#my stance on scanlations and illegal uploads

[domeyashiro]

Hello, I have some question for you today, it might not be seazuru related, can be say it’s just my curiosity. Since your blog is quite big for an foreign saezuru’s fan i assumed that a lots of people have reach this blog more than others which mean you may get Lots of saezuru related Q. Have you ever sometime skip the Q and not answering them? If yes why? Is it because the informations are still not show up yet or there is others reason for you? Forgive me if you’re uncomfortable to ans. this.

Yes, all the time. Unfortunately there’s no way for me to reply to all the messages I get, usually because I simply don’t have enough time. So when I do find some time, I tend to pick questions that would be of interest to more people than just the person who’s asking, or questions that I personally find interesting and would like to think/ write about. Sometimes I simply choose questions that I can quickly reply to. It really depends on how much time I have in that moment. I also tend to keep encouraging messages in my inbox because it’s nice to see them again and again. So thank you to everyone who sent one in the past! I appreciate them all!

There’s only one type of message I don’t reply to on principle, which is stuff like “Where can I read the new chapter / watch the movie for free? / When will the new chapter be uploaded?“ and so on, because a) I don’t know and b) I don’t want to know. I’m here to offer info and whatever I can share without working against Yoneda-sensei’s interests. I don’t mind putting my own work like summaries, or translations of tweets / older interviews online, but I will not help anyone pirate Yoneda-sensei’s works, even if every single one of you bought a copy afterwards. First of all, as a professional translator I feel it would be unethical of me to ignore the author’s will. But above all, artists are human beings like you and me. They have every right to decide what happens with their work. Like I have the right to decide what goes on this blog. So unless a mangaka explicitely states “Go ahead and share my work for free” (which I’ve never seen btw), I will assume that they are not happy with me uploading their stuff, or me telling people where to download their works for free (because I have seen plenty of mangaka and publishers speak up against scanlations). So I will not do it. Please respect that this is where I draw the line.

Don’t get me wrong. I know exactly what it’s like to want to know how your favorite series continues as quickly as possible. I’ve started learning Chinese for that reason this year. And I won’t pretend I’ve never read a scanlation either. I might have even translated a manga or two as a student for the local website of a friend. (Luckily, back then aggregator sites weren’t a thing yet, so I can only hope that barely anyone saw my translations.) But the more I learned and the more I saw of the industry, the more I understood that I was treating the artists like I knew better than them what was best for them (aka ”Spread the love!!!”). But I did not. I knew nothing, not about their working conditions, or about their financial situation, or the details of their contracts. There was literally no way for me to tell if or how what I was doing was affecting them. Which is why I stopped and never looked back.

Over the years I’ve seen a lot and learned as much as I could, and in the process I’ve come to firmly believe that the artist has to be the first priority of any fandom. Because without artists there would be no fandom! Manga should be fun for everyone. But if we sacrifice the creators for the sake of keeping the fandom happy, we’ll only end up with less creators in the long run. They deserve to have fun too. And I’m not here to take it from them.

Sorry if this has gotten a little off topic. I’ve never really talked about this before, because I was hoping that my blog would speak for itself. But since people keep asking me where to download stuff, I felt that I had to make it clear once and for all where I stand on this issue.