MULTI-NATIONAL MANGA ANTI-PIRACY COALITION FORMED

San Francisco, CA, June 8, 2010 – Today a coalition of Japanese and U.S. publishers announced a coordinated effort to combat a rampant and growing problem of internet piracy plaguing the manga industry. “Scanlation,” as this form of piracy has come to be known, refers to the unauthorized digital scanning and translation of manga material that is subsequently posted to the internet without the consent of copyright holders or their licensees. According to the coalition, the problem has reached a point where “scanlation aggregator” sites now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators’ expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales. Worse still, this pirated material is already making its way to smartphones and other wireless devices, like the iPhone and iPad, through apps that exist solely to link to and republish the content of scanlation sites.

Participants in the coalition include the 36 members of Japan’s Digital Comic Association, Square Enix, VIZ Media, TOKYOPOP, Vertical, Inc., the Tuttle-Mori Agency and Yen Press. Working together, the membership of the coalition will actively seek legal remedies to this intellectual property theft against those sites that fail to voluntarily cease their illegal appropriation of this material.

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Kodansha’s recent foray into North American releases has been a hot topic among blogs for the last couple of months, leading up to this week’s release of the first volumes of Akira and Ghost In The Shell.

I took the time to flip through both books, and while having heard tell of what readers would find, I was still a little surprised. The previous release of these series were by Dark Horse who published them both with a large cut-size, flipped pages and some edited content. Kodansha Comics’s books are re-releases of this material – the same translation, edits and presentation as the first editions from what I could see at quick comparison. The differences are minor, including soft covered first editions, a short ‘thank you’ foreword to Kodansha from the creator and the inclusion of Kodansha Comic’s logo on the spine. It’s difficult to tell if the print quality is more or less the same as Dark Horse’s since my prior copies are now several years old.

While Kodansha’s copies are good for those who missed picking up Dark Horses’, the convenience factor falls a little short when Dark Horses’ hard copy editions are still widely available in many areas (and even at cheap discount bin prices on top of that).

Though the re-release of these two -(albeit popular) titles warranted a little initial disappointment as Kodansha’s opening act, there was still anticipation of the potential for unedited, unflipped versions. However with the realization that the series’ are both simply repackaged editions of old material, it’s hard to get all that excited. On top of that, can Kodansha find a strong foothold in the North American market, both in the hearts and wallets of fans, when reselling something much of the target fan-base already owns?

Publisher Weekly’s interview with Kodansha USA’s publishing head, Yoshiio Irie, stated that Kodansha will soon begin announcing more titles with a focus on their older bestsellers. Question still is – will they be bestsellers English readers have already seen, bought or read or will Kodansha tackle some of their own material from scratch?

My hope is the latter, for even I, someone who wasn’t very crazy for Akira but still owns the old books, can’t imagine there’s a huge market for the redux choice. Still, I do really want to see Kodansha find success in a market that’s seen so much uncertainty in recent years, and though their frugality in this labour-saving endeavour fits neatly amidst the belt-tightening faced by manga publishers, it really puts a dent in the hype factor.

You can read more readers’ reactions over at the AnimeNewsNetwork and Mania.com‘s forums.

But what do you think? Did Kodansha start smart with these re-releases or do you think the risk of new material would’ve been a better gamble for pleasing the buyers?