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

[Kagurakora]

manga aggregator sites

I don’t like any of them.

 

[Kagurakora]

I don’t like any of them.

m*ng*p*rk is what I chose for now

I don't believe I'm allowed to tell you that since it goes against the rules of MangaDex to list aggregators.

But you can easily find them, just search up "manga aggregator sites" and you should see some.

 

[Angry_Panda]

[site] is what I chose for now

I would suggest editing out the name of the site before the mods see this.

 

[Kagurakora]

I don’t like any of the

m*ng*p*rk is what I chose for now

It doesn’t have some of the stuff on this website that I liked…

 

[Kagurakora]

I would suggest editing out the name of the site before the mods see this.

1. Ok, I censored it.
2. It doesn’t have some of the stuff on this website that I liked…

 

[Regular_user2]

1. Ok, I censored it.
2. It doesn’t have some of the stuff on this website that I liked…

Add the name of the series to your search and you should find the sites that have it. You might have to use different sites to read all your series.

 

[Koneko_Nyaa]

Here is the solution everyone overlooks:
The DMCA is a US law. Host the site outside of the USA and tell everyone who submits DMCA complaints to fuck off.

 

[Angry_Panda]

Here is the solution everyone overlooks:
The DMCA is a US law. Host the site outside of the USA and tell everyone who submits DMCA complaints to fuck off.

.com, .org, .net, and most other non-country code TLDs are administered by US registrars, so the Feds can seize non-compliant DNS entries regardless of where the host server physically resides.

 

[BestBoy]

administered by US registrars

mangadex.org would have to become mangadex.su. and do we really want to have this website hosted in 1990's Soviet Union?

 

[Angry_Panda]

mangadex.org would have to become mangadex.su. and do we really want to have this website hosted in 1990's Soviet Union?

In Soviet Russia, manga scans you.

 

[JVick]

I don’t like any of them.

You could simply buy the manga as well.

 

[Manko-sensei]

In Soviet Russia, manga scans you.

Their manga? Our manga now!

 

[Angry_Panda]

Their manga? Our manga now!

All authors are required to have a five-year plan for their series....

 

[BestBoy]

required to have a five-year plan

For some authors I can't argue this wouldn't actually be helpful...

 

[Ikea_Mug]

UPDATE (as of 19th May 0:40 UTC)​

Staff have provided more information regarding the whole situation in a FAQ​

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Mangadex was hit by quite the sizeable DMCA takedown, resulting in chapter numbers going down by more than 25% (that is, over 660k chapters) - and no, we're unfortunately not talking about Trump coming up with new tariffs.
Since this has led to a lot of confusion and off-topic discussions in the bugs, support and announcement threads and no real official announcement has been made yet, I'm making an unofficial one for the time being.

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Q: Where are the chapters of the titles I was reading just yesterday? / What happened to my uploads?​

Mangadex got a joint DMCA takedown notice, presumably on behalf of major publishers both Japanese and Korean.

Q: Is there a list of that titles were affected?​

No such list has been provided by Mangadex staff yet, but you'll find community-compiled lists in a lot of places like this reddit thread. Therefore, please don't spam this thread with affected titles.

Q: Is this the end of Mangadex? Will Mangadex shut down?​

There are no plans or indications of Mangadex shutting down (that I'm aware of). There was a change of site ownership but that seems mainly organisational. Mangadex is a popular site, more so than many readers are aware of. It's more surprising MD got this far solely on the backs of very few volunteers, than seeing them expanding the collaboration with Namicomi now imo.
Obviously, this means Mangadex will have to comply with (legitimate) DMCAs in the future, so many uploads are/will be at risk of being taken down. Therefore, it really comes down to whether more publishers will be as short-sighted to target the least evil of manga piracy sites and send further DMCAs waves now... Additionally, there might be further rule changes regarding what is allowed to be uploaded to which title but so far that hasn't happened.
As things stand, uploading on Mangadex at the very least is still one of the best (and most convenient) ways to get your stuff on a majority of aggregators out there.

Q: What's next? / What about my read markers and comments?​

An old v3 feature, allowing to show chapter metadata only without being able to actually read a chapter/access its images, is planned to re-release ASAP. This will include your read markers as well as comment threads.
This also means that, even if a reading progress/library exporter existed, it won't work until then. And no, before you ask I can't recommend one (feel free to recommend something to put here), but it looks like T10_ considers making one.

Q: Is the removal of chapters permanent? / Can I appeal the removal of my chapter(s)?​

As things stand, Mangadex staying compliant with the DMCA notice is the most likely outcome. However, there are plans to show who took down a chapter and when. This means you will be able to file a DMCA counter notice to challenge the takedown if you so wish (good luck with that).
Additionally, if you believe (and can prove) chapters that aren't licensed by a publisher were removed incorrectly, you can report those on MD's end.

Q: Why are there sometimes chapters left?​

Because of the nature of a DMCA takedown request, only chapters available at/before the time when the takedown request was issued were removed. It seems like the plan for chapters uploaded after the creation of this snapshot is to still be removed, probably to avoid further DMCAs.

Q: Can we still upload new chapters to titles that were affected by the DMCA? / What about reuploading removed chapters?​

While this is just my speculation as an official statement has yet to be made, I would strongly discourage doing so. Unless publishers suddenly have a change of mind, this would just be asking for more trouble and DMCA takedown requests for Mangadex. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if uploads to affected titles get deleted precautionary. This has also been the case for previous DMCAs (although those were on a completely different scale and applied to English chapters only...).
TLDR: No and no, please and thank you.

Q: Why is there no official announcement?​

There is (at least somewhat)! See the official FAQ.
I wouldn't be making this one if there was. They'll make one when/if they can share more details. I imagine getting flooded with DMCAs isn't the most comfortable situation to be in, let's give them some time. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure they're all aware of the situation, so there's no need to reach out to individual staff members...
That being said, I'm sure they are just as unhappy with the situation as you are, so there's no need to vent your frustration at staff. Keep in mind Mangadex is being run by unpaid volunteers...

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With that, I think I got the most important bits covered. I might or might not update this, depending on how this whole mess unfolds.
Looks like there are rough times ahead, so let's hope for the best for all of us and the site...
Seems like the moral of the story was to read Manhua all along, didn't think I'd ever say that

Understood thank you for letting me know what's going on. With me being gone half a yeah go various reasons I came back to pretty much nothing I read... Well.... Readable

 

[Tony_Mushah]

Bro, this thread is still active !!?

 

[Manko-sensei]

Bro, this thread is still active !!?

That K guy necroed it last week, you could say it was inevitable (another tantrum I mean).

 

[NightmareOkami]

Mind telling me some of them?

Google is your friend so are apps

 

[AnonymousContributor]

Can't wait for the Manga Instrumentality Project where all the manga turns into slop behind a paywall while it all goes tumbling down tumbling down tumbling dooooown

 

[TGN]

Since this thread is on life support again, might as well do some graphing.

Using Google Trends, we can get data on the popularity of Mangadex. I picked May 25 as a starting point, a fair bit after the spike in searches due to the DMCA, and on a Sunday. I recorded a data point every week after, as Sundays are where the most searches end up. Here's a linear regression of the data:

Where t is weeks since May 25, and P(t) is popularity in terms of percent of max.

Extrapolating from this trend, Mangadex will reach half its popularity in only 12 weeks from now (t = 28), and will completely die in 40 weeks. Of course, a linear regression is dumb; something more accurate is an exponential regression:


Which looks nearly identical to the linear regression, so I won't show it. It's defined by P(t) = 98.92(0.98)^t. Here's the extrapolation:

It predicts that Mangadex will reach half popularity in around 17 weeks, and in a year from now will be at quarter popularity.



Fun! Well, hopefully something happens to stop it. Half popularity is kinda fine though, since that's still about as popular as the site was in late 2022 (keep the feds off our backs). This took longer than I thought it would, so I'm not bothering to do a quadratic regression