Site Update - 14th of May 2025

[Tscheddov]

It’s true, you can test it yourself by trying to upload something to any series. They haven’t appeared to change their content policy though. It appears they might try to pass blame onto scannies and just say that “people agreed that they had permission to upload it so it isn’t our fault lol”

i am afraid that is what its means. who would now still be willing to upload something here?


Did i miss something on other platforms or is there still no official Statement on this matter from MD ?

other than the few replies from Mods on the first pages of this thread (which btw was about a site update and not the purge)


i think they should address this whole issue properly

I really want to know who sent this DMCA and on whoms behalf.

 

[MtWill]

This just sounds like gating out content in a free to play gacha game unless you shell out per node so you're left with only being able to play under half a story chapter. If it's free you don't gate content.

What they'd have to do is make it free but with ads on sidebars, maybe a moving banner on the home page or manga page, and an ad at the start, end, and middle of a chapter (you can't have tons of them as then you end up like those horrible webtoon scan sites). If not that, then you make it a subscription service but you can't make it overly expensive like streaming sites or Marvel/DC's monthly sub. Publishers cannot be trusted to do either in a good way.

I mean, such a system could also include what Wuxiaworld adopted, which was to (1) keep the first n chapters free, (2) use the Wait-To-Unlock strategy (which meant each series could be unlocked daily and permanently) for the remaining locked chapters, (3) give free daily keys for doing basically anything (whether it be just logging in, or reading chapters - stuff you already came on the website to do), and (4) implement this alongside existing subscription and buy-to-unlock methods.

On top of this, if such a system then adds the normal manga publisher strategy of keeping the most recent 3 - 10 chapters unlocked (depending on series), allows fans to provide translations in partnership with the author for series which lacks funding for official translations (this would also kill trashy, moneygrab scans), and manages to get multiple big-name authors and publishers to sign on, then I'd say it would be viable. Even better, perhaps allow translations between all languages for more market penetration and for more choice and variety given to people. Give the consumers more options, and make the anime, manga and light novels more accessible.

Here's the thing: there's no way that these corpos would ever just let someone create a service with some ads or a cheap subscription, since the revenue would be relatively low - they're the most short-sighted mofos out there, and are only concerned with the profits in this very quarter, rather than properly building long-term customer loyalty and a reputation like Steam. I say - if such a system works fine for Wuxiaworld, then surely it would be OK to at least try it for a new Steam-like manga platform.

I will end with a disclaimer though: I'm not any professional, so who knows if this would even work?

 

[RonBWL]

On top of this, if such a system then adds the normal manga publisher strategy of keeping the most recent 3 - 10 chapters unlocked (depending on series), allows fans to provide translations in partnership with the author for series which lacks funding for official translations (this would also kill trashy, moneygrab scans), and manages to get multiple big-name authors and publishers to sign on, then I'd say it would be viable. Even better, perhaps allow translations between all languages for more market penetration and for more choice and variety given to people. Give the consumers more options, and make the anime, manga and light novels more accessible.

Lemme just say that China is actually smart about this compared to Japan/Korea - at one point, publisher would simply reach out to groups doing popular series, offer them like 20 bucks per chapter in exchange for a 3 days delay. Boom, they get a high quality "official" version for almost nothing, the fan translation is up as usual (albeit with a delay to give people time to go read / unlock on onfficial website), and everyone's happy.

 

[MtWill]

i am afraid that is what its means. who would now still be willing to upload something here?


Did i miss something on other platforms or is there still no official Statement on this matter from MD ?

other than the few replies from Mods on the first pages of this thread (which btw was about a site update and not the purge)


i think they should address this whole issue properly

I really want to know who sent this DMCA and on whoms behalf.

I'm pretty sure that this very announcement (see below - relevant section is bolded, and specific wording is underlined) about the Site Update does mention the checkbox, which was probably planned both in response to profiteering on the website and also as a pre-emptive measure before the DMCAs struck, which they did just a day later. As for whether the MangaDex team would throw any uploaders under the bus is probably up for debate (although I'd tentatively trust the MD team, given their service for all these years).

Hi everyone! We're rolling out two updates today: one highly requested enhancement and one important rules clarification.

...

To ensure fair access for readers and sustainable practices for translation groups, we have updated our rules on excessive profiteering to include external sites with pay-walled content and hosting of infringing material:
Groups may not promote platforms that permanently lock translated works behind a paywall or manipulate release schedules to encourage paid access.

However, early-access previews—such as chapters made available in exchange for donations or reader requests—are permitted only if all content is released freely after a consistent delay.

Any group that hosts on its own website or any other external site official releases or chapters belonging to other groups without explicit permission and proper credit is prohibited from uploading any content to MangaDex.

We have been enforcing these standards informally for some time, but growing misuse and a surge in user reports have prompted us to codify these policies.

This update ensures we continue to enforce our rules consistently and fairly, with no exceptions. MangaDex’s mission remains the same: to be a free and open platform that still allows groups to receive community support.

Anyways, I heard through the grapevine (note that this info appears to be speculation) that it was Kakao Entertainment banding together with other publishers to push a massive DMCA strike across the entire mangasphere.

I'd be inclined to agree: a lot of piracy sites have gone down in past months, and Reaper Scans (just 5 days ago) received a DMCA Cease and Desist from Kakao (check Reaper's website: their notice on the takedown is the first and only thing you can see).

 

[skimer]

i am afraid that is what its means. who would now still be willing to upload something here?


Did i miss something on other platforms or is there still no official Statement on this matter from MD ?

other than the few replies from Mods on the first pages of this thread (which btw was about a site update and not the purge)


i think they should address this whole issue properly

I really want to know who sent this DMCA and on whoms behalf.

https://forums.mangadex.org/threads/site-update-14th-of-may-2025.2274813/post-26279316

This post here provides a link with an answer to your question about who sent DMCA.

 

[llde]

Then you're completely disregarding facts. Have you noticed that people are boycotting K-manga because they think it's too expensive, and that people expect at most to pay $2 a month for a subscription like on viz or mangaplus, even though shueisha and viz are obviously losing money on having such a low price? You can make excuses all you want, but the issue these days are not a service problem, it's that people don't want to pay and basically expect to get manga for free.

Service problem and price problem is a false dichotomy. A price problem CAN BE a Service problem too. This is evident when prices are fixed at an high price. For example the chapter unlock model is common on japanese manga apps too, but their prices, both for this model and for paperback volumes, are way lower then the western prices, even if we factor the cost of living and median revenues differences.
Piracy in games reduced a lot when service improved (with increased Steam reach and the creation of GoG), and another lot got reduced when pricing become way more fair then before, with regional pricing.
Cost is, in more then one way, TIED to service. Granted there are entitled people that make of not paying a mission, however they are the minority.
Also KManga IS a service problem, at least for everyone who is outside USA, considering they decided to limit there their services. For what reason I cannot say considering they should have the right to distribution of the English release, but shouldn't be bound by territory

 

[MtWill]

Lemme just say that China is actually smart about this compared to Japan/Korea - at one point, publisher would simply reach out to groups doing popular series, offer them like 20 bucks per chapter in exchange for a 3 days delay. Boom, they get a high quality "official" version for almost nothing, the fan translation is up as usual (albeit with a delay to give people time to go read / unlock on onfficial website), and everyone's happy.

That's what I'm saying. Japanese and Korean companies are all being run by seniors - which isn't a bad thing, but most of these seniors haven't done long-term planning for even a day in their life, and think that what they're doing is supposedly sticking to "tradition". In reality, this is practically stagnation.

Even if people rag on Chinese manhua and light novels for being low-quality, at least the industry is full of people who know a good opportunity when they see one. The system you just mentioned sounds basically like Naver WEBTOON's premium chap system, but even better

 

[KatoShuu]

which one was removed ?

as a mod said earlier here: theres blood in the water now.
Fakku Irodori J18 are gonna give it a shot now as well.

https://mangadex.org/title/bd70d83b-096c-4c5e-8790-771e8eaad6ed/loli-baba-okaa-san-wa-oshi-ni-yowai
My bad, it was already gone before this incident

 

[xEternalSoul]

Lemme just say that China is actually smart about this compared to Japan/Korea - at one point, publisher would simply reach out to groups doing popular series, offer them like 20 bucks per chapter in exchange for a 3 days delay. Boom, they get a high quality "official" version for almost nothing, the fan translation is up as usual (albeit with a delay to give people time to go read / unlock on onfficial website), and everyone's happy.

To be fair, what Kakao and the other JP publishers are doing now is basically what Qidian did long long ago. However, repeated failures to enforce fan translations made them realize that it would be better to just get fan translators on their payroll to work on their series. This is basically how the new Wuxiaworld and Webnovel came about. Looks like other corporations just didn't get the memo.

 

[MavericMC]

Almost all of the mangas I read have been nuked, screw this site I'm out.
Death to the DMCA.

 

[volodyuka]

It just seems strange to me to DMCA chapters of manga that never had an official English translation to begin with, there's no merit in it. I was thinking it might be automatic AI mass DMCA actions that mixed things up in the process.

well, all of you are english readers (I am too read mostly in english), but MD had chapters translated to many-many-many more languages, like russian for example. country which has very small market for manga, has no or very little stuff translated officially to russian online and mostly stuff is licenced and translated for official release in physical form, and for it it needs to be "a big thing", like biggest of shounens like naruto, bleach, one peace, OPM, chainsow man, some big isekais, very little of popular slice of life and generally speaking it's hardly even a one percent of all the manga that exists.

like if I would like to read "Houkago Teibou Nisshi" I must go to fan scanlaters as there is 0 chance of it being officially licensed and translated to russian (well it was translated as far it was in english thanks to enthusiasm of a scanlater group which done it for free and quite well). and here is the thing, yes shueisha operates in russia, at least lets us read new chapters in english, but there is no way to make in app purchases at all, and app lets you read manga in full once. other services either does not operate at all, or you cannot pay for them which is honestly the same thing. and you are kind of out of options to go straight to pirate cites. and you will still miss on a lot of manga that will never be translated to english. and was translated only because of the enthusiasts. and through that might of even had a chance to become official.

and yeah, all the chapters russian scanlaters are gone now too. like it's a very small niche scene here. it has zero to none exposure. licensers only license stuff if there is a big audience for it and they see that audience. it's not just english, it's all languages and a really wide net being tossed to "combat piracy" . it's not just counter productive, it is kind of stupid. in all levels. and I think it was done meaningfully, that is MO of jap/korean publishers.

 

[Tscheddov]

I'm pretty sure that this very announcement (see below - relevant section is bolded, and specific wording is underlined) about the Site Update does mention the checkbox, which was probably planned both in response to profiteering on the website and also as a pre-emptive measure before the DMCAs struck, which they did just a day later. As for whether the MangaDex team would throw any uploaders under the bus is probably up for debate (although I'd tentatively trust the MD team, given their service for all these years).



Anyways, I heard through the grapevine (note that this info appears to be speculation) that it was Kakao Entertainment banding together with other publishers to push a massive DMCA strike across the entire mangasphere.

I'd be inclined to agree: a lot of piracy sites have gone down in past months, and Reaper Scans (just 5 days ago) received a DMCA Cease and Desist from Kakao (check Reaper's website: their notice on the takedown is the first and only thing you can see).

i dont think thats it. it says:

Any group that hosts on its own website or any other external site official releases or chapters belonging to other groups without explicit permission and proper credit is prohibited from uploading any content to MangaDex.


for me this reads as if scangrup A hosts an own sinte and uploads chapters from scangroup B without scnagroup Bs persmisson and credit is not allowed to upload here.

the checkbox text clearly says rightsholder/ license holder / author

 

[Tscheddov]

https://forums.mangadex.org/threads/site-update-14th-of-may-2025.2274813/post-26279316

This post here provides a link with an answer to your question about who sent DMCA.

these are dmca's to google to remove certain results from the google search. this ain't
the DMCA that MD got.

comeso is a letterbox company of questionable reputation in germany.
if you try to find where they are you only find shared wroking spaces and abonend office buildings. i bet if i went and looked for them on the given address on the website i'd find nothing.

these cowards once boasted about taking down a naruto wiki because they had screenshots of the anime for charachter visualization

EDIT: their website seems to be offline as of now.
the registered business address is Ottobrunner Str. 28 82008 Unterhaching Germany
The managing director is a man named Jan-Ole Wilkens.
these informations are available to the public
https://www.northdata.de/comeso GmbH, Unterhaching/Amtsgericht München HRB 233818

 

[llde]

That's what I'm saying. Japanese and Korean companies are all being run by seniors - which isn't a bad thing, but most of these seniors haven't done long-term planning for even a day in their life, and think that what they're doing is supposedly sticking to "tradition". In reality, this is practically stagnation.

Putting people in charge by seniority instead of by expertise caused a lot of serious disasters. The issue isn't only lack of long term planning, is lacking of knowledge of the mediums their company is supposed to use.
Like that time Iranian internet providers decided the best way to implemented a government ban on porn sites was to override the routing tables (BGP poisioning, that handle the inter Autonomous systems routings). , and a lot of unrelated sites got unavailable for half of the world.
Alas the "western world" only recently started to migrated from this system to a more properly handled system. more in europe then in the US.

 

[brndndss]

and now to spend my day reading drama about manga instead of .. the manga

 

[volodyuka]

and now to spend my day reading drama about manga instead of .. the manga

well if things continue it might became an only thing to read

 

[Ground]

these are dmca's to google to remove certain results from the google search. this ain't
the DMCA that MD got.

comeso is a letterbox company of questionable reputation in germany.
if you try to find where they are you only find shared wroking spaces and abonend office buildings. i bet if i went and looked for them on the given address on the website i'd find nothing.

these cowards once boasted about taking down a naruto wiki because they had screenshots of the anime for charachter visualization

EDIT: their website seems to be offline as of now.
the registered business address is Ottobrunner Str. 28 82008 Unterhaching Germany
The managing director is a man named Jan-Ole Wilkens.
these informations are available to the public
https://www.northdata.de/comeso GmbH, Unterhaching/Amtsgericht München HRB 233818

That's what I'm confused when people post that link. That Lumendatabase query is looking for the term Mangadex not recipient name, the result for that includes Google as recipient where they want link to pirated contents removed from their search result. To look up by recipient name this is what you should use: https://lumendatabase.org/faceted_search?recipient_name=Mangadex and it yield no result. While I understand not all will be published, but for a scale this big why there's really nothing.

 

[dmy96]

Copy pasting what i read on reddit regarding the additional clause when a chapter is uploaded. Is this seriously the case?

Someone already confirmed that chapters can still be uploaded w/o any additional steps. But if there were any DMCA issues, the series uploader will be fully accountable.

So, if things were blown out of proportion and the uploader somehow got called to court or whatever, it would no longer be due to unauthorized publication alone, as they might also be charged with false representation of authority.

Since MD will no longer protect the scannies, they can simply give out the uploader’s or group’s info to the rights holder should it be found that the uploader doesn't fulfill no. 3.

Because of this, many large groups with little anonymity might steer clear of MD altogether, which will reduce future uploads on the site.

 

[gheis95]

At this point, I'm beginning to think it might be less of a headache if everyone just dedicated their efforts to Twitter/Pixiv manga
They're not my favorite, but you're not as likely to get a DMCA over them

Comeso (the one supposedly behind this dmca) is known for dmca'ing fan artists too, there were a few cases in the past, both on Twitter and Youtube, users who received dmca notices and strikes respectively.

Edit: but this is too big for them, as some people are saying, it was likely Kakao the real culprit, as both manga and manwha were the one deleted. They even created an unit, called P.CoK.

 

[jeezits]

US websites have never been responsible for user content per Section 230, and that hasn't changed. If they were Mangadex would have gotten slammed with a lawsuit and not just a take down notice.

btw disappointed by the amount of people going "Oh I wish there was a subscription/less scammy subscription service, then I'd be okay paying for it" and my brother in christ are you asking to rent books instead of owning them ITYOOL 2025? Shameful bootlicking.