News
Translated Manga Scan Aggregator Removes 350+ Series
posted on by Gia Manry
MangaFox, a site that aggregated translated scans of manga, has removed at least 350 titles from its website as of this writing. A site administrator cited an unspecified "copyright issue" as well as the recent formation of a coalition between U.S. and Japanese manga publishers against scanlation sites. The administrator added that "our boss is trying to negotiate" with unspecified parties.
The initial slew of 235 removed titles consisted entirely of Viz Media licenses, but a later update indicated that more titles had been removed at the behest of unofficial scanlation groups, including titles licensed by other publishers and titles unlicensed in North America. The number of removed titles now total at least 350.
The U.S. and Japanese publishers' coalition was announced on June 8. At the time, the coalition — which includes Vertical Inc., Viz Media, Tokyopop, and Yen Press, as well as members of Japan's Digital Comic Association such as Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Shueisha — announced that it was considering legal action against 30 unnamed scanlation aggregators.
MangaFox is owned by a company called Hangzhou NOEZ Technology Co., Ltd., who claims that MangaFox ranks "within Alexa's top 2,000 sites worldwide with over 1,000,000 daily visitors and 400,000 registered members." Hangzhou NOEZ is based in Hangzhou, China, although it was originally founded in New York. NOEZ owns several other anime- and manga-related sites, including one dedicated to streaming anime episodes, one featuring both anime and manga to download, and a social networking site for anime fans. Several of these affiliated sites still list titles that MangaFox had removed, although their scanlation links are now either broken or redirected to competing scanlation aggregators.
Mangafox and NOEZ have not yet responded to ANN's request for comment.
Thanks to Diana for the tip.
Image © Tite Kubo/Shueisha
