Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[Jadeite_McSwag]

Well it's been a good run gang

 

[Angry_Panda]

IF it's still in the database that the original uploaders be given a chance (even if the missing chaps aren't visible to reader) to recover their uploads within maybe a certain timeframe or maybe in private...

Pretty sure this would violate the terms of the DMCA. (Note - not a lawyer.)

 

[Shot8manga]

Man, the amount of people i've seen excusing piracy and saying that reading manga should be free to read completely after this is kinda yucky to me. I agree that having them online helps some authors, but at the same time, you're kinda being entitled to consuming free books and not supporting anything. I always support the official release, but obviously, a lot of them that were hit do not have an official release. But legally, it's theirs. It's definitely a very grey area, and one that is hard to discuss. Scanlations are what made manga popular in the US at first, after all.


If I were an artist and hundreds of my hours were put online for free i'd be very upset, though.

You have a point and the same time sound a bit hypocritical.

Analogously, what do you think of retro game emulation? Or consuming pirated content in general. If i were to demean manga piracy in general I'll be sure my moral standing are up to all aspects of contents.

This is not an attack your personal belief, I too hate entitled manga reader especially those unable to appreciate free stuff.

 

[Ainkrip]

User friendly? That's not what you should be worried about.

You should be worried about what's scanlator-friendly. That's the main reason MangaDex is what it is. Online manga is anything, everything because of scanlators. Mangadex is the only place for us currently.

But the community always adapts. I have a feeling scanlators will learn how to fracture their work into "stuff that's safe to upload to MD" and "stuff that's safe to upload to another website", a website that will probably arise due to this very situation.

No you just need to host mangadex in a country that doesn’t care about dmca requests. Like China, Russia, Moldova and many others.

 

[RonBWL]

I am not talking about accepting predatory practices that the Japanese publishers use on the digital reading services, but that definitely does not help. I am talking about several comments online that i've seen saying that manga should be free to read - the type of people that don't support any type of release because they're entitled. I know manga can be expensive outside of the US, which is why I do think it helps to have this stuff online.

This is exactly why I think it's hard to talk about, because both parties are in the wrong. It honestly cannot be summed up in a short thread. It's a complex topic definitely suited for a long video.

The problem with this line of thinking is pretty much the same with everything entertainment-related: You're punishing people that actually support AND buy your stuff just because a loud group of people act entitled. In the end, you lose genuine customers, the loud group of people are not going to pay anyway, and it creates an endless loop of piracy that will never ever go away.

 

[pip25]

I am honestly flabbergasted that

• MD is in the legal position that it must comply with such sweeping takedowns
• The publishers waited this long to nuke MD, if they are

Further confusing me is the fact that they've been phasing out MD@Home with the rationale that individual contributors were more susceptible to takedowns than they are, yet now they are bowing to the takedowns themselves.

Not sure what to make of all this.

 

[Ainkrip]

Those sites do exist. They're absolutely horrible, and I can't emphasize that enough.

The usability of Mangadex is entirely because they aren't those kinds of websites. You can't usually have one trait without the other. The better a website is for the community, scanlators, the fandom, and ultimately for the success and profit of popular series as a whole, the more likely it is to have to abide by DMCA requests because they tend to offer under more legitimate circumstances.

No you just give the code and the whole website architecture to other people and then they can host a new website in another country that doesn’t care about DMCA requests.

 

[Unregistered_Hypercam]

Doing catalogue of all the series im reading and which ones got nuked.
So far the following got nuked:
Natsume Arata no Kekkon (only the most recent chapter is left)
Dragon Yashinatte Kudasai
Furitsumore Kodoku na Shi yo
Dai Dark
I Am A Hero
Dress Up Darling

So far the rest of the series I’m reading or have read either have official channels I can read them through or the scan groups have private channels. This sucks but the publishers are technically in the right.

 

[T-sama]

I am honestly flabbergasted that

• MD is in the legal position that it must comply with such sweeping takedowns

My guess? Since the site works by donations it has to be more on the legal side and such, someone real name is attached to everything paid, so they can't just be scummy about it.

• The publishers waited this long to nuke MD, if they are

I have a suspicion on that, more and more series get published in the west through official apps, so I wouldn’t be surprised if publishers were waiting to do big dmca on multiple sites to try cut a lot of the piracy, forcing people to use their apps.

Facts are this might not be your usual dmca, times are changing, we can't assume it's just a repeat of what happened before.

Also, Mangadex is probably one of the few that will get fucked cause many sites are scummy and completely ignore dmca, since they're hosting in countries were they can't get caught, so mangadex and possibly Dynasty getting fucked in the long run is laughably easy compared to other sites

Further confusing me is the fact that they've been phasing out MD@Home with the rationale that individual contributors were more susceptible to takedowns than they are, yet now they are bowing to the takedowns themselves.

Not sure what to make of all this.

Takedown protections here have always been a illusion, if mangadex mods don't comply they get sued.

We're in a house of cards and the wind is blowing, perhaps scummy sites had the right idea all along lol

 

[Bentoki]

MTL has come a long way the past couple of years, especially with the help of AI. Both LLM like chatgpt and tools like panel cleaner for OCR have come a long way. It's completely different from the days when you had to use like scanlate.io.

I'm genuinely considering learning programming for python or something to make a program that combines some of these to make a psd that only needs to be edited before it can be released. Something similar to ichigoreader or cotrans, only that instead of making a page for reading, it makes a basis for scanlating. Honestly I think it's weird that no one hasn't made it already, though my bet is that someone has but doesn't have it public. Like how hard could it be, just feed the raws to manga ocr, let it clean the parts that can be cleaned like in panel cleaner and use AI generative fill (llama or whatever) on that which can't be cleaned, make a complete chapter script like with panel cleaner (probably needs to go manually over like in panel cleaner though), run the script through chatgpt in a table form so you keep the line consistency, and then just put them where the original lines were and save it as a psd to finish. It sounds ridiculously simple honestly.

Though considering how much I struggle with just installing stuff in the terminal, this might be a bit of a hurdle for me I guess.

Please stop being retarded, you have no idea what you are talking about and MTL is nowhere near serviceable.

 

[Mazki72]

I've already started to change sites, as a reminder you should write down which chapter you are on a notepad so that when you want to go back to read a series that you had left for a while you find that most of the chapters have been deleted, as it just happened to me.

this site is over, but it was useful while it lasted.

 

[T-sama]

notepad

Spreadsheets are superior

 

[Viper4lyfe]

Rather than combatting piracy, it encourages it.

At least MangaDex requires people to do their own translation work. Other sites will host both volunteer translated version (likely stolen from the group's website), AND the officially licensed and published versions (obviously stolen from the official site).

Instead of working against MD, they should use it as a way to find new talent to hire professionally. It'd be cool of MD's forums had a section only visible to publishers looking to hire, and members of scanlation groups. (While I'm sure there's plenty of scanlators that do this purely as a hobby and won't leave their main job to join a publisher's translation team... I bet there's many others that would LOVE to do this as their job.)

 

[pip25]

Takedown protections here have always been a illusion, if mangadex mods don't comply they get sued.

We're in a house of cards and the wind is blowing, perhaps scummy sites had the right idea all along lol

Then it was an illusion shared by the very devs of MD, since they were the ones who told me this a year or so ago (on Discord). Hence my confusion.

 

[NightmareOkami]

All of Zombie 100 ~Zombie ni Naru Made ni Shitai 100 no Koto~ got nuked
Shuumatsu no Harem: Fantasia completely nuked

 

[Diraldir]

The problem with this line of thinking is pretty much the same with everything entertainment-related: You're punishing people that actually support AND buy your stuff just because a loud group of people act entitled. In the end, you lose genuine customers, the loud group of people are not going to pay anyway, and it creates an endless loop of piracy that will never ever go away.

Ya know what, I agree with that. I'm just a bit conflicted with my inner self.

 

[Bentoki]

Still, a bit more communication would be nice.

Quite a few of our series were hit that weren't licensed or anything, the page itself is just blank and you can still upload chapters to do it, we didn't get any notification or anything saying that a chapter was removed due to a takedown request. It would be nice to know that you just aren't allowed to upload your shit to the website or something, even if it's not public.

 

[T-sama]

Then it was an illusion shared by the very devs of MD, since they were the ones who told me this a year or so ago (on Discord). Hence my confusion.

The facts are that compared to vast majority of manga sites, Mangadex and Dynasty Scans are seemingly very over the table in how they operate, no ads and such, they depend of donations, no profits.

Because of that I'm pretty sure not only they're hosted in countries were they can have legal repercussions, but someone real name is probably attached to most things, possibly multiple mods real names really.

Result? They  have to comply with dmca, Mangadex and Dynasty Scans always portrayed themselves as the good guys cause they respect authors and publishers by obeying dmca.

No matter what any of us do somehing like this was inevitable because they simply can't ignore dmca, they simply never expected one of this magnitude.

Honestly, there's a reason why scummy sites ignore dmca, because they host in places were they won't have legal repercussions.

Turns out playing by then rules and trying to be the "good guy" just means you're a easy target.

Especially when people get complacent and lazy, assuming a situation like this would never happen.

 

[Syapaaye]

So we can assume the Japanese publishers ordered the hit, right? Even to series that they don't seem to plan to officially translate to English. I wonder, is there a specific reason why they're only targeting the English translations while leaving the other languages up? I mean, I can imagine why, but still seems pretty arbitrary.

 

[T-sama]

So we can assume the Japanese publishers ordered the hit, right? Even to series that they don't seem to plan to officially translate to English. I wonder, is there a specific reason why they're only targeting the English translations while leaving the other languages up? I mean, I can imagine why, but still seems pretty arbitrary.

Someone listed all the publishers involved, it looks like it's less a "we plan on licensing these mangas" and more of a "we know you have these mangas, remove them immediately".

For them it's not arbitrary cause they're against piracy out of principle, even if we never see official translation.

Pretty sure someone mentioned baka tsuki also got hit by dmca recently, I think they upload just novels, so this is possibly not a isolated incident, mangadex is just a easy target.