MangaDex is trying to profit off of piracy.
Uhm, no. They're not.
They're trying to profit from
NamiComi, which is a self-publishing platform like LINE Webtoon. Hell, if anything, they're probably using profits from running NamiComi to help offset the operating costs of MD.
Running MD is like dumping money into a black hole. It has no returns. Do you really think maintaining an image server, database, and bandwidth for something as big as MD is easy or cheap? If you happen to know otherwise, then I'd love to see the ledger you got.
Don't say that I'm wrong.
Prove me wrong.
The only reason why MD continues to exist is because the people that run the site have always supported scanslation as a hobby - not as a means to make money.
Granted, in the past they pretty much allowed scanslators to do whatever they wanted, but only because they didn't want to inhibit anyone at all from doing scanslation. In fact, the more groups providing their own translations on a single title, the better, because that meant that readers would be able to choose between which translation they liked better.
They only had to enact rules curbing profiteering off of scanslation because it was starting to seriously effect the community as a whole. Too many groups were being toxic about it because they wanted to monopolize titles so they could get people to come onto their ad-driven websites and pay for chapters kept behind paywalls.
That, and it also helps avoid troublesome attention from publishers. The only thing a publisher hates more than piracy is outright bootlegging. Paywalling scanslations counts as bootlegging. And a publisher will always prioritize going after the people that are trying to turn a profit on intellectual property they have no legal right to.
Also, by registering as a company in the UK, they're subject to the UK's somewhat more liberal copyright laws as opposed to the USA's incredibly draconian laws. The site won't get hit with another DMCA strike because DMCA is a US copyright law, and therefore not truly enforceable in the UK. Copyright claims can still be made, they just have to go through the UK's legal system instead of the USA's.
(And this is also why we had that rash of titles being taken down due to certain portrayals of young people - it goes against the UK's obscenity laws. Though the staff have walked back on this a bit, limiting themselves only to titles that actually get reported for violating these laws instead of actively seeking them out and removing them. The legal fig leaf here is that the process of uploading new titles is more or less automated, so the legal obligation to act can only be enforced if the staff are directly made aware of a title that violates these laws.)
Anyhow, the only reason why MD got hit with such a huge DMCA strike last year was because a group of publishers saw an opportunity to do a massive, coordinated legal attack on an "the biggest aggregator site" on the internet. Because, just like buying products at a wholesale shopping club, legal fees are cheaper when you're doing it on a bulk rate.
And it was not
just to hit MD. They also wanted to remove MD as a means for for-profit scanslators to draw people onto their own websites where they could make money on ad revenue and paywalls, with promises of "early releases", "better quality scans", and "exclusive chapters".
So yeah. It's not hypocritical because they absolutely don't make money off of MD. And by eliminating this behavior of profiteering by scanslators, they're returning things to a more "normal" state.
Most importantly of all is that we're already starting to see the benefits. Without groups like Tuski no Fansub, Asmodeus Scans, and Bega Scanslations being able to lean on others to stay off their "turf", more altruistic scanslators can take over on titles like this one.
But hey, you wanna go turn your money over to those guys? Be my guest. I'd rather be spending mine on getting my truck fixed instead of some chucklefuck who just fed a manga into a large language model AI and copy-pasta'd the "translation" with barely more than a quick proofreading.
