As posted on AnimeSuki
While the closing up of OneManga is a good thing since they don’t really translate anything and just upload iffy quality scanlations, it doesn’t leave us with a viable alternative. Without a legal alternative, they are pretty much shooting themselves on their foot. Surprisingly, there is one in the development called “OpenManga,” but I don’t know how good it will turn out since it’s not open to the public yet (and it’s still unknown if it will be region locked or not).
Also, it won’t address the availability of unlicensed manga. There are still many titles that are obscure, too old or risky for companies to consider licensing. As long these companies don’t address this, most have to use a bit more difficult channels such as FTP or IRC to get them, thus lessening the incentive to read manga.
Like I have said in my editorial I wrote a month ago about Scanlations and the State of the Manga Industry, “Manga is not a right. It is a privilege..” If Manga Industry wants to win customers, they need to prop up a legal alternative that is like Crunchyroll that will allow users to read manga from legal sources and allow subscriptions for immediate access with the ability to download a translated chapter/volume to ereader devices or computers for offline reading at a reasonable and affordable price. If these services end up being region locked or have DRM on their downloads, the service in no doubt is going to fail… miserably..
As always, the unlicensed stuff is going to be shafted the most… but there is always other channels… However, they are more difficult to the average Joe, which make them less likely to do so.
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