Legality of “Scanlations”

Long post.

As a reminder, since 99% of the countries have signed to uphold other countries’ copyrights…. that means it does NOT MATTER if a series has not been licensed in your country: it is STILL illegal to scan, copy, or otherwise duplicate/distribute/etc/etc manga/manhwa/whatever-you-wish-to-call-them. IN FACT, it includes translating them! Yes, translating is ILLEGAL without the explicit consent of the author. In fact, writing more than an acceptably short (read: one short paragraph) summary of the work is considered a copyright violation and is illegal!! So, fans are limited to one short paragraph. So, yes, even my summaries are illegal, since they are in-depth. I try not to do direct translations so it is not “as bad” as it could be looked upon as. Scanning, downloading, translating, in ANY COUNTRY is illegal. Go read all the international accords/treaties/etc all the countries agreed to like I did, if you don’t believe me.

And do not ever ever EVER let me hear cries about “but I cannot afford them” or “they aren’t available in my country”. If you believe in such, I say this to you: you are not entitled to ANYTHING and you are, really, the reasons why all these series are being canceled and publishers are failing — because no one can make any money off of this anymore if no one buys!!

This is why I keep telling you, go to aladdinus.com or somewhere if you wish to purchase Korean manhwa. Kinokuniya.com sells manga. Amazon.co.jp sells manga. Suck it up and PAY FOR THEM!

Yes, you may wonder why I continue writing in-depth summaries if they, too, discourage people from buying the books since they know what happen. But, I say it can help a bit by catching people up with a series and encouraging them to buy anything new because they enjoy the series. And also, I purposely do not post up artwork so if you want to SEE what is going on, you need to look at the pages. And this is where I am so so so very disappointed in everyone always wanting to find the websites where you can download the raws from. For the love of …. continue to destroy the livelihood of the cartoonists, then. You’ll bring about the destruction of the very material that is entertaining you. Even if you don’t buy everything, at least start with SOMEthing. Like…ONE series. Show support for at least ONE series and buy it.

Advertisement