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The University of Georgia's Japanese Animation Club
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Kamonichan
This User Has No Life ;)
Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Age: 23
Posts: 4369
Location: Wherever I'm Least Needed
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 Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 1:28 am Post subject: |
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| Onikami-kun wrote: | | The donations that support scanlation groups aren't paying salaries. The money is used for purchasing raws, and perhaps a small webhosting fee. I don't know how the host sites distribute funds. |
Mmm. My point was that the donations probably aren't all that large, considering most scanlation groups I've seen have a relatively small goal for total donations, usually between $40 and $60. Therefore, theoretically, it shouldn't cost too much for retail companies to do the same. They're already covering costs for raws and translations, so it's possible that they wouldn't have to fork over much more for online distribution. Again, theoretically. I have no idea whether that's true in practice or not.
Spoiler: | Mediaright wrote: | | If a judge decides with the industry, that's it. Scanlations in any form are directly illegal by any definition, and it's a lot easier to get in-trouble. All the talk about the ambiguity of legality in scans for titles that won't ever be licensed will go away. |
Unfortunately for scanlators, there is absolutely no ambiguity about the legal status of scanlation. None at all. The idea that just because a series is not licensed in the US and/or never will be makes it OK to pirate, that idea is really just a convenient myth scanlators, fansubbers, and the people who use either have said in order to place a thin veil over what they're doing. We say it's OK because the IP is licensed in Japan and not in America, and because it's not in America that it doesn't fall under US copyright protection. A nice idea. Unfortunately, it very much falls under international copyright protection.
Remember watching old VHS tapes and having to sit through the green screen with white text? That was warning you that what was on the tape was protected by international copyright. America originally proposed and supported the idea to protect the vast amounts of IP we had compared to other countries at the time and still have today. It was a way of looking out for ourselves. That still applies today and to other countries, be the IP comics, manga, cartoons, anime, or novels. Really, the only reason more people haven't gotten in trouble is the problem of enforcement. As has been said multiple times in this thread, the companies will never put a complete stop to piracy. They can just make it slightly more difficult for people who don't know what they're doing and who haven't done a Google search yet.
So remember, everyone, use bittorrent for all your anime and manga ne--I mean, pirating is(n't) wrong. Don't do it.  |
Edit: Everything in the spoiler tags is, um, wrong, but right at the same time. Um, maybe confused would be a better word. I delved deeper into the matter and discovered, well, confusion. Lots and lots of confusion. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (referred to as simply "The Berne Convention") applies to all creative works that is printed or produced in one of the 162 signatory nations. It specifically deals with photographic works and cinematography. So that should make the spoiler tags true. But, um, confusion ensues right around here.
You see, Japan itself is signatory of the Berne Convention, so photographic works and cinematography should fall under international copyright protection. But, and try to stick with me here, many producers, directors, mangaka, and authors in Japan often do not refer to their work as either photographic, cinematographic, or really anything else specified in the Berne Convention, or they describe it in a way of being photographic or cinematographic but still not in the way the Berne Convention protects. Some of them claim intellectual copyright, but they claim it under a set of Japanese copyright laws that don't fall under the Berne Convention. But then, the Berne Convention allows signatory nations to make modifications to the nation's copyright and still fall under international copyright, so it should still be protected, but many intellectual property owners choose to relax their protection rights so that doujinshi circles and authors can use their characters and stories, which the owners view as free publicity. So technically the Berne Convention allows doujinshi to be distributed outside retail lines, but only if the creator allows in and then it shouldn't let the original IP to be distributed. But then doujinshi circles claim copyright on their doujinshi, which they're technically allowed to do under the Berne Convention and the Japanese legal system. So then you have the original creator AND the doujinshi creators who own copyright to the IP the former owns. And doujinshi circles also choose to relax regulations to allow further distribution. And the copyright protection many people have over manga, anime, whatever only protects it in its original printed form and treats modifications much like doujinshi, so technically speaking translating the manga to another language, and sometimes even another Japanese dialect, alters it enough to technically classify it as doujinshi and make distribution of scanlations legal, but proliferating the raws is still technically illegal, but if someone who purchased the original printed work translates or modifies it enough for it to be classified as fanwork, then that's not illegal. But the owner of a legally printed copy is obvious allowed to transfer ownership to another person, so if the owner sent the manga to a friend who then translated it, it would be completely legal. But the most common way to do that is to scan the images and send them via the internet, and that process would technically be illegal unless the original owner destroyed his own copy after scanning it, which works out because many people who scan the manga rip out the pages, thus "destroying" the printed work. And through all this, the Japanese government still has the copyright laws that protect the original work and wants to exercise their protection rights by claiming the IP belongs to the Japanese people, as represented by the government, but if it belongs to the Japanese people, then technically everyone has the right to do with it as they please, which is why Japan instituted another set of laws where the Japanese government is the one that decides what happens to IP created in Japan while still having the IP belong to the original creator AND doujinshi circles AND the Japanese people. But while that's going on, many different political figures vary on the issue of what they decide to do with IP, ranging from extremely protective to couldn't-care-less, and sometimes changing their opinions based on the genre of the manga or anime and/or based on the creator or publisher, and then on whichever combination of genre, medium, creator, publisher, and potentially multimedia of the work in question. So the laws differ according to prefecture, and sometimes from city to city within any one prefecture, and people debate whether the IP belongs to the local government of a mangaka's current residence or the prefecture they were born in, and even more if the mangaka works in a different prefecture than the one they live in or the one they were born in, and sometimes on whether or not it belongs to the mangaka or their assistants. And, um, yeah... I could go on. I think. Maybe I can't. I'll say I can't. I have a headache, and it's late/early.
Damn it, I'm gonna go to sleep.
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Mediaright
Infamous Member
If there's a will, there's a way! Man...I'm gonna need a donut.
Joined: 15 Aug 2008
Age: 20
Posts: 486
Location: Central Command @ Reed
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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...my brain hurts....owww.
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Dumas
Centennial Member
Dr. Strangefan
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Age: 24
Posts: 1314
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| Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2010 12:05 am Post subject: |
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A long time ago, manga was printed and sold in monthly (or thereabouts) installments, essentially single chapters with some cover art from wherever slapped on and maybe a letter column or something. This was before I got into manga, but one of the series nearest to my heart is only available (incompletely) in this form Stateside. I wonder if a return to the format would be viable, at least for the most high-profile series. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it died out for a reason.
Oh, and I hate scanlators who cannot be arsed to check out even simple things like whether or not the Navy uses the rank of colonel. |
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