Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[jeezits]

What you asked about to begin with was the ties between Kakao and Japanese publishers, not the ties between Kakao/Japan and the DMCAs.
So yeah, there's an actual provable connection between the two.

Still, even without any direct evidence of their involvement here, it's pretty suggestive. You have Kakao spearheading massive global anti-piracy efforts and talking about targeting Mangadex in particular. Then Mangadex is hit by massive anti-piracy efforts. It's not unreasonable to speculate that those two things may have some connection.
People just shouldn't confuse that speculation with fact.

There's literally not. There's people endlessly conflating correlation with causation with zero facts or links or anything really.

Allow me to log in one last time to pay my respects.

View attachment 22308

Meanwhile, here comes 4chan to crow over a bad thing happening as if they won't suffer just as much like every bitch idiot rightwing loser ever.

 

[Bok3tto]

It’s true, you can test it yourself by trying to upload something to any series. They haven’t appeared to change their content policy though. It appears they might try to pass blame onto scannies and just say that “people agreed that they had permission to upload it so it isn’t our fault lol”

Aggregators (Bato, Mangaowl #rip, Mangago, LikeManga, etc.) put DMCA language on their site as a CYA move to avoid getting doxxed and sued that basically says ‘We don’t own this, we’re just reposting it from elsewhere’. Which is cute because ’DON’T REPOST’ pages exist?

It‘s actually kinda weird MD got hit and not those sites—because they’re usually top in search engines or because they’re the least problematic, maybe?

 

[T-sama]

So yeah, not stealing but definitely depriving an author of income here.

Not true, most people who pirate were never going to buy to begin with.

Vast majority of people wouldn't buy 99% of what they read, example, isekai slop, they're low effort shallow garbage half the time but many of us still consume them cause it can be amusing enough, do you think any of us would buy them?

The actual fact and truth of things is that if it comes to actually buying series vast majority of us would buy only a few dozen at best, if we could afford that much of course since manga price and country economy makes a lot of difference on that.

The only reason we read as much as we do is because we can do it for free, it would never happen if we had to pay for it cause vast majority of series are not worth buying unless you're fucking rich.

 

[Doctor_Who]

Any news?

 

[bondejeger]

Not true, most people who pirate were never going to buy to begin with.

Vast majority of people wouldn't buy 99% of what they read, example, isekai slop, they're low effort shallow garbage half the time but many of us still consume them cause it can be amusing enough, do you think any of us would buy them?

The actual fact and truth of things is that if it comes to actually buying series vast majority of us would buy only a few dozen at best, if we could afford that much of course since manga price and country economy makes a lot of difference on that.

The only reason we read as much as we do is because we can do it for free, it would never happen if we had to pay for it cause vast majority of series are not worth buying unless you're fucking rich.

I-it’s not like I’m interested in anything you make b-baka baka!

 

[happy_sqft]

Super cope but if that 1k thing is real, may this comment help lol

Ingesting cope it is

 

[RonBWL]

Not sure we can call any country that has internet ‘3rd world’ anymore, but also if those people have access to bookstores or game shops they can get those works through special orders and word of mouth. It might be expensive but then DMCAs are less of an issue (getting sued, getting a site taken down, etc.) because you’d own the work outright—and the company and creatives get paid.

Funny, because by your logic publishers are already making money thanks to scraplers (at least that's rampaging in my country and getting a print on a copy is a nightmare). They aren't going to get more by killing scanlation because at the end of the day the ~10,000 copies they issued is all that they get.

Right because publishers are. They are protecting their investment— publishers give authors an advance, authors work it off by royalties per volumes sold. If something is licensed and people are reading scans instead of paying for volumes or renting chapters, the author doesn’t get paid. Licensors don’t make their money back from translations if one person rips the pages and disseminates them. The whole business model becomes untenable.

Again, the people who buy are going to buy, those who won't buy will never buy. Publishers and Licensors aren't convicing non-buyers to buy, they are actively convincing their regulars to stop buying.

If the work is unlicensed and people go right to scans instead of lobbying for a license, publishers won’t assume a translation is necessary and nothing gets done.

Funny because you mentioned "The Internet" - clearly, instead of observing the market and pick new "popular" titles to localize, they expect the "readers" to lobby for licensing... Yeah good luck with that, because those who can read Japanese aren't lobbying for English, and those who can't won't know if the series piqued their interest or not. You can't have it both way.

Totally get how frustrating this all is—starting with insults is a clear sign you feel helpless and confused about how all this works. But saying ‘we can’t‘ when there are workarounds for making payments, VPNs for access, phone a friend to get volumes, etc. is disingenuous. It’s not that we can’t get this stuff it’s that we can’t get it NOW that’s the issue. These agreements take time, publishing has a pace that is well behind the popularity of the works, just how it is. Scanlating is fun and all but it’s not going to fix that problem the way you think.

It's called being reasonable - again, I'm not buying a product because the seller actively forbids me to, or provide a crappy version of it when they have the means to make it good.

Look at numbers: Publishers pay authors an advance, authors work off the advance through royalties per chapters and volumes sold. Licensors pay publishers up front and work it off through royalties/subscriptions. If you’re not paying for the work, the author isn’t paying off their advance and posting scans of the licensed work means the licensor isn’t getting a return. If something is popular here but officials are dropped because of low sales, there is a direct correlation.

Again, let's use the example of the Japanese market where you need like 5k copies out of 12k prints to avoid axe-kun. The Japanese otakus aren't buying because they have limited fund and can only invest in Isekai trash, but global readers aren't in any better position: Importing is expensive, certain countries can't be shipped to at all. The only option we have is purcahse the Japanese ebook, but even that is a chore that renders so many people unable to spend five bucks, even if they really want to support the author. It just doesn't work until there is a better system to let people around the world chip in.

Forget the current exchange rate, if 1 person reads 50 chapters on here for free instead of paying $1 a chapter on K-Mango that seems like nothing. But looking at the top thread in Similar threads, 2K people looked at the April Fool’s 2025 Advertisement Submission Context—if each person reads 50 chapters each on here that’s $100K ($1 per initial read) that’s not going back to the publisher to pay off the author’s debt or even trickling down to the author. We all know how crazy hard author’s work and when they have to pause for illness or whatever this just adds to the stress.

You'd be delusional to even THINK that out of 2000 people getting denied off the so called "50 chapters" from MD would go and sign up to K-Manga. I'd argue that out of those, maybe like 1000 are geo-blocked, 500 others that simply refuse to support the kind of quality K-Manga put into their service, and the rest simply aren't paying no matter what.

So yeah, not stealing but definitely depriving an author of income here.

Until conclusively proven with actual data, I'll say it again: THE PUBLISHERS are depriving an author of income by killing scanlation. Coming from myself, I've already stopped buying on Amazon because of their DRM, and that's a customer loss thanks to shitty service. They aren't convincing more people to buy, but already lost customers with their move, smart business 101 there.

 

[Koraeli]

There's literally not.

Kakao: Puts out press release saying "We're working together with Japanese publishers."
Japanese publishers: Puts out press release saying "We're working together with Kakao."
Both of them: Take pictures of themselves working together.
You: But there's literally no proof of any connection between them!

That's either a pretty serious level of denial there, or incredibly poor reading comprehension.

 

[T-sama]

but global readers aren't in any better position: Importing is expensive, certain countries can't be shipped to at all.

Don't forget currency prices too lol

My country is perfect example of that issue, now, I won't lie and say there's no mangas in my language, but I simply don't read in my language, for the most part english translation is always superior in no small part cause Brazilian Portuguese simply lack many words English have, and then there's the fact that sometimes translation is just bad really.

So, for me to buy a English manga? Let say a cheap one, $10 bucks, right this instant $1 = 5.61 in my currency, so that $10 becomes 56.10 for me, and then there's shipping, just for convenience sake let say total becomes 70 bucks for me, and then there's goverment tax of buying anything from outside, which as far as I know was 50% of the value, so I pay an extra 35 bucks because of that, making for a total of 105 bucks for a single volume, and of a cheap manga to boot since there's mangas that are way above 10 bucks.

People who whine against piracy tend to forget that most of the world doesn't have easy access to manga, especially if the person is from USA or UK since they seem to assume everyone can buy manga as easily, for most of us piracy is literally the only option, we would never be buyers to begin with so saying by pirating we're taking away sales is an outright lie and flies in the face of reality.

 

[Bok3tto]

If the business don't care to let me pay them, why would I invest my time and potentially even more money to buy into their business?

Felt, but imagine for a second how well this attitude would play IRL with the implication that publishers are ‘asking for it’. Part of the reason this is all so easy is because we have no actual connection to the people and things we’re dealing with.

You know why these survey fails? They never actually reach the AUDIENCES. Polling only the people in your ecosystem while the mass market with money to burn are out there drowning in safe mainstream stuff is a good way to turn even more potential customers away.

Also felt, but at the same time publishers are opening lines of communication and have been for a long time. If people are reading here en masse and not going to publishers en masse with ‘here’s a cool thing I would love this in my language’ then it’s wasted opportunity.

And it's pretty simple. If publishers aren't interested in reaching a wider audiences by giving them access to their library, there will only be safe mainstream stuff going forward. There aren't enough otakus in Japan to rocket sales for all titles. But I guess this is irrelevant to the topic at hands.

Totally irrelevant but needed to be said so again—reading in here and not using the avenues of communication afforded you ensures you don’t get what you want.

At a certain point, though, everyone in here decided to ignore copyright laws and permissions and disregard artists in the interest of free content out of a sense of entitlement or shared enjoyment or whatever, and in the end continuing to choose this route ensures the issue is never resolved.

 

[T-sama]

I-it’s not like I’m interested in anything you make b-baka baka!

You joke but did I say anything wrong? I know for a fact you must have a few series that yes, you had interest, maybe out of curiosity, who knows, but that if you had to pay you wouldn't even touch them because you know that either they're too low quality or just not something you'd like lol, you read them simply because you have access to them thanks to piracy, otherwise they probably wouldn't even make a blimp in your radar.

 

[bondejeger]

You joke but did I say anything wrong? I know for a fact you must have a few series that yes, you had interest, maybe out of curiosity, who knows, but that if you had to pay you wouldn't even touch them because you know that either they're too low quality or just not something you'd like lol, you read them simply because you have access to them thanks to piracy, otherwise they probably wouldn't even make a blimp in your radar.

You’re making excuses because you don’t want to pay.

 

[T-sama]

You’re making excuses because you don’t want to pay.

Ah yes, because I'm so full of money to pay 100 bucks for a single volume, thanks for making clear you're not here to argue in good faith, it's easy to say "you just don't want to pay!" and ignore context and that things are not black and white.

To want to pay for something people need to be able to pay to begin with, most of us aren't exactly swimming in money, you ignoring that and making strawman argument won't change that, all it does is make you sound like a self righteous asshole who keeps repeating "but piracy is bad! wah wah".

 

[bondejeger]

Ah yes, because I'm so full of money to pay 100 bucks for a single volume, thanks for making clear you're not here to argue in good faith, it's easy to say "you just don't want to pay!" and ignore context and that things are not black and white.

To want to pay for something people need to be able to pay to begin with, most of us aren't exactly swimming in money, you ignoring that and making strawman argument won't change that, all it does is make you sound like a self righteous asshole who keeps repeating "but piracy is bad! wah wah".

Manga isn’t an essential item you can’t live without. You can pirate as much as you want, but you should really stop making excuses like that. It’s juvenile.

 

[T-sama]

Manga isn’t an essential item you can’t live without.

looks around
Weird, I can't see a single person who ever implied it was.

You can pirate as much as you want, but you should really stop making excuses like that. It’s juvenile.

"excuses", nobody making excuses, good job completely ignoring the point.

As it was said multiple times already most of us wouldn't really buy manga, period, except maaaaaybe a few series we really like, the point some of us are making is that even if we want to buy manga there's various reasons that simply make it extremely difficulty or even impossible to buy what we want or just to support the author, money being one of them since it can be extremely expensive.

Honestly, the fact that you resort to a personal attack as calling me "juvenile" is laughable, juvenile is trying to see things as black and white, shows you're still not mature enough to understand the world can be more complex than that.

 

[Bok3tto]

At this point, I'm beginning to think it might be less of a headache if everyone just dedicated their efforts to Twitter/Pixiv manga
They're not my favorite, but you're not as likely to get a DMCA over them

No, but it is going to result in a really boring game of whack-a-mole where the house always wins. Heard from someone who went legit that authorized fan translations are a thing—reaching out to an author and asking for permission. But like, you have to be prepared for a ‘no’ and to not be a dick about it? On the upside, if they say yes you’ve now been given permission AND scored the respect of your fave.

 

[bondejeger]

looks around
Weird, I can't see a single person who ever implied it was.

"excuses", nobody making excuses, good job completely ignoring the point.

As it was said multiple times already most of us wouldn't really buy manga, period, except maaaaaybe a few series we really like, the point some of us are making is that even if we want to buy manga there's various reasons that simply make it extremely difficulty or even impossible to buy what we want or just to support the author, money being one of them since it can be extremely expensive.

Honestly, the fact that you resort to a personal attack as calling me "juvenile" is laughable, juvenile is trying to see things as black and white, shows you're still not mature enough to understand the world can be more complex than that.

You’re completely disregarding that people make manga for a living. They’re dependent on sales for it to go on. You could for instance buy their raw manga digitally just as easily as the Japanese do. But not even are you not supporting them, you’re also trash talking their work and say the only reason you read it is that you can read it for free because you pirate it. How is that not juvenile? If you don’t enjoy it, why don’t you go enjoy something else that you can pay for?
Honestly it’s sad that you can’t understand that this is something as simple as that. This is their job. Would you like to work for free, or have people trash talk the job you do?

 

[Trodsen]

I used to be a customer for MangaUp, but they've jacked their inapp prices so much I uninstalled their app for good, currency exchange rates also don't help at all with that.

Kmanga is absolutely atrocious in general, you couldn't convince me to use their app if you paid me for it and it also needs a vpn to even access.

Alphamanga on the other hand does have a pretty reasonable system where the 3 latest chapters at any given time are available for free. I'm their customer, even though lots of their series are easily available for free simply to support that.

And mangaplus is honestly also pretty good as long as a series stays there.

Now the main issue is that even with these 4 apps from different publishers, I simply can't check the 8000+ titles in my follow list here in md over there since they plain don't exist in any of these alternatives.

The second main issue is that all of those official publishers somehow seem to suffer from worsening translations in general, official translation quality has been worse and worse over time instead of improving somehow, a case in point for that is Risou no Himo Seikatsu if it wasn't for the scanlation group doing it I'd have missed a ton of important stuff from the story due to the official translation being simply bad and incomplete at times.

So really if publishers want to see revenue from overseas fans they have some pretty glaring issues to solve before even thinking about scanlators. Not that I believe they want that money, I've been reading manga since 2006 and I'm pretty sure a lot of them would rather the filthy gaijin never got to lay eyes on their treasures than be paid for it.

 

[T-sama]

You’re completely disregarding that people make manga for a living.

Nobody disregarded that

They’re dependent on sales for it to go on.

What sales since most people who pirates manga won't buy it even if they could? There was never a sale there to begin with, people who want to buy manga already buys what they can and want if possible.

You could for instance buy their raw manga digitally just as easily as the Japanese do.

1 - As it was mentioned before a lot of sites where we can buy raw makes things extremely difficulty or even impossible for anyone out of Japan to buy it

2 - Even if we can buy raw most don't want something in a language they can't understand, others simply can't buy because it's too expensive

But not even are you not supporting them, you’re also trash talking their work and say the only reason you read it is that you can read it for free because you pirate it.

Ok now you're full of shit, a lot of mangas are objetively trash, period, don't act as if for example a lot of the isekai slops we see are actually good, a good part of the reason they sell in Japan is due to cheap and shallow escapism and self isenrt, that's it, not because of their quality.

At best they're good in the sense of how much of a funny trainwreck they can be, cause writing quality a lot of time is literally objective garbage.

It's literally a fact that a lot of people simply won't buy them in the west, probably part of the reason we don't really get the most slop mangas licensed really.

How is that not juvenile?

Judging the quality or a work is not juvenile.

If you don’t enjoy it, why don’t you go enjoy something else that you can pay for?

Who says I don't enjoy it? I can enjoy it the same way I enjoy junk food, they're dumb and a trainwreck, I can enjoy simply because of how stupid they are, but if I had to actually pay for it I have infinitely better mangas I'm more invested into to buy.

Honestly it’s sad that you can’t understand that this is something as simple as that.

No, the sad thing is that you're with your head so deep your own ass that you can't see things from other people pov, I know exactly how things are from the mangaka side, but as it was said multiple time most of us won't or can't buy manga.

As said multiple times we were never going to give mangaka money one way or another, saying that they're losing money because of piracy is pure bullshit, we would simply move on and do something else if it was literally impossible to access their works, because the only reason we read many series is because of convenient easy access.

This is their job. Would you like to work for free,

To which they're already paid for, or rather, underpaid for since most Japanese publishers are abusive as fuck.

or have people trash talk the job you do?

1 - personally speaking if I did a shit job I would like to know
2 - you can't please everyone so no matter how good it is some will still find it trash
3 - independent of quality some people are toxic and malicious and will trash your work simply to hurt you

If you're so mentally weak that you can't deal with people trashing your work that's on you, to publish something or even just say anything on the internet you need to expect get shit from someone, that's how fucking life works.

 

[bondejeger]

Nobody disregarded that

What sales since most people who pirates manga won't buy it even if they could? There was never a sale there to begin with, people who want to buy manga already buys what they can and want if possible.

1 - As it was mentioned before a lot of sites where we can buy raw makes things extremely difficulty or even impossible for anyone out of Japan to buy it

2 - Even if we can buy raw most don't want something in a language they can't understand, others simply can't buy because it's too expensive

Ok now you're full of shit, a lot of mangas are objetively trash, period, don't act as if for example a lot of the isekai slops we see are actually good, a good part of the reason they sell in Japan is due to cheap and shallow escapism and self isenrt, that's it, not because of their quality.

At best they're good in the sense of how much of a funny trainwreck they can be, cause writing quality a lot of time is literally objective garbage.

It's literally a fact that a lot of people simply won't buy them in the west, probably part of the reason we don't really get the most slop mangas licensed really.

Judging the quality or a work is not juvenile.

Who says I don't enjoy it? I can enjoy it the same way I enjoy junk food, they're dumb and a trainwreck, I can enjoy simply because of how stupid they are, but if I had to actually pay for it I have infinitely better mangas I'm more invested into to buy.

No, the sad thing is that you're with your head so deep your own ass that you can't see things from other people pov, I know exactly how things are from the mangaka side, but as it was said multiple time most of us won't or can't buy manga.

As said multiple times we were never going to give mangaka money one way or another, saying that they're losing money because of piracy is pure bullshit, we would simply move on and do something else if it was literally impossible to access their works, because the only reason we read many series is because of convenient easy access.

To which they're already paid for, or rather, underpaid for since most Japanese publishers are abusive as fuck.

1 - personally speaking if I did a shit job I would like to know
2 - you can't please everyone so no matter how good it is some will still find it trash
3 - independent of quality some people are toxic and malicious and will trash your work simply to hurt you

If you're so mentally weak that you can't deal with people trashing your work that's on you, to publish something or even just say anything on the internet you need to expect get shit from someone, that's how fucking life works.

I think you should just stop reading manga and do something you enjoy and respect enough to pay for.