? The mangakas?

 

[pip25]

NamiComi has accepted to take management of the site and its domain; no transaction was performed.

I think this is a way bigger thing in the FAQ than anything else. Ownership of MangaDex has been passed to a company. It's quite worrying, but also no wonder they have to respect DMCA from here on out.

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

Honestly, even if they want to abandon the seven seas and go fully legit, I would prefer if they were honest about it and communicated this properly.

The Experiment of working together with the publishers and trying to be semilegitimate has failed due to the greed, low character and insecurity on the size of the manhood from the publishers responsible for the DMCA.

That is a fair reason to give up and hand the site to someone else.

However, properly communicating that to the audience, properly offering a data export with reading status and chapters read would temper the tensions.
So, to the site owners, please make a public announcement on the future of Mangadex.

 

[Rafunbel]

It's for the beta, ah MD my beloved..I will miss you..

 

[GipoScribantino]

Chapters will still be released, I know that much, but not having a well-organized hub is going to be painful. Other aggregators simply do not have the user interface for that.

 

[BredReader]

A website like ReadComicOnline is still up because they changed their url to .li (Liechtenstein, a German microstate), and if they get in trouble they will most likely change it again to another country. Heck, some famous French far-right website keeps changing their url everytime the French government tries to shut it down. Yes, the owner of that political website has been in exile in Japan for years to escape interpol, but he still freely sells crêpes in Tôkyô as if nothing happened and his website is still online 10 years later. So if a globally wanted extremist activist can do it, I don't understand why a mere comics-hosting website like yours could not just change their domain name to a foreign country that does not care about copyright laws. I swear everytime a pirate website falls down, it's always for the same dumb reason. This is literally the reason why nhentai.net got DMCA'd last year while hitomi.la still remains the eromanga archive by default. It's really not THAT hard to understand, is it?

 

[Angry_Panda]

I don't understand why a mere comics-hosting website like yours could not just change their domain name to a foreign country that does not care about copyright laws.

List of countries that are not signatories to some form of international IP rights agreements:

Eritrea
Ethiopia
Iran
Iraq
Marshall Islands
Palau
Somalia
South Sudan

Have fun with that list.

 

[GipoScribantino]

List of countries that are not signatories to some form of international IP rights agreements:

Eritrea
Ethiopia
Iran
Iraq
Marshall Islands
Palau
Somalia
South Sudan

Have fun with that list.

And it was then, that the country of <insert name> escaped poverty thanks to a website for piracy.

 

[Angry_Panda]

And it was then, that the country of <insert name> escaped poverty thanks to a website for piracy.

1. Host a non-profit piracy website.
2. ?????
3. Profit!

 

[Blastoutmaria]

If this is how it's going down, I hope they implement a 'Follow List' DL file dump like they did with batato.
Ain't gonna compile manually all over again after many years.

 

[Forikorder]

A website like ReadComicOnline is still up because they changed their url to .li (Liechtenstein, a German microstate), and if they get in trouble they will most likely change it again to another country. Heck, some famous French far-right website keeps changing their url everytime the French government tries to shut it down. Yes, the owner of that political website has been in exile in Japan for years to escape interpol, but he still freely sells crêpes in Tôkyô as if nothing happened and his website is still online 10 years later. So if a globally wanted extremist activist can do it, I don't understand why a mere comics-hosting website like yours could not just change their domain name to a foreign country that does not care about copyright laws. I swear everytime a pirate website falls down, it's always for the same dumb reason. This is literally the reason why nhentai.net got DMCA'd last year while hitomi.la still remains the eromanga archive by default. It's really not THAT hard to understand, is it?

they can, they choose not to

 

[hahanaho]

This is literally the reason why nhentai.net got DMCA'd last year while hitomi.la still remains the eromanga archive by default. It's really not THAT hard to understand, is it?

I actually don't understand. Why didn't one site get DMCA while the other got DMCA'd? The .la domain?

 

[T-sama]

Approximately 7000 titles are affected
Ok so let's check the API then 🚡
Calling the api.mangadex.org/manga?availableTranslatedLanguage[]=en endpoint
There is still 52012 titles with English chapter available.
Calling the api.mangadex.org/chapter?translatedLanguage[]=en
There is still 776014 english chapters available.
776014 / 52012

Man...
Should i be worried?
Even if the most popular titles has been nuked, there is still a lot to read.
Gotta find some niches title to read then.

Well, how many of those titles are:

• one shot
• twitter stuff that is never continued
• pixiv stuff that is never continued
• fanbox stuff that is never continued
• doujins
• hentai
• series abandoned long ago
• chinese, korean, taiwan and so on with hundreds and hundreds of chapters in a single series

Just because the number of titles with english chapters is big doesn't mean there's actually a lot of series we can really read, the dmca pretty much hit half or more of the active stuff + completed old series.

Add to that that many groups are simply just leaving, then in practice Mangadex won't have even half left of actual proper series to read.

 

[T-sama]

So much doomerism. MD has always operated under the logic that they'd respect DMCA. It's why some titles didn't have chapters. It just unfortunate it got targeted by such a large DMCA takedown request.

They also only ever operated under the impression that they'd respect Scanlation groups, not protect them (protect them from what lol??) This means they would respect the (reasonable) requests from scanlation groups. Like removing their uploads if asked.

Dude, Mangadex is changing hands to NamiComi, aren't them literally legit business? You really think they'll work with stolen material?

 

[T-sama]

I actually don't understand. Why didn't one site get DMCA while the other got DMCA'd? The .la domain?

Chances are both get DMCA, but Hitomi is hosted in a place where whoever who ownes can just laugh at the DMCA and nothing will happen to them, while Nhentai owner was scared of legal repercussions.

 

[bondejeger]

Well, how many of those titles are:

• one shot
• twitter stuff that is never continued
• pixiv stuff that is never continued
• fanbox stuff that is never continued
• doujins
• hentai
• series abandoned long ago
• chinese, korean, taiwan and so on with hundreds and hundreds of chapters in a single series

Just because the number of titles with english chapters is big doesn't mean there's actually a lot of series we can really read, the dmca pretty much hit half or more of the active stuff + completed old series.

Add to that that many groups are simply just leaving, then in practice Mangadex won't have even half left of actual proper series to read.

Yeah, none of the stuff I’ve been working on recently got dmca’d, only stuff from like three-four years ago, but I don’t really feel comfortable uploading to this site anymore, and I think it’s the same for a lot of others.

 

[OlgaFrow]

The site will be purged sooner or later voluntarily. NamiComi isn't going to kill themselves by ignoring DMCAs and they own very, very little rights with regards to what has been uploaded on this website. Furthermore they are in the business so you can bet your ass they are going to be proactive in their management.

Shout out to the previous administration for essentially ghosting everyone. I understand that processing 7,000 DMCA take downs is essentially a death sentence for a small team, but the total lack of any real announcement stings. Especially when the main reasons they have to remain silent...are so that MD continues to shamble on, a shell of its former self.

 

[bondejeger]

The site will be purged sooner or later voluntarily. NamiComi isn't going to kill themselves by ignoring DMCAs and they own very, very little rights with regards to what has been uploaded on this website. Furthermore they are in the business so you can bet your ass they are going to be proactive in their management.

Shout out to the previous administration for essentially ghosting everyone. I understand that processing 7,000 DMCA take downs is essentially a death sentence for a small team, but the total lack of any real announcement stings. Especially when the main reasons they have to remain silent...are so that MD continues to shamble on, a shell of its former self.

It’s basically mangahelpers all over again. It didn’t work out 15 years ago, and probably won’t this time around either.

 

[T-sama]

Yeah, none of the stuff I’ve been working on recently got dmca’d, only stuff from like three-four years ago, but I don’t really feel comfortable uploading to this site anymore, and I think it’s the same for a lot of others.

Or maybe they just didn't had time to remove it yet since it's over 7k series to be removed.

As for being confortable, yup, even before the faq many groups were clearly leaving due to the upload policy change, the rats always know when it's time to abandon the ship.

 

[T-sama]

It’s basically mangahelpers all over again. It didn’t work out 15 years ago, and probably won’t this time around either.

The sad part? I don't know about Mangahelpers, but for years now Mangadex is basically the main scanlation and community hub, even if everything was removed it could still survive in some way as I said multiple times, but fact that they pushed it into NamiComi hands basically kill any chance of Mangadex existing at all, cause no way they'll keep Mangadex as a scanlation and community hub out of the kindness of their heart, they're a business after all.