hey kids - i'm a computer - stop all the downloadin

[davemerrill]

To all our readers -

There are now many people unjustly posting copies of manga on the internet. These unjust copies are inconsistent with mangakas’ feelings. They are also distorting the authors’ intentions of “I want the work to be read this way”. The actions of posting these unjust copies on the net, into which the mangakas have poured their hearts, are not only hurting mangakas in real life but are also against the law, even if done in a light-hearted manner. Every time we discover such “unjust copies”, we talk to the mangaka and consider every possible countermeasure. But the number of inconsiderate people is great, and at present we cannot deal with all of them. We have a request for all our readers. The unjust internet copies are deeply hurting the manga culture, mangakas’ rights, and even mangakas’ souls. Please understand once again that all of that is against the law. Also, the mangakas and Shueisha will severely deal with any unjust copies found on the internet. We ask that our readers please continue to support us.

~Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department

From here, and he got it from here.

So now, at least you can't say they didn't ask!

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Not quite radical enough for me. I'd start with music, where the present setup has all the nuisances of artificial scarcity while simultaneously being extremely bad at rewarding artists. Sure, track what people are downloading or listening to, but fund it by taxation on related equipment. This is a common proposal, but a) don't hand out the money via a shambles like the PRS b) remove all restrictions on copying music electronically.

Now you've got no incentive to avoid the tracking. Quite the opposite - the issue is with stopping you ballot-stuffing to route cash to your favourite band. It doesn't kill off recording studios; if you think paying for a high quality recording will improve downloads, go for it (but we'd better have a rule that an advance for recording can at most be in lieu of income from that specific recording and you can't enter into a restrictive agreement for future recordings). If you want to print physical copies, go ahead; they're still protected.