News The End of Korean Piracy Is Near

Ah how I hate the "lost revenue" fallacy. If you never had it, you never lost it! But the shareholders lap it up and it's a terrific excuse for the suits to use when they aren't making a gorillian monies, hand over fist. It's not OUR fault we aren't making more money!

As you can see, this many people clicked on a link, and if we extrapolate these statistics based on blah blah blah .... that means we lost more money than... lets see... the entire GDP of the planet! GASP! SHOCK! We could all be super gorillianaires if it weren't for those darn pesky pirates. My math is flawless, I should be richer than the entire planet by now.

 

Ikr this is I feel just nonsense, this is losing the 'what if i got all those view from fans translation', they arent losing money at all..
The piracy make it popular which will be a success if they try to make it official, this is very different if they made english official then someone pirate it.

For me, I personally like to read for free then if I like it, I will decide to buy the book again for re-read or collection.

QI is a smart jerk I think,
"wow, this one popular internationally"
*lincesing and make official english then dmca-ing*

This is gray area, so idk, but whatever it is, the claiming loss of what if is ??

 

Thank you. Average readers seem to believe the same nonsense when it comes to ads.
1 view is $1 according to some folks

 

Honestly, aside from very few rare web novels, I read them not because they are good, but because they are free, available, and I'm bored. If they stop being free, I don't really care, I just won't read them. I don't like them that much to pay for them, since the plot and quality in those novels is not really anything to boast about. I think there's a lot of other people with this mindset, they don't read them because they think the novels are exceptionally good or anything, but simply because they are free and available.

 

Actually a webnovel I could see myself buying is Reverend Insanity/Daoist Gu, except the chinese government banned it and the author isn't even allowed to continue writing it...

 

Oh... They're gonna try it? Good luck, hit me up when the pirate manga sites stop functioning. Until I see every single pirate manga site in the internet down, I'll just consider this empty PR talk~

It's really funny to see those attempts, seriously. I'm pretty sure someone already reported mangadex to the local police of whatever country the site is hosted and nothing happened to it. Now try stretching that to the pirate sites that couldn't care less about your DMCA attempts and stuff... It just won't work. They can try stopping piracy all they want and it will not work out.

The only reason Korean translators are so scared of being noticed by publisher/author/whatever is because they don't want to be the ones to keep translating a novel when directly being told that they should drop it... But in reality, there is not a thing that can be done to them if they wanted to keep translating. Especially if they decided to just go anonymous and upload their translations to a pirate site without a credits page.

Ah, and the good old "we lost 175621387568217568217649087265817265812736487213547821 USD of money from this content most viewers wouldn't pay for anyways!" Like... I read a lot of fantranslations, but would I pay for any of them? No. Not because I don't want to mind you, but because I struggle to pay rent each month, I don't have the spare money to buy books and haven't had it in the last few years.

And once I finally do get the money to buy books, I'll just go buy some LNs or mangas published by Yen Press or something, I'm not gonna pay for webtoons. So all the profit they said that they'd earn from me is basically nonexistent now and would still be nonexistent in the future... The estimated profit loss argument is always so silly.

 

I have always wondered how those huge manga pirate sites continue to work. Is it because it's anonymously and the sheer amount of things uploaded there or something?

 

AFAIK it's a conjunction of things.

Like, to begin with, they are hosted in countries that don't care that much for takedown requests and stuff, which is already a big help to them.

Then, they are anonymous for the most part, so it's really hard to reach the owners.

And then there is the fact that taking them down is a long and arduous process that might take months... While making a new substitute is something that takes a few minutes or hours at most to be done. So... For every pirate you take down, four new ones will have been born to substitute it. Making it essentially impossible to deliver any meaningful blow to the pirate industry, and as such, not really worth the effort.

Sometimes someone shoots themselves in the foot well enough to the point they end up killing themselves, like Kissmanga did, but... Those are few and far between.

 

The obvious solution to piracy is to eliminate poverty but they couldn't be bothered.

It is a clear example of human short sightedness and stupidity

 

lol why is interpol even there

copyright infrignment is civil action and i think it is the same in south korea too

 

I commented a while ago, but I thought I’d expound on it even further

It is not readers that’ll be affected but the translation groups themselves. They are, after all, the ones distributing contents that are unofficial works. Koreans would consider it piracy and illegal distribution. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. The only thing that matters in their eyes is that it’s not licensed. The focus of the publishers, and I’m sure at the vehement support of authors, will be geared towards the translation groups. You, as a reader, won’t be affected because I highly doubt they’ll bother sending legal warnings to readers. It would only be a waste of time and there’s not a benefit to it financial wise.

Fan translators and groups can do their utmost best to avoid a DMCA or a takedown or even a criminal pursuit by using an anonymous hosting server (even then it’s not 100% foolproof and we have seen examples of that), but the moment you use a service that complies with copyright laws, those companies will and can remove/block you from use of their services the moment the Korean government and/or publishers notifies them so (I.E. Patreon, Discord, Ko-Fi, Paypal, Wordpress, Blogspot, Adsense, Payooner).

Adsense and Patreon is a big one for translation groups who rely on its revenue as their source of income. Sure there are alternative ad networks, but they’re overridden with malicious ads. This may not matter much to readers, but for a translation group who relies on the goodwill of readers or ad revenue as a source of income, it matters a whole lot, otherwise their operations risks shutting down not from some criminal pursuit but from lack of revenue.

It doesn’t matter the moral argument used or counter-arguments to it, it’s simply a losing game to fan translators and groups when those Korean companies informs the services that legally complies with copyright laws to delete their Discord server, close their Patreon account, their Ko-Fi account, block their PayPal, remove them from Adsense... ETC. They don’t need to go through a server takedown notice. There are other alternative methods to do so.

The risk far outweighs the cost.

 

Time to pack all 4.4+ KR in my reading list to epub....

Honestly though what I hate about this is that if you're not korean citizen then say good bye to the thought of even purchasing official raw KR Web novel through legit sites like munpia and what not. You can study Korean and obtain passable reading skill and you'll be stuck since these official ebook sites(except ridibook, but that's not full library) need some kind of Korean social security number to even register your account, or it won't accept your money. The only option for Korean learner right now that wants to read KR Web novel is txt or fly to Korea. It's ridiculous.

Even raw Japan ebook don't need some ridiculous social security number to purchase them.

Edit: I stand corrected. It seems Munpia now allow foreigners to sign up without the need for Korean Social security number nor domestic mobile number. This makes it a lot better for Korean learners. One cons still remain though and that is the fact that we're required to use proprietary reading app. And that means unless you're really upper intermediate Korean learner then looking up new words is going to be torture and momentum breaking as you manually type each word. And no papago (a better alternative to Korean google translate) to help gives you sentence translation clue when you're stuck.

With Japanese Light novel I can just purchase ebook from amazon or rakuten kobo, strip drm, then open the file in web browser with pop-up dict extension, hover mouse on the word I don't know and the translation will pop-up allowing me and other high-beginner/low-intermediate to keep reading momentum.

That's a big difference because most can probably reach high-beginner/low-intermediate level in a year or two (For this very particular task, around 6000-12000 vocabs ball park), but for Korean Ebook where you have to manually type to look up word then you'd likely need at least around ~16000+ vocabs to make reading not cumbersome and awkward.

With all that said and done, It's hard to blame them for using proprietary which indirectly ends up raising the difficulty bar for language learner, as they're already having as much trouble with piracy at this point even with drm. Not everyone can be ballsy like J-novel club, and it's already a big progress to allow foreign purchase.

Still kinda a service problem to minority like me though. Because I can pay, and I'd rather pay than having to spending my time looking up nooks and cranny for circulating txt files. But going legit means it's very very hard to look up word due to drm side effect, as opposed to drm-free text file.

Sorry for the wall of text btw. Non native here and writing precise and to the point is still too much for me

 

Um... most JP raws that people see are from Syosetu which is a free website where anyone can upload whenever and people read for free, think of it as a fanfiction site except for original literature. Of course everything is just out there in the open. Also, you don't need a social security number. I thought you did but a Kpop fan once told me it wasn't that hard, at least not for Kakao, but I never had a reason to sign up or even look. I actually just checked, the biggest thing is to just put your phone number in (all countries are allowed, as far as I can see) and a Daum email but I think you can do both an account for and an email at once. It's in plain English, I looked up some stuff and I also saw the registration in Vietnamese, so if your country is different there's a decent chance it'll be translated into that language as well.

 

hahahahaha

 

This was pretty much I am adhering to when I said my post that publishing companies can be damn creative if they want to take down something. It's not like publishers are blind that some people abroad are ripping their IPS and 'products'. Sure, some translators will fall under the cracks but the message is still there - these companies have the resources and the inherent right to the material being pirated. And the supporting platforms some fan translators are using (Patreon, Ko0fi etc). are not stupid not to consider the merits fo potential copyright claim or DMCA request coz they don't want to see as a company abiding or helping technically illegal work. Repeated instances of this actions can cause some platforms to espouse a clause about piracy sooner than later.

But of course, some of these things are issues that some readers don't care about as long as they get their fix or guilty pleasure. The sad thing is it may become a trend for translators to be a 'disposable' role in the community. Sure, they can pick up skills since this is almost volunteer work but they are gonna feel the heat of a demanding audience during their tenure.

 

Where did they get these numbers from? No seriously, where did they get them from?

 

Some people might even pay, but then they decide to push some ridiculous paywall with bullshit values for individual chapters,and also forces you into having to using mobiles if you decide to get advanced content,not to mention you are not even guaranteed anything

 

IDK but I always assumed it's something like.

• people on this pirate site clicked this link/torrent/whatever x times
• people on this site clicked it y times
• even if every website links to the same thing, or every torrent site announces to the same torrent, they are all added up individually
• whether or not the pirate actually finished download or using the thing is irrelevant
• each different version (alpha 0.3, alpha 0.8a, 1.0 etc) is added up as a separate version
• ignore regional pricing difference and sales
• assume full r.r.p. on total value
• maybe just fudge the numbers between "projected earnings (eg. $1M USD") and "actual earnings(eg. $200kUSD)", pretending the gap MUST be due to piracy, and not shitty products
• assume ad revenue for pirating websites is at full value, add that on too?
• make up some crap about pirate markets (like those ones that sell a burned copy of a movie for $2) is your money?

Just make the number as big as possible and ignore reality so you can cry more to the shareholders, maybe enact even more draconian, anti-consumer copy-right "protection" that hurts nobody but valid consumers? Man IDK, these people don't operate on the same plane of logic as the rest of us. Maybe someone else has some real facts but this is how I thought they get this insane numbers.

 

I doubt the numbers they cited but it is fairly easily to get numbers especially if the industry or the company conducts marketing research. Granted, the numbers will be more like a forecast or predicted sales. But possible revenue can also be included . For every business or industry that want to expand, research is a must to back up major decions such as a joint statement of companies mentioned in the OP. If it is government backed statistics, there is more standard for it to be more reliable but I am not putting it above them to inflate numbers. I doubt these companies have time to loiter around piracy sites since those numbers are privy to the said site and the site owners will be bonkers to share that info. Both are not exactly in the same lane so I really doubt they will be publishing numbers from a piracy site, let alone ask or demand Google or the domain host for the numbers.

 

Please do not pass incorrect information.
All Korean webnovel platforms offer ebooks