Dealing with scanlations of your titles

[Scryren]

Thank you, I really do appreciate you looking into this.

I don't have access to the email address that our Mediafire account was registered under. The staff member that created it is on extended hiatus so the only information available to me is the public DMCA violation window that tells me it was submitted by DMG over the phone.

I had switched the account's email address over to one of mine in hopes of getting of the one take down emails, but I haven't yet. I'll keep an eye out for any emails regarding your request to them and keep you updated.

[TropicanaTina]

Well, I can back up Shroud in that Dangerous Pleasure did not remove Love and Trap/Koi to Wana when it was licensed and assigned nor even when it was released. It wasn't removed until after release, not until I personally sent an email to them. I had no difficulty with that, though. I don't know if my message was interpreted as aggressive, but, if I remember correctly, I believe the message I sent was largely a copy-and-paste of a statement that Digital Manga themselves suggested that we use.

Another thing that's mistaken, and this is rather tangental, is this whole idea that the Guild is nothing but a collection of scanlators. I'm not saying anything bad about scanlators, but this idea, which I've seen stated on many sites, is a little irksome because I feel it diminishes the legitimacy and professionalism of the Guild. These are not localizations produced by scanlators or fans (that is, they shouldn't be called "fan localizations" more so than, say, any Digital Manga in-house production deserves to be called, even though Digital Manga employees are certainly fans of manga too). These are official, professional localizations and should be recognized as such. There are many people in the Guild who have never been involved in scanlation. There are DMGers who have done professional freelance work in these fields before joining the Guild. And even if one built their skills via scanlation, once they're under contract with Digital Manga, they deserve to now be recognized as professional localizers.

[Scryren]

Hi Koi Koi, as I stated in my reply to you last November, I didn't recognize Koi to Wana as one of our releases, or I would've pulled when I saw it was avalible on DMI's blog. I still don't remember this project, but it was released in it's entirety during a Christmas batch so I'm not surprised it doesn't stand out to me. Emailing us about it being released is completely acceptable and it was appreciated.

But this has happened twice now with DMG and it only proves my point that you guys needs to do a better job at annoucing your licenses. While I may have not recognized it as one of our projects, I have a 60 member team behind me and no one said anything about Koi to Wana.

[TropicanaTina]

I think the localizers themselves are doing about as well as they can in that regard, what with announcements on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., but, yeah, I think we'd all like to see Digital Manga doing a bit more, which hopefully will occur soon since everything is an ongoing, evolving process at this point. I definitely think the romanized titles should be included with the translated titles since so often fans stick with the romanized titles for identification. If someone was to do a Google search for "Koi to Wana", they wouldn't even get a shopping link to eManga, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble as a result. At the most, in relation to the official release, they'd might come across Koi-Koi's Twitter and a link to the topic on here in which our bundle was announced. Speaking of that topic, that isn't even updated these days, so outside of various group pages, there isn't any way of knowing about upcoming DMG titles. In the early days of DMG releases, when it was a slow trickle, Digital Manga announced the release of each title on the main page, but that too has stopped (understandably so with the flood of titles), and I'm not sure if the "digital round-up" updates are mentioning every single release. That's a tricky matter itself, though, since there's no consistency in the platform releases. Sometimes eManga was first, sometimes Kindle or Nook, and there can be huge gaps too (it's been well over a month since the Kindle/Nook release and Koi-Koi's Welcome to SMC still hasn't appeared on eManga).

If you're interested, Digital Manga's Guild video conference this Friday is an overview of how the Guild has been going and a discussion of where it's going in the future. It's open to the public, so you could weigh in on how Guild members have been representing the company with their C&D messages, if you'd like.

[Shroud]

If I get a direct reply with any information, I'll be sure to fwd it on to you. It is quite out of order for media Fire to misrepresnt file suspension reasons. File owners definitely deserve to know the exact nature of who/what/when/why. And as I was not the complainant for those 100 odd titles, it was definitely remiss to send me emails with details of these files relating to your account.

Rest assured, I have never, and would never, ever act on behalf of a rights holder without permission. And I certainly did not intend to come across as aggressive. Email and short PMs and the like are not perfect communication instruments, be any means. And having to try to use unambiguous language for legal clarity often makes one come across as terse. That is far from the intention. As heated as this has gotten in parts, I do think it's been helpful to both sides to have this open and honest dialogue.Hopefully this will enable both sides to come to some sort of mutual agreeable arrangement.

[chirechan]

Not to further hijack Russesa's thread, but this issue of C&D has picked up notice outside this forum.

I think it might be in DMP's best interest to print an official stance on this topic so that their rationalization might be heard. Right now, there are just comments in the forum and whatever was said during video conferences.

[hanged_man]

Ideally, SOP for the issue should be included in the localizer guidelines.

[kozato]

For clarification: I'm responsible for announcing each digital title on Facebook and Twitter as it appears on Nook/Kindle. Every DMG title is posted there, usually twice: once when it's released on an e-reader, and once when it's released on eManga.

Digital round up posts, which are posted every week on Friday, reflect all digitally released titles for that week. I've been working to incorporate Japanese titles into new licensing posts, and will be doing likewise for DMG release posts to prevent further confusion.

[alexar]

I feel very sorry for those guild members that have to retranslate titles already scanlated. I wish DMG was still announcing what each group is currently working on since not all the groups seem to be that active online. That way I could try and give some support to groups that are releasing already scanlated titles. I wish I could buy everything in support of DMG, but unfortunately I can't.

I love DP, but they have been a bit remiss about published titles before. However, to their defense, they do fairly often pimp licensed titles so that fans will buy them.

[nycmango]

Excuse me but many titles that are being licensed by DMG has already been scanlated many years ago so it is DMG's own choosing to license certain titles. I don't know what the complaint is and I do not feel bad for people who are working on already scanlated titles because many of these DMG freelancers claim to do this not for the money but instead they are doing it because its legal and they want to share the artist's work legally.

To those aggressive DMG members, please get over yourselves and think more about promoting the artist and not how much money you personally lose because scanlations exist. I've followed some of your twitters and not many times do I hear anyone praising the work of the artist and its always me, me, me and how "my" next title is near complete and will be sold on amazon. At this rate I don't see any clear direction for DMG in promoting some of these undervalued less known artist .. Many of the artist you guys license I know and some I don't but on twitter all you do is praise your guild and not so much as to talk about these artist and their style? If you want to complain about scanlations, next time talk first about the artist's hard work and not yours because you don't own it as you did not draw it.

Also, if you really did a good job no one would be complain about why they don't buy DMG titles and turn to scanlations instead. Rude and aggressive behavior as an act to force people to buy legalized copies will NOT be tolerated in any industry.

To DMP parent company, please pay more attention to the type of people you hire as freelancers.