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Originally Posted by Isan  While most would argue that scanlations benefits the mangaka, that's absolutely not the way it's viewed in japan. It's like saying downloading a pirated movie off the internet benefits the film industry because it makes a lot more ppl see said movie. |
I think the only way scanlations would be similar to pirated material if the scanlated works are officially licensed by an English distributor. Films pirated online are already licensed by the MPAA, hence they already have a distributor. This means people lose money if you download films online. Unlicensed works by Japanese authors are
not like that, because there are no distributors who've licensed the work (a.k.a., "bought rights" to the work) in the first place. No one owns rights to the English distribution of the work.
Unlicensed works outside of Japan don't have distributors. No one can lose money if you download an unlicensed manga that doesn't already have an official distributor, unless this is done in Japan, because there are no distributors in the first place.
And scanlators only scanlate nonlicensed material. You can say it's like scanlations can are the "sample" of the real thing. For instance, translations of manga scanlations are wrong a lot of times, editing is bad (even sometimes full of grammar errors), and scan quality of manga scans is also not too great. So, they are like rough drafts of the real deal, given out in order to promote the work. And like samples, scanlations are used to promote the original product. Scanlations will and do promote the author and his/her work.
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| And while it hasn't happened yet, I can still see the day where japanese companies start sending C&D to scanlation teams. |
I highly doubt this for two reasons:
1. English distributors pay to license an author's work. I assume they give this money to the Japanese publisher. When a scanlator scanlates a manga's work that's not licensed in English-speaking countries, they are increasing publicity of the work and author at hand. If an English distributor realizes that there is a market for Japanese authors, then this might lead to buying a distributor's license to the author's work -- therefore profiting the Japanese publisher.
To break it down simply:
English company realizes many people are interested in yaoi manga translated into English. --> Buys license from Japanese publisher ($$! goes to author), so they can make money off this. --> English publisher sells Japanese author's work legitimately in English market.
This helps the Japanese publisher and the original author, thanks to the recognition to foreign audience brought on by scanlations.
2. Japanese companies are only hurt insofar as if their Japanese customers read and understand English. Manga is translated into English, right? The Japanese consumer would only be interested in downloading free scans if they can access the scans in the first place. I don't think many Japanese readers would show interest in downloading mediocre-quality, non-readable English-translated manga, when they can go out and buy the original manga in their original Japanese for only about $3.00 US from their local bookstore.