Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
They were merely following the example set by the scanlation groups in that respect - taking other peoples' work without permission.
|
Well... it's really more subtle than that. I know your position on copyright, and in general I agree, but the social norms among Japanese publishers are different in this area than what you might expect in the US or western Europe. The Japanese publishers really have been rather visibly turning a blind eye to both scanlation and fan-subbing, and as someone pointed out earlier, they actively
encourage the commercial publication of fan-fiction manga (doujinshi). Regardless of the Berne Convention, I think we need to respect that if the Japanese publishers don't want to enforce this part of copyright law, there's no point in the rest of the world trying to do it for them.
Now, if the Japanese publishers are actually objecting to scanlations at this point, fine. But I suspect, as someone else has suggested, that it's actually American publishers such as Viz, and frankly, if they haven't paid for the US publishing rights, I don't see where they have a right to "enforce" copyright law in this area.
I'd like to hope that this really means that someone (e.g. Viz) is considering publishing emanga on a large scale. But I'm not that optimistic.