Copyright and Manga 'Scanlations'

'Scanlation' (a combination of scan and translation) is where a manga (Japanese comics) is scaned, translated then the translated text is then edited into the original speech bubbles.

The scanlation community has never really been against original rights but usually filling a gap where legal routes dont reach. The legal translation methods are slow, with a manga series released weekly in Japan as part of a compilation of series being released overseas in groups of chapters meaning increadably long gaps between publications, prices being prohibitorily high, and only a small portion of manga being released overseas. Scanlations provide solutions to these problems with scanlations being done within a week of release, no costs, and a huge range with the availablity of a series only being limited by peoples willingness to do it. Most scanlation aggregation sites will take down a specific manga if it is asked to by a legal distibutor, but it is not universal.

Untill recently manga publishers and overseas licensors have largely ignored scanalation groups or viewed them positively with publishers in Japan generally considering it to be an overseas thing with their main market buying the cheaply available originals most of their revenue came from Japan. Some overseas licensors used the comunities to see what mangas were popular and licensed them for publication, and seeing the groups as good promotion. However recently as overseas intrest in manga has risen and licensing becoming increasingly profitable an anti-scalation coaliton of Japanese publishers an overseas licensors has led to the shut down of several of the major aggregation sites (like onemanga a site which closed the online manga reader portion of its site on Aug 1st, chosing to continue on as a forums and trying to redesign itself as a place for original manga) driving readers underground to sites who do not respect distributors rights.