Manga Publishers Face Uphill Battle Against Scanlations
by Kai-Ming Cha
Jun 29, 2010

The announcement of a joint coalition between American and Japanese publishers targeting illegal online manga “scanlations” has spurred a flurry of activity on two major aggregator sites. Since the announcement three weeks ago, MangaFox, one of the primary aggregators of illegal manga scans, has pulled over 330 titles—a large number of them Viz Media properties—from their home page. Likewise, OneManga, a scanlation aggregator that has a reported over a million visitors per month to their site, also pulled titles from their manga list. 

Although Viz declined to comment on the removals, comments and reports on a variety of blogs focused on manga and the scanlation community have reported some disruption on the aggregator sites. Indeed the removals of some illegally scanned material is reported to have come at the request of scanlators themselves—the volunteer manga fans who translate and post scanlations—who fear legal repercussions for their acts.

Kurt Hassler, publishing director of Yen Press, Hachette’s manga and graphic novel imprint, a member of the anti-scanlation alliance, told PWCW he has just returned from Japan where he had discussions on the topic with his Japanese partners. “I can tell you that the coalition is pleased with some of the responsible movement we have seen although it is neither as complete nor as comprehensive as we would like,” Hassler said. “The Japanese version of the formal announcement of the coalition went out last week, so we'll just have to wait and see where our next steps take us from here.”

Hassler makes an important point. Despite the fact that some material has been taken down, removals are likely to be largely cosmetic as visitors and fans continue to be able to access series via RSS subscriptions or mobile phone applications. Observers have also noticed that since pulling the titles, a few of the illegal scans have gone back up on the aggregator sites. Osamu Tezuka’s MW, published by Vertical, is one example of licensed material pulled from MangaFox but relisted.