Should mangadex have finished releases in the internet archive?

[Gudachiz]

In this current trend where companies region lock(looking at you K-Manga) and other companies over charge for the manga they have, all for reading them online, wouldn't it be a good idea to use the internet archive to have finished releases uploaded here and then in the internet archive? Majority of these are cleaned and not rips from official publishers anyway...
So i was thinking wouldn't it be nice to have it placed in the internet archive as a zip file? thi is just an idea to avoid not preserving them btw, we all know how much manga isn't ever getting an english translation and those that do either have theirs lost in the deep corners of the net or the sites that host them are flagged down eventually, which is a big waste

 

[MrIncognito]

I think the internet archive is in enough hot water already

 

[RogueKitsune]

In this current trend where companies region lock(looking at you K-Manga) and other companies over charge for the manga they have, all for reading them online, wouldn't it be a good idea to use the internet archive to have finished releases uploaded here and then in the internet archive? Majority of these are cleaned and not rips from official publishers anyway...
So i was thinking wouldn't it be nice to have it placed in the internet archive as a zip file? thi is just an idea to avoid not preserving them btw, we all know how much manga isn't ever getting an english translation and those that do either have theirs lost in the deep corners of the net or the sites that host them are flagged down eventually, which is a big waste

I think you might have a misunderstanding on how the Internet archive deals with copyrighted content.

 

[Gudachiz]

I think you might have a misunderstanding on how the Internet archive deals with copyrighted content.

I guess, tho i personally meant those that went under the radar for a long time and already had groups cleaning them long before the official publishers came in.
i understand there's a lawsuit currently filed against the internet archive for releasing a couple books online for educational purposes and their publishers went after them for it so this realy won't fly in that case, but my idea more or less applies to those whose sites aren't really liked due to their bad rep(again looking at you K-manga) and will more than likely go under due to reasons like region locking... for a manga.. or cases where the online publisher actually closes down(print wise, i do think that's an entirely different market anyway, unlike most things manga is still bought in print for collection purposes and its still popular as print media, the only hard part is availability tbh)

 

[GipoScribantino]

This whole region lock is funny.
Scanlations were born out of "unlocking" works that otherwise would not leave Japan (or whatever other country); now you have scanlators "dropping" works released behind a region locked service simply because they happen to have the same language.
I understand why they would stop working on those from a legal point of view, but it's ironic nonetheless when they give "dropped because officially licensed" as the reason and then the official release can be perused only if you live in the USA.

 

[Gudachiz]

This whole region lock is funny.
Scanlations were born out of "unlocking" works that otherwise would not leave Japan (or whatever other country); now you have scanlators "dropping" works released behind a region locked service simply because they happen to have the same language.
I understand why they would stop working on those from a legal point of view, but it's ironic nonetheless when they give "dropped because officially licensed" as the reason and then the official release can be perused only if you live in the USA.

yup that's the most annoying part of it all and forget even getting the said manga in your local book stores, believe me i tried, the mangas aren't there and its regardless of the country you're in, anywhere outside of the USA at this point is basically blocked from getting a big variety because of said region locks, scanlators who want to continue either don't risk it or use really obscure sites if they even dare to take officially licensed manga and at times its better and more accurate

 

[MrDDA]

yup that's the most annoying part of it all and forget even getting the said manga in your local book stores, believe me i tried, the mangas aren't there and its regardless of the country you're in, anywhere outside of the USA at this point is basically blocked from getting a big variety because of said region locks, scanlators who want to continue either don't risk it or use really obscure sites if they even dare to take officially licensed manga and at times its better and more accurate

Yeah k manga fucked up a lot of the scanlation scene and it's so dumb that its region locked in the first place. Like, it doesn't make sense from a profit pov that you close off European, aus, and other regions.

One big example of K manga fucking everything up is Blue Period. It's crazy to think that a highly rated and popular manga with a recent anime can't even get a free English translation anywhere for it's most recent chapters. The scanlation scene for Blue Period is essentially dead because K manga discouraged scanlators.

Funnily enough Witch Hat Atelier, a manga I thought to be less popular than Blue Period also got licensed by K manga. But somehow you can find a free English translation the same hour a new chapter drops.

 

[ieatass69]

Like, it doesn't make sense from a profit pov that you close off European, aus, and other regions.

IIRC any kind of region locking always comes down to either licensing or law compliance. The former in this case. It does (and has to) make sense from a profit PoV (I mean companies are always driven by big $). I'm not very versed about licensing stuff but I suppose the estimated cost to license things outside of US must be higher than the estimated profit from people buying subscriptions and such.

 

[Gudachiz]

Yeah k manga fucked up a lot of the scanlation scene and it's so dumb that its region locked in the first place. Like, it doesn't make sense from a profit pov that you close off European, aus, and other regions.

One big example of K manga fucking everything up is Blue Period. It's crazy to think that a highly rated and popular manga with a recent anime can't even get a free English translation anywhere for it's most recent chapters. The scanlation scene for Blue Period is essentially dead because K manga discouraged scanlators.

Funnily enough Witch Hat Atelier, a manga I thought to be less popular than Blue Period also got licensed by K manga. But somehow you can find a free English translation the same hour a new chapter drops.

there are a few titles that slip through the cracks via bato, i think slime is one, tho in slime's case there's more than enough people willing to get it one way or the other.

I personally think that K manga's bound to get out of business eventually, their model isn't viable and i hear their monetization for manga chapters is dogshit, if this is gonna be the trend anyway i really hope there's gonna be a defacto app available on pc and mobile the way steam is with region adjusted pricing, right now their main focus is the US audience which makes no sense still,
of course some of the elitists who live there(i know some) think that its all good and you should still go the legal route because it doesn't affect them, its thinking like that that made manga unavailable in the first place.
hopefully we get more groups in the future willing to risk it, I would personally like to take up the mantle but the group i co-own is already filled with backlogs of chapters we still need to catch up on and its hard to get people to move
I'm personally willing to do it tho as long as someone helps me out looking for capable members who are also willing to take on serialized work, there's a couple manga i really wnat to read but can't because a company serialized them or the pricing is horrible, like if i'm gonna pay for a subscription service for a manga, I'd at least want it to be good and something I wouldn't get heaps to. problem is we don't get that, heck this current model still doesn't have the big brain ideas like
"we're gonna be the defacto to-go-to for manga site/app, by providing you with the option to read the manga as printed media if you wanted then we mail it to you, using any payment method you want, like if you want cash on delivery, online banking etc and you can also have the option to go on the sub model"
there are so many ways they can rake in profits properly but they don't do it for whatever reason when the answer is right there in front of you, it just takes a little more investment

 

[Gudachiz]

IIRC any kind of region locking always comes down to either licensing or law compliance. The former in this case. It does (and has to) make sense from a profit PoV (I mean companies are always driven by big $). I'm not very versed about licensing stuff but I suppose the estimated cost to license things outside of US must be higher than the estimated profit from people buying subscriptions and such.

some countries have lower costs, if you license primarily to the western world sure but licensing generally to parts of asia will probably not cost much given how much the companies would rake in profits should they actually prioritize their customers, I know it's just a pain to do since you do need a bit more time but given how steam has done it with their model they can probably just mimick that and go digital only then add physical volume purchases later with the shipping of course going to the customer as a convenience fee, that would still make it a lot cheaper than requesting your local book store to order a specific manga and have it delivered to you

 

[ieatass69]

licensing generally to parts of asia will probably not cost much

Now that I think about it, if licensing to certain asian regions is not as expensive, then they are in direct competition with the native localizers who also bought license for cheap, so it's probably not worth it either. I mean why should I buy subscription from somewhere at a likely higher price when I can support translators from my own country and read in my own language. Lower the price too much to compete with the locals and you start getting complain from people who have to pay more, and that's another mess to deal with.
All in all it's just my speculation, I don't work in any legal position that has anything to do with licensing after all. But I highly doubt corps just ignore free cash on the table if the only thing keeping them from it is just a magic button that unlocks distribution to all regions.
Or maybe they just couldn't get JP to say yes. That might very well be true considering how much JP companies like to keep their products inside their country.

 

[Lustrist]

it would be a legal clusterfuck. i just save these comment sections to the internet archive

 

[Zblurth]

Region locking absolutely suck and is so stupid in the age of VPN, but on a profit and legal sense it make... sense, why would you licence something in a country that does not share the same official languages as your publication, also tax problem and a whole lot of bureaucracy to get a sliver of a niche.


let me be clear I HATE regions locking but sadly it does make sense in our economy, and it is probably not even the K manga and other than want to enforce it (as it make the potential costumer well, non costumer) but they need to do that to just maintain the licence, (like a steam game posting their game on a torrent site for some reason well Valve can just remove them from steam if they do that)
Now if those official publisher could even get 50% of the quality of fucking mangadex as far as reading go maybe I would consider paying them, so fucking site a blocking fullscreen reading, none of them support double page layout... you know... the fucking format of the genre, some censors the thing, and worth of all you need to pay with stupid mobile game coins so you will always spend more than necessary. I am not sorry but if that is the quality of their service regions locking is their last problem as I WILL go out of my way to read and support the author in other way than them

 

[elemhunter]

Your best bet for archiving efforts would be Libgen/Anna's Archive (the latter of which is making a big effort to preserve comics as well). When Batoto went down, a lot of manga in their original quality was lost. To this day, there's still quite a lot that hasn't been reuploaded to MD yet. Ideally, MD staff would let Anna's Archive mirror everything.