Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
How can this be legally possible? Surely the overwhelming majority of Manga are copyrighted works, are they not?
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I'm not sure. If I recall, the ones they have are mostly "fan subs", meaning that fans do their own translations of the Japanese manga. Of course, since the art is the work of the Japanese publishers, this is not 100% ok, but its a bit of a gray area and apparently the publishers never go after these fans. The fan groups are usually good about stopping distribution of these subs when and if a U.S. company licenses the work and does an official translation and release. I think the thinking of the Japanese companies is that it is this type of fan work that has promoted and made anime and manga popular in the US, so in the end it actually helps them.
If the apps do have licensed works, maybe they have some sort of ad sharing agreement? Or maybe they don't. But anyway the apps are freely downloadable from the Google Play Store, so I'm not sure its the consumers job to look into all the rights issues. I assume Google has some ability to remove infringing apps from its store.