Yes, it’s true: Active Anime interviews VIZ Media PR director Evelyn Dubocq and learns that pirated anime and manga are bad for business, and that’s bad for fans:
If anime piracy continues to grow in North America, at the expense of legitimate product, then studios will be forced to increase prices and/or slow down the number of anime releases, to compensate for lost sales. For some of the less popular, but critically acclaimed anime series, this could mean that new seasons would never be officially released here. Similar, new anime properties may never even make the leap from Japan to North America.
Ultimately, if piracy continues to extend to a greater scale and sales of legitimate anime DVDs in the US fall as a result, there could be less anime produced in Japan.
For those who think they are doing the companies a favor by creating an advance market, Dubocq has a bucket of cold water:
ACTIVE ANIME:
Does VIZ uses bittorrent or similar data at all when deciding which series to license?EVELYN DUBOCQ: NO
And what about fans who say scanlations are better translations?
This is just another form of piracy.
Dubocq is toeing the company line here, and certainly legally and morally she is right: Piracy takes money out of the pockets of creators and publishers, and although I’m inclined to be less sympathetic to middlemen, they do us a service by bringing the books over (and taking some risks in the process).
The thing that makes me hang back a bit on condemning scanlators is that most of them seem to be operating for love, not money. It’s much easier to condemn someone who copies DVDs of crappy Hollywood movies and sells them out of the trunk of a car than someone who loves a manga or anime so much that he or she learns Japanese and translates it, especially when the work is not otherwise available in English. There is a scanlator’s code of ethics that says not to post licensed properties, and I can certainly endorse that, but being able to look at scanlations of something that’s only available in Japan is one of the things that makes the internet interesting.
But that’s the reader’s point of view. As a writer, I keep coming back to the interview ComiPress posted with manga-ka Leiji Matsumoto about the impact piracy has had on him.
Good work has a purpose and objective to it, a reason “why” it was made. The creator is the one sending that message; that’s why we need a system in place that rewards the creator. Because he or she is the only person in the world who can create that work.
Matsumoto also talks about how he doesn’t like seeing his work taken out of context, which I can understand. It’s an interview worth rereading, if only so scanlators can see how the apparently harmless actions of one person, multiplied by the thousands, can have a bigger impact than anyone intended.
Manga scanlations are a big help to the manga publishers. Let’s face it, most scanlations are average and the serve as a great advertisement for the published manga. There’s a huge section devoted to manga in bookstores these days, how does one distinguish between titles? BY reading online and the buzz from forums and blogs like this one. Deep down, we’re all fan boys and girls who will purchase the book if we fall in love with it. ISn’t manga booming now? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
I’ve heard Jack’s excuse (above) quite a lot, and it no longer holds water. If a fan falls rabidly in love with a story, then the fan might buy the legit copy of the story, but really, how many manga is anyone rabidly in love with? Two, maybe three series? If you aren’t rabidly in love with the story, then you’ll read the scanslation (the “free” version, where you might have spent $10 to try out the legit version otherwise) and never buy any of the legit product — thus taking money out of the creator’s pocket.
What scanslations do is take the casual reader out of the legit market. So the only manga that can make money for a manga company are the wildly successful “A-list” titles. Basically the Shounen and very successful Shoujo titles. Quirky Shounen and Shoujo titles, Seinen titles, and especially Josei titles will fall by the wayside. It’s already happened for anime, and it looks like it’s beginning to happen for manga.
I doubt this will keep scanslators from doing what they do, but maybe when manga sales go as flat as anime sales are now, they may realize that they contributed to it with tons of “free” material that is, not just competing, but dominating the legit sources that actually send money to the creators.
This thread has gotten me thinking, however, and while Viz may not see it the “advance buzz” factor is something they utilize. When I look at many of the manga series I buy, only a few are based off of publishers’ marketing efforts. The most common factor in getting me to buy a manga series is the excitement from people who followed the scanslation.
That doesn’t excuse piracy, but this discussion furthers me along the “grumpy that manga publishers don’t seem to have a better marketing team than Marvel, DC or Dark Horse”.
However, the opening quote also expresses the entitled sort of attitude that often gets me grumpy in anti-piracy arguments. IMO, widespread piracy often indicates some major disconnect between the vendor and the consumer. If people are pirating anime because they don’t feel like it’s becoming available stateside fast enough, threatening that piracy might stop the flow isn’t a major disincentive… after all, if there’s a chance that the releases will stop, why not get them all from the same source? Similarly, if one is pirating DVD because anime DVDs are too expensive (and compared to DVDs of american TV, they are) what does the threat of higher prices do to deter piracy?
Admittedly, these aren’t easy to solve problems, but sometimes anti-piracy efforts strike me as the equivalent of battling walking pneumonia with cough syrup and lozenges — seeing the symptoms as the problem.
I think what happens is some people read scanlations and scream on the forums, “I LOVE ______”. It appears in sigs, avatars and begins to seep into people’s heads. When the book comes out, it has interest attached to it and the potential buyer has never read the scanlation. I think scanlations are different than .mp3s in that they require hard work in multiple areas to produce them and often money to distribute them. I admire scanlators for the work they put in.
Just two quick points:
– there’s a difference between a scanlation (picture + translated text) and a translation (text-only; usually indicates who’s speaking, may include F/X and a few comments on the action / atmosphere). I imagine scanlations may well bite into the “legitimate” market, since you get the whole package online for free. Since a *trans*lation will offer you only the bare bones of a story – and especially since manga rely so heavily on graphics rather than text – anyone using one will probably need to find a copy of the Japanese original in order to make sense of it, thereby putting money in the creator’s pocket.
– the “scanlator’s code of ethics” you mention seems to be somewhat elastic. Many scans of (a) titles licensed for English-language publication and (b) not only forthcoming volumes but those already published in the US, are still readily available on the Web. Unless more scanlators become more responsible, some publisher – US or one of the Japanese giants – is going to lose patience and unsling the flamethrower, at which point things will indeed become ugly.
Unless I’m really missing something, I think the difficulty of reading scanlations online is going to slow the market down. I haven’t looked at a lot of them, but most scanlators seem to use IRC chat (which I’m too busy to figure out) or jpegs, which have to be downloaded and take time to open. I did see one site that had a manga reader, but it was sort of wonky as well. It’s just not as easy as opening a web page or using one of the online manga readers from a publisher’s site, and it’s certainly not as effortless as turning pages in a book.
Serious fans will be willing to go to the trouble. But people who are less motivated, even people who read a lot of manga (like me!) aren’t going to bother. Sure, there are IRC tutorials on the scanlation sites, but I don’t like the idea of downloading stuff from a private site. Too much risk of picking up a virus or other nasty. And jpegs are slow. I guess I’m lazy, but I suspect most web users are like me.
So moral arguments aside, I doubt that scanlations are going to kill or even seriously dent the English-language market.
You know I listen to arguments like jack from customers all day long and every time i hear it makes me wan’t to leap over the counter and strangle them.
The bad thing is he is hurting people and frankly he doesn’t care, I am a manga and comic book dealer, I owne a brick and mortar store at Fort Carson Colorado and serve the military personel. Here’s the problem Jack Scanlations are putting the little guys and the big guys out of buisness its not a harmless crime.
Examples
As of 2009-2010 Walmart will no longer be carrying Manga.
(Thank God! that helps me out a little) Walmart has decided that it is failing product and if you go to walmarts site you will find no manga right now, evidently buying toiletpaper and manga together just doesn’t work.
Barnes and Noble have cut back there stock to almost half because of its line most of which has been tokyo pop books because fans just aint buying them. But that certianly are pickpocketing them or maybe you haven’t noticed the little stickers they are putting in there books lately at barnes and noble and Borders.
Thieves like jack here and in my local town of Colorado Springs have closed two comic stores. Why because people can’t buy grocerys right now or afford there house payments so the go online and steal what they want for free. Myself I am consider chapter thirteen bankrupcy . I took a chance on opening a store who catered to manga lovers, primarily because I love manga as much as you and I know I wasn’t alone out there. Though I have constant flow of new customers do to the soldiers going though our base headed for Iraq and Afghan, Brigades ranging in the thousand I’m finding it hard to keep my buisness a float. All day long I listen to all the people tell all the great sites they harmless are getting there manga from, the reality is it isn’t harmless your stealing. You thieves are killing the comic book dealer! You don’t ever buy the books like you claim, and because of you Tokyopop may not even exist in a few years. If you got to get the new stuff quicker buy it from oversea’s I have no problem with people shopping for stuff at play asia and getting it in japanese or reading ahead in Shonen Jump or Shoujo Beat at least the Manga writers get payed, but don’t kid yourself you are destroying anime and manga forever with your stealing. Finding it online is the same as pickpocketing it in the store. Its wrong!
On the good note though the anime and manga apacolypse may be happening Viz plans on making a lot of examples of people this year. The fan scans will stop after a few cease and decist orders same as they did with Slayers Revoloution Anime and a few other properties they have recently aquired. I can’t blame Viz for doing this, frankly I hope the “true fans” actually help point out the sites. Sorry if my spelling is bad I’m a little emotional about this subject.