"Shueisha has requested us to not to host his title and its chapters. Please do not upload." <-Please note, this contains a typo. "his" should be "this". The confusion resulting from this typo is obvious.
You know. In a country where it is legal to basically plagiarized, as defined in practically every other country and every other industry, the authors/artists of Manga (Mangaka) are apparently fairly stupid.
Every good entrepreneur knows that it is an absolute must to 'diversify', one doesn't simply put all one's money into a single stock and expect to make lots of money. More likely than not this would lead to a financial loss rather than a gain.
And yet, a Mangaka personally requested their manga be removed from a non-profit website. This is just stupid. <-This is where the confusion is. Practically everything else still works regardless of Mangaka vs Publisher.
Even the gaming industry has been learning over the past fifty years that it is utterly impossible to squash the hackers and people who illegally download video games. You kill off one group, two more pop up in its place (or a vastly higher number than that).
Telling Batoto, again, a completely non-profit hosting site, to not host this manga is stupid.
While it is certainly true that Nisekoi has been hosted elsewhere already, there is no guarantee that those sites won't become for profit sites... assuming they aren't already.
Batoto has 'one' advertisement, and that ad is solely to help pay for the server cost. This ad is on the main page. If you don't go to the main page but directly to the manga you wish to read you can completely miss it. Other sites have a minimum of ten, on each page... including each page containing the image of a manga page.
Batoto is an honorable website. While I have some issues with how it is run, that is mostly in the poor definitions given about banning procedures (basically the same thing as America's "I'll know it when I see it" stance on pornogrophy, which is utterly stupid.)
As I was saying earlier. Any good entrepreneur knows to diversify. Even the oil industry is beginning to branch out into other forms of income.
The ones who should be scared aren't the Mangaka, but the magazines that 'legally' host their Japanese versions. Once mangaka discover that they can make a lot more money a lot faster and more reliably by hosting the scanned images online, they will be able to leave their sometimes cruel overlords and continue writing what they wish freely... for as long as they wish, or as long as people continue reading.
Will there still be problems with people hosting unauthorized copies? Yes, but with the electronic age -- and especially the internet -- this issue will never go away. The so-called 'dark net' is real, and things that were once used only by people doing extreme illegal business often trickles down to people doing 'less illegal' things. (i.e. if governments are 'encouraged' to violate their citizen's rights by monitoring the internet in the way some companies want, we'll just find less legal and more secure ways to get what we want.)
So, what's my point in all of this? Mangaka (perhaps not magazine companies, but mangaka) should be cherishing the non-profit hosters of manga. More than that, they should either be making their own, or making business deals with the ones that exist to make a cut of the income.
If, instead of requesting (read 'demanding') Batoto to remove Nisekoi from Batoto, Shueisha asked for advertisements to be placed on this page and perhaps some of the pages with the actual images, and to receive 60, 70, 80 or 90% of that income, I am fairly sure that Batoto would have either agreed or simply done what it has already, i.e. removed the manga. That would have been a smart business investment. Not removing it from a trusted source, one of, likely, thousands of host sites.
Batoto is not mangafox. Batoto does not profit off of other people's work. Batoto respects the requests of not only the authorized producers, but also the not-so-authorized (read illegal) ones as well. Anyone who doesn't recognize Batoto as not being a threat likely deserves their content to be distributed by less trustworthy people.
Finally, just an FYI: I'll likely modify this post in the future to add, remove or correct things. This may be based on people's responses or on my own discoveries.
And a final note: I don't have the monies to buy the 'legit' Nisekoi brought to America. Even if I did I would have to compare the 'legit' version with the fan translated versions. Recently... no, as far back as the inception of bringing Manga or Anime to America, American companies have been abusing the original works by adding, removing, or changing things. This has gotten so bad in some cases that I am beginning to feel the need -- not the urge, the need -- to only read/watch fan translated versions to get the 'best' experience, or at least the closest to the original experience. This, naturally, includes all of the errors, poor quality, and other mistakes made in fan translations.
Basically, I would nearly rather go to jail than support what I see as an atrocity to manga, anime and the Japanese culture in general committed by ignorant American companies.
(An example: Hulu, an authorized provider of "Kinzoma" an Anime about [and I quote from Hulu]: "When Shinobu was still in middle school, she had the opportunity to study in England while living with a host family as an exchange student. And while that happened many years ago and she doesn't do well in English class, she still loves the English language. When Shinobu learns that the daughter of her host family, Alice Cartelet, is coming to stay with her and study in Japan, she’s thrilled. But will Alice be able to fit in with Shinobu’s Japanese schoolfriends, Youko and Aya?"
This show is rated TV-14, even on Hulu it is shown as rated TV-14... and yet before each and every episode there is a "Mature Content Warning".
At first I was stumped, I even opened a ticket with Hulu to report the 'bug'. But I have come to realize that it is because of some extremely subtle LGBT content -- i.e. the two main characters act somewhat lovey with one another, but are not in a relationship, outside of pure friendship; additionally one of the friend 'sub-characters' has 'feelings' for the other friend 'sub-character'.
This is a show likely intended for youths or adolescents in Japan... But in America it is rated Mature on Hulu. We're just lucky they didn't butcher it like what was done with Sailor Moon when it was originally brought over...
If this is the way America treats the content it brings from another country, then I would rather experience it from the 'true fans' who do their best to remain true to the original, rather than appease the insane/idiotic masses -- or their perception thereof.)
Edited by Master_Aricitic, 11 May 2015 - 07:24 PM.