Mangadex to purge titles for legal reasons

[yogurtman250]

I told myself I wasn't going to speak in here

But if y'all don't behave I will be locking the thread
This is the last warning

Oh God please no they're going to spread to other threads

 

[OisE]

We don't like your comments,
We don't like your reacts,
If you won't stop we'll ban you.

Wow I am flattered. Me and...god??!!!
Didn't know I was a monarch!

 

[Nekomizus]

Wow I am flattered. Me and...god??!!!
Didn't know I was a monarch!

Please don't say that I don't wanna read another discussion about religion when this is supposed to be a thread protesting censorship.

 

[Xnot]

@Xnot something does not add up.

In one message you tell us to no longer upload any such content, but in another you say that only certain reported titles are being looked at and removed.

Was the same ever said about titles infringing on copyright? That kind of content is still obviously being allowed to be uploaded until a report comes in, but here specifically you tell us to no longer upload loli content?

Or should we see these takedowns as equal to DMCA takedowns, so that we can operate as normal and titles will only be removed when they're reported?

And on another note, it still hasn't been addressed why titles were wiped instead of only the chapters. You can't say that you're looking at options to not wipe them if there's already a system in place to do just that (for DMCA takedowns).

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regaring one user or point in time versus another. The issues with the loli content is more intrinsically related to the material itself, so you can expect it to be enforced more strictly to some degree.

The titles were wiped because it was the safest and fastest action to take at the time. We want to have the title pages available, though some of them have covers that might require editing beforehand.

WHO ? Tell us the name of the Organization that approached you in this regard.

@Xnot Please tell us who sent these claims. Who is this "legal nexus" ?

Our legal department told us to take action and we took it. That is the extent of what I can or want to say regarding that.

 

[meccaflare]

The titles were wiped because it was the safest and fastest action to take at the time. We want to have the title pages available, though some of them have covers that might require editing beforehand.

It is what it is, but a more accurate word would be "censor." You're changing the covers as a means of addressing something offensive. This explains why the page was completely deleted; removing the chapters wouldn't have sufficed because the covers themselves were part of the issue.

I don't often find myself agreeing with Redditors:


In this case, however, I agree that the titles should be restored. Censor the covers if you must, and mark the uploads as unavailable, as you did with the DMCA. I don't like it, but it's better than the stealth wipe. In any case, I'm looking forward to the notice you'll eventually put out. I've posted here a few times before with questions and suggestions.

 

[darkdepths]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regaring one user or point in time versus another.

Oh come on. We all know that's a BS checkbox used as a CYOA measure and that 99% of the content here isn't uploaded by people authorized by the copyright owner. Don't try to play dumb by bringing that up here.

 

[BestBoy]

bestboy

At least have the bravery to @ me

 

[Mazaky]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regaring one user or point in time versus another. The issues with the loli content is more intrinsically related to the material itself, so you can expect it to be enforced more strictly to some degree.

The titles were wiped because it was the safest and fastest action to take at the time. We want to have the title pages available, though some of them have covers that might require editing beforehand.


Our legal department told us to take action and we took it. That is the extent of what I can or want to say regarding that.

I have some issues with your answer:

Under U.S. law, simply requiring users to confirm they own rights does not automatically shield a platform from liability. What matters is whether the site qualifies for DMCA Safe Harbor protection (17 U.S.C. §512). Having Terms of Service that say users must have rights does not eliminate platform liability and having a DMCA process helps but only if you guys genuinely qualify for safe harbor. If the site knowingly hosts widespread unlicensed manga, courts could find contributory infringement, vicarious infringement and loss of DMCA protection, which the more obvious the piracy on the site the weaker would be the safe harbor defense, which would be the case in this instance, which would be even weaker at the moment that it gets to the court that this site monetize the content at some degree (ads, subscriptions, etc.).

About the "Loli content", taking into account that we are still based on the U.S. law as your TOS mentions, if we look at Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) the Supreme Court ruled that purely virtual images (drawings/CGI) are protected by the First Amendment because they don't involve a real child victim, even with the PROTECT Act of 2003 the material must be "obscene" under the Miller Test (lacking serious literary, artistic, or scientific value), it has to meet all three standards (The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find it appeals to prurient interest; It depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and It lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value) to "pass" the test, which in many cases was already proved to be almost impossible.

Even if we take this all into account and you are trying to shield yourselves for the future, as mentioned several times here, you would have to delete almost 90% of the entire site since most would fall under the same aspects and now, because you selective deleted some of it, you are liable to have the knowledge about the content that is portrayed in the web and have full moderation of it, which would go back to the defense of safe harbor to be totally lost at this point, and even popular series, as Berserk, would be in the same category as the series that were removed as of now.

This is even more serious since one of your staff members made the insane decision of calling some users of your site as "pedophiles" which would now enter the Pandering Provision (18 U.S.C. § 2252A) as the site having awareness of the content hosted on the platform and pandering for said content and the moderation having the knowledge and means to moderate it.

From my perspective, this is an incredibly reckless decision, especially if you did not receive any formal judicial notice and still chose to move forward with it. Acting preemptively in this way could ultimately make any future legal case against you more complicated and difficult to defend.

My concern also extends to what this decision signals for the future, particularly the strong influence the legal department appears to have over the site’s direction. If this is the first step, it would not be surprising if, within a few months or a year, the prevailing view becomes that all unauthorized content on the site should be removed on the grounds that you are liable for it in one way or another. These are similar steps to those taken by platforms like Crunchyroll and Fakku. Yet just last year, you stated that this was not your intention, even after NamiComi became involved.

 

[Mendax]

Just close the site, it's over.

 

[Adusay]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material

Lmao

 

[Heika]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regaring one user or point in time versus another.

You guys need to have a serious discussion with your legal counsel. The reason YouTube and ThePirateBay don't get sued into oblivion for having copyright material is that

1. YouTube is mostly user-generated content, and infringing material just slips through the cracks
2. ThePirateBay doesn't actually host any files.

Mangadex is 99.9% infringing materials. You would never be able to get away with claiming you don't know about it, and you are also directly hosting files

 

[karimsss]

I told myself I wasn't going to speak in here

But if y'all don't behave I will be locking the thread
This is the last warning

blud is shaking writing this shit

 

[jak]

A piracy site wanting to follow the law? You can try all you want, you are never going to be Crunchyroll.

 

[BestBoy]

ThePirateBay don't get sued

Maybe you're too young to remember, but TPB was taken to court and it's operators jailed and fined.

 

[Archhaven]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regarding one user or point in time versus another.

There is absolutely no way y'all are naive enough to think that's actually true. That is and has always been a checkbox people click when they upload their scans.

You run a pirate site. Your legal team has much bigger problems to worry about than puritanical pearl-clutching bullshit.

 

[hibikiyamada]

Upon uploading content, the user confirms to us that they are authorized by the copyright owner to upload the material, so there is some additional nuance regaring one user or point in time versus another. The issues with the loli content is more intrinsically related to the material itself, so you can expect it to be enforced more strictly to some degree.

The titles were wiped because it was the safest and fastest action to take at the time. We want to have the title pages available, though some of them have covers that might require editing beforehand.


Our legal department told us to take action and we took it. That is the extent of what I can or want to say regarding that.

What an absolute joke of a response. Genuinely laughable that you typed all of this out, especially the first paragraph. At this point the only reason why I think you can't tell us what made your legal team respond in this way is because you KNOW it makes you all look bad. Other platforms have been able to tell us when the governments of certain countries have pressured them, so it can't be because of that.

If all it takes to justify the removal of content is just a mean letter that doesn't even have any sort of governmental authority attached to it then more content will absolutely be hit in the future.

It's nice to know that your policy has nothing to do with it, but I honestly would've preferred you to say it was due to some personal conviction that caused the sudden enforcement of the policy mentioned earlier. At least then you all wouldn't have been shown to be spineless cowards.

 

[Eliminateur]

jesus, what is this STUPIDITY, wow... just wow... i have no words, i'm going to start actively looking elsewhere deleting the entire "thing" including metadata, listing and everything is beyond daft, it's borderline criminal.

and they have the GALL to ask for support and not block ads?, really?, you're a joke

 

[Mazaky]

Maybe you're too young to remember, but TPB was taken to court and it's operators jailed and fined.

I think he is talking about how TPB operates right now, which is decentralized with multiple servers and has little to no moderation, which made it actually become unsafe. But at the same time there are dozens of alternatives that use loopholes and breaches to host files as TPB did back in the day safely and with moderation to some extent, the main issue of many of those hosting websites is when the operators try to be well know with the public, which makes them easier to find, be fined and possible jailed.

 

[urzu_se7en]

We made this site after batoto went down, we can make another one after this goes down the drain. Never forget where you came from.

 

[Luzmoth]

The conclusion I'm getting from all of this is, as said above, newer (and possibly better) sites will always appear, and everyone should start torrenting.

MangaDex is done for. Glad to see people enjoying the shipwreck, though.