Ban on scanlation groups that charge any money for any reason.

[aceredshirt13]

There are two scan groups still active on MangaDex - Lua Scans and Hive Scans - who charge money for early access to scanlations on their personal websites, sometimes withholding them from upload on MangaDex for long periods of time in order to drive traffic to their website and get people to pay for them. Even putting aside the fact that both of these groups were permanently banned from the Scanlation School server for being caught stealing scanlations and charging money for them (something three other groups caught doing this have been banned here for, but these two for some reason haven’t), it is extremely dangerous for MangaDex to have two very prolific groups charging money for pirated content on their personal websites.

I’m not going to get on too much an ethical high horse about charging for these, because even though I think it’s blatantly shitty theft, 90% of scanlation is technically piracy anyway. However, crucially, it is free piracy, and as such it is often left alone. But if major manwha companies catch wind of the fact that two very prolific manwha translation groups on the site are charging for pirated manwha - some of which, as was the reason for banning them from Scanlation School, may not even be their own scanlations - it will not just be Lua Scans and Hive Scans that suffer. Their reckless and extremely illegal profit-making actions could bring MangaDex down with it. After all, it’s not as if only the user who uploaded official scans of Boruto was targeted in the past MangaDex purge - it was the entirety of the site that was taken down.

My proposal is not suggesting the removal of any group who has a Patreon, takes commissions, etc. etc. because those often fall into a grayer area that is less direct and more likely to be ignored. My proposal is to explicitly ban any scanlation group that is openly and directly using their personal website to profit off of scanlation containing pirated content like the above two groups. This will not affect the overwhelming majority of scanlations on this site - I’ve not even encountered any groups doing this other than these two, and their actions appear to have a long history of being unethical and widely disliked so I suspect they will not be greatly missed - and in fact will help protect everyone else from being shot alongside them.

I mentioned this in the support channel of the Discord server and people seemed to agree with me, and was told discussion was being had. However, I didn’t hear back about any of said discussion, so I decided to bring it up here as well - especially because it’s a serious issue that needs widespread discussion for the safety of our site.

 

[kn4ll]

Tons of new groups have started using some kind of coin system. I suspect that most of the groups are probably run by the same people.
I guess the time where scanlations were done by enthusiast fans for fans is now over.

 

[robertelch]

Many groups these days do it and, as such, it won't be banned

 

[aceredshirt13]

Many groups these days do it and, as such, it won't be banned

Genuinely asking, which groups? I've looked into plenty of scanlation groups as of late and have not seen the practice of charging people for it as common. None of the other scanlators I talk to do this. And if this really is done by significantly more scanlation groups than the ones I mentioned, I still think a ban should be seriously considered - once again, for the safety of the website. Like I said, this isn't about Patreon, donations, commissions, things like that - this is specifically about directly charging for pirated uploads of scanlations.

The ban doesn't have to be without a whisper. An ultimatum can be given - stop doing this, or you'll be banned under this new rule. They can still do it on their own site, and they can still upload their manga on other sites like Bato or MRM or the hentai one or elsewhere. Just not the site that is largely surviving in the public eye because it's not-for-profit, gives credit, and doesn't have ads.

 

[Painasbread]

All of those groups have to use mtl only on their series, and at least decrease their scanlation quality by a lot to stay productive, dish out a lot of content in diverse genres to bring in the maximum potential of customers to their site (at least that's the obvious pattern they have right now).

Since they need to have a wide range of comics, the original comic's quality will also be most of the time mediocre, because they can't give too much time on it either, so any better comic will be taken over and get more popular on better scanlations groups.

So most of these groups can only get a middle to average popularity, and a more volatile fanbase, because people will get more easily disinterested in the more and more boring comics. And the probability of finding a good series on their site is usually extremely low. Even if one is good, they'll make it more annoying with their trash scanlation quality.

All in all, it's generally never worth to read on their website. So I don't really have much of a problem with them.
I suppose they're doing that because they're just not good enough, and to chose the convenience of not having to be thourough and build a good fanbase, but rather win money by the sheer amount of production of low quality comics.

Some official english groups do that too (mostly for manhua and manhwa), they're just doing it legally.

All in all, they're all stricly using MD as a buffer to advertise for their website.

 

[aceredshirt13]

All of those groups have to use mtl only on their series, and at least decrease their scanlation quality by a lot to stay productive, dish out a lot of content in diverse genres to bring in the maximum potential of customers to their site (at least that's the obvious pattern they have right now).

Since they need to have a wide range of comics, the original comic's quality will also be most of the time mediocre, because they can't give too much time on it either, so any better comic will be taken over and get more popular on better scanlations groups.

So most of these groups can only get a middle to average popularity, and a more volatile fanbase, because people will get more easily disinterested in the more and more boring comics. And the probability of finding a good series on their site is usually extremely low. Even if one is good, they'll make it more annoying with their trash scanlation quality.

All in all, it's generally never worth to read on their website. So I don't really have much of a problem with them.
I suppose they're doing that because they're just not good enough, and to chose the convenience of not having to be thourough and build a good fanbase, but rather win money by the sheer amount of production of low quality comics.

Some official english groups do that too (mostly for manhua and manhwa), they're just doing it legally.

All in all, they're all stricly using MD as a buffer to advertise for their website.

Oh yeah, the translations for sure suck, I’ve seen a great deal of complaint about that. The concern is less that and more that their illegal actions have significant potential to have a deleterious effect on us even if they don’t have serious fanbases - and the fact that they don’t have serious fanbases due both to their poor choice of comics and the poor quality of their translations means that if this ban is put in place they are unlikely to be missed. And again, even aside from charging for scanlations, the two I mentioned above are also actual proven scanlation thieves that have uploaded stolen scanlations and claimed them as their own. I find it unbelievable that that would not be a bannable offense on its own, so regardless of whether or not my strongly suggested ban on paid scanlation groups comes into account, I think it’s absolutely unacceptable that confirmed scanlation thieves still have a platform on the site that prides itself on crediting scanlations.

(Oh yeah, I’ve seen some truly awful translations on, say, official translation sites for Chinese and Korean web novels, and I’ve noticed translations not being great for Japanese focused sites like Renta, really poor scan quality from several entires on Amazon’s Digital Manga Publishing, etc. Definitely the most embarrassing one is that manga “translation” company that did Neko Oji that just openly uses machine translation for everything. But unfortunately since machine translation isn’t a threat to MangaDex, I’m not bothering to pursue that course of action because it’ll clearly never happen even though most everyone would prefer it… alas.)

 

[Painasbread]

Well, since MD isn't banning those groups, I suppose it's their choice, which they took in due consideration to everything involved. If they want to do it, then they'll do it. I don't think there's much more to discuss other than that.
If they're not responding in this type of threads, I suppose there's not much else we can do.

 

[kn4ll]

Well, since MD isn't banning those groups, I suppose it's their choice, which they took in due consideration to everything involved. If they want to do it, then they'll do it. I don't think there's much more to discuss other than that.
If they're not responding in this type of threads, I suppose there's not much else we can do.

There's two many of them too likely. Like half of the manga on the most popular list are from these groups.

Genuinely asking, which groups? I've looked into plenty of scanlation groups as of late and have not seen the practice of charging people for it as common. None of the other scanlators I talk to do this. And if this really is done by significantly more scanlation groups than the ones I mentioned, I still think a ban should be seriously considered - once again, for the safety of the website. Like I said, this isn't about Patreon, donations, commissions, things like that - this is specifically about directly charging for pirated uploads of scanlations.

The ban doesn't have to be without a whisper. An ultimatum can be given - stop doing this, or you'll be banned under this new rule. They can still do it on their own site, and they can still upload their manga on other sites like Bato or MRM or the hentai one or elsewhere. Just not the site that is largely surviving in the public eye because it's not-for-profit, gives credit, and doesn't have ads.

Some of the new ones are Asmotoons, Nikatoons, KDT Scans. Older one is Galaxy Degen Scans.

 

[Painasbread]

There's two many of them too likely. Like half of the manga on the most popular list are from these groups.

Some of the new ones are Asmotoons, Nikatoons, KDT Scans. Older one is Galaxy Degen Scans.

I guess I was wrong about the middle to average popularity (I meant to say average to low btw) those groups garner. Anyway, that doesn't change much things for me.

It's obvious that most scanlation groups wishing to get a return on their investisment chose to monetise their scanlation this way rather than patreon or other ways. It's not like things happened overnight. But the groups never got banned anyway.

Why should they get banned now then? I'm not saying you're wrong and they shouldn't get banned, but why should they get banned now more than when the first big groups started doing this? (Manhwafreak is doing this since the ages of time, never got banned)

 

[kn4ll]

I guess I was wrong about the middle to average popularity (I meant to say average to low btw) those groups garner. Anyway, that doesn't change much things for me.

It's obvious that most scanlation groups wishing to get a return on their investisment chose to monetise their scanlation this way rather than patreon or other ways. It's not like things happened overnight. But the groups never got banned anyway.

Why should they get banned now then? I'm not saying you're wrong and they shouldn't get banned, but why should they get banned now more than when the first big groups started doing this? (Manhwafreak is doing this since the ages of time, never got banned)

I don't know if there's an official statement here about groups like this, but I just guess that since other similar groups that do this stuff haven't been banned for years, I doubt they'd ban the new groups.
They're not allowed on places like the manga subreddit though, at least linking to their own site. I've noticed the mod there deleting posts to platinum scans, and they've just got a reader with ads I think.

 

[Angry_Panda]

From the site rules:

1.5 Chapters from groups linking to websites which adopt excessive profiteering techniques are not allowed. Examples include, but are not limited to: adblock-blockers, hidden redirects, clickjackers, pop-ups and pop-unders.

1.8 Permanently withholding some of your scanlations to a series for the purpose of attracting users to your site is not allowed.

And from the forum rules:

3.4 Don't advertise or include affiliate tags in links without explicit permission. This extends to all areas of MangaDex.

3.6 Groups that have opted out of using MangaDex to distribute their content must opt out in its entirety, including (but not limited to) linking to their website in comments and using any of our channels for recruitment.

And from the recruitment subforum guidelines:

5. Do not advertise paid positions.

There's nothing that says 'a very long time' is the same as 'permanently' w/r/t site rule 1.8 (and I seem to recall I've seen at least one staff member specifically state this, though I'm not sure if that was on the forums or on the Discord). Nor is there anything that says a group can't be run for profit if they want to post chapters on MD (but if they pay their members, they couldn't recruit for those positions here).

Is it kinda shitty? Yeah (though as I get older my concept of 'the value of my time' has changed, and I'm not necessarily going to begrudge someone who's trained and talented their right to try and make a few kroner doing scanlation on the side).

Is it a good way to get on a publisher's radar real fuckin' quick? I'd bet it is.

Does it potentially cause some uncomfortable situations for MD? Possibly - my own opinion is that 'it seems like it would', though to this point MD has managed to keep a low enough profile that they don't seem to show up on the lists of sites being targeted by publishers every so often. Not being a staff member, I have no insight into what that looks like behind the scenes, and have to trust they have a handle on this.

Now, if someone's stealing from another group and passing that off as their work, that MAY BE grounds for an action per the site rules:

1.3.4 Both using the translated script and images of a scanlation as the basis of a new scanlation are generally allowed as long as there is a significant difference from the source release, such as being translated to another language, having significantly improved typesetting, or higher quality raws.

Note the 'significant difference' clause - simply retypesetting the same translation without a 'significant improvement' of some kind is not acceptable. That has resulted in at least one ban I've seen.

Ultimately, there's some degree of subjectivity in all of this, and if the staff have been alerted to the behaviors and have decided to take no action, it sounds like the decision has already been made.

 

[aceredshirt13]

From the site rules:


And from the forum rules:


And from the recruitment subforum guidelines:

There's nothing that says 'a very long time' is the same as 'permanently' w/r/t site rule 1.8 (and I seem to recall I've seen at least one staff member specifically state this, though I'm not sure if that was on the forums or on the Discord). Nor is there anything that says a group can't be run for profit if they want to post chapters on MD (but if they pay their members, they couldn't recruit for those positions here).

Is it kinda shitty? Yeah (though as I get older my concept of 'the value of my time' has changed, and I'm not necessarily going to begrudge someone who's trained and talented their right to try and make a few kroner doing scanlation on the side).

Is it a good way to get on a publisher's radar real fuckin' quick? I'd bet it is.

Does it potentially cause some uncomfortable situations for MD? Possibly - my own opinion is that 'it seems like it would', though to this point MD has managed to keep a low enough profile that they don't seem to show up on the lists of sites being targeted by publishers every so often. Not being a staff member, I have no insight into what that looks like behind the scenes, and have to trust they have a handle on this.

Now, if someone's stealing from another group and passing that off as their work, that MAY BE grounds for an action per the site rules:

Note the 'significant difference' clause - simply retypesetting the same translation without a 'significant improvement' of some kind is not acceptable. That has resulted in at least one ban I've seen.

Ultimately, there's some degree of subjectivity in all of this, and if the staff have been alerted to the behaviors and have decided to take no action, it sounds like the decision has already been made.

I wasn’t trying to advocate for it on the grounds of current rules, I know there isn’t a current rule that covers it - that’s why I was pitching this in the suggestions section, after all, for a measure to be added against it to avoid the publisher risk.

I guess I was wrong about the middle to average popularity (I meant to say average to low btw) those groups garner. Anyway, that doesn't change much things for me.

It's obvious that most scanlation groups wishing to get a return on their investisment chose to monetise their scanlation this way rather than patreon or other ways. It's not like things happened overnight. But the groups never got banned anyway.

Why should they get banned now then? I'm not saying you're wrong and they shouldn't get banned, but why should they get banned now more than when the first big groups started doing this? (Manhwafreak is doing this since the ages of time, never got banned)

I mean, by that logic we shouldn’t have a measure on our site crediting scanlation groups or linking back to creators, right? No other unofficial manga reading site has a measure like this in place, but I think most people would agree that the increased credit and visibility that the categorization and linking system brings us a good thing. “We’ve always been doing this bad thing, so we should just keep doing this bad thing” isn’t a justification for anything, really. If MangaDex does turn out to claim that it is a valid justification anyway, well, I can’t do anything about that. But at the very least I can say why I think it’s a bad idea in the hopes that something will be done about it if attention is increasingly brought to it.

 

[Painasbread]

“We’ve always been doing this bad thing, so we should just keep doing this bad thing” isn’t a justification for anything, really. If MangaDex does turn out to claim that it is a valid justification anyway, well, I can’t do anything about that. But at the very least I can say why I think it’s a bad idea in the hopes that something will be done about it if attention is increasingly brought to it.

... I meant to say they should have been aware of this already, and if nothing changed, then that pretty much summarizes their standpoint.
I see comments like your thread regularly, and I was there when it started, so I know people have been talking about this for a while now. But those groups still didn't get banned. I take it that the staff have their reasons, either what panda was talking about or something else; anyway their stance is pretty clear to me right now.

Unless they contradict me by explaining things further, I don't think things will change if the situation doesn't. Maybe now it looks like too many groups do this monetisation thing? We could honestly see it coming.

So unless MD makes an official response to address the situation as a whole or answers the thread, there's not much else for me to say about this.