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Comment by Blackthorn | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product. Same-week translations that are often superior to the official ones, which come months (or worse) later.

Some publishing houses like alphapolis are so backwards they don't even license English releases at all. Even ones that have gotten a popular and officially translated anime adaptation.

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Viki licenses Asian film and lets the community provide subtitles. The results are excellent. Viki doesn't do any translation themselves.

For one show I liked, Viki lost their license to show it. Instead, the show (and its second season) are available on youtube. English subtitles are provided, but they are so bad that it's clear there was no human input to or review of them. The show is unwatchable. (Think I'm exaggerating? See what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOdWOS49RE&list=PLvBtqeytAL... )

I'm not sure how this could have happened, but there are failures at several levels. Viki got high-quality subtitles without paying for them. People who couldn't speak the language got to watch foreign shows. NoahMob is attempting to show a series with subtitles that aren't better than nothing. They could have real subtitles for free! It's not like I'm going to branch out into their other videos based on the experience of being unable to watch the show they ruined.

Not only is the product better, manga scanlators have a "code of honor." If a manga is licensed in English they will typically drop the manga no longer scanlating because there is now a provider in English. Of course, not all of them do this but more often than not it is adhered to.

Yes, this means that some clever folks realized they could have a legit manga website that removes the unlicensed translations the moment an official release is available. And they never allow uploads in the original copyrighted language. See mangadex.org

Idk who the founders are, or if it was a bunch of scanlation groups that combined their efforts, but it's a pretty smart way to get around the copyright problem.

And until there is a company who has the license to publish in English, there's a benefit to the Japanese rightsholders - free and extensive market research.

People will always choose the product that best meets their needs (price, convenience, content, etc). Therefore, the only piracy that ever happens is that which provides a superior product.

> This is one of those cases where the pirates really are providing a superior product.

Product? Are they sellings these files?

You make a good point. Their product is better and cheaper!

Not the question you asked but to make it clear, I don't mind paying for things. I've had a Crunchyroll premium account for years and I have a whole bookshelf filled with official translations. But sometimes they come years later and you want to actually discuss the series that's going on right now with fellow fans, just like you would for an English book. Or you want to be able to read it at all (see: alphapolis).

An interesting story:

Long ago, I downloaded a fansubbed anime series. My sister is interested in anime as a genre and has been interested in watching that series. When I asked her recently why she hadn't already watched it, she said "because it's not on crunchyroll".

In the pirate ecosystem, you can watch what you want to watch. The "legitimate" ecosystem seems to breed learned helplessness.

The worse part is when you see translation rights being bought and then the translator never following through to the end even if I put my money into it. I feel that's why I'm mostly ambiguous to the whole situation on what could be done better. I just know I would not be exposed enough without the pirates.

The word "product" refers not only to things that are sold, but also to things that are produced (made, fashioned, fabricated, etc.).

I'm not a native English speaker, so I suspect you are right. However, I'm not finding anything here to support your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product

This is as close as I get: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business)

And it says:

> In marketing, a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer.

Sounds like something you'd buy?

In some cases, pirate sites do have a cost to be able to fund operations and maintain quality, but one way or another, the customer pays something to someone (even if it's just access to internet via their ISP) and receives a product. So yes.

Many individual manga are scanlated by commission, or the patreon model for entire groups. Weird no one else mentioned that. Lots of scummyness in that area, where individuals republish other groups and sell it.

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