Pirate Site Traffic Surges With Help From Manga Boom (torrentfreak.com) 16
New data shared by tracking company MUSO shows that the number of visits to pirate sites has increased by nearly 30% compared to last year. The publishing category is growing particularly hard, mostly driven by manga piracy. The United States continues to harbor the most pirates in absolute numbers. TorrentFreak reports: During the first quarter of 2022, pirate site visits increased by more than 29% compared to a year earlier, which is good for a dazzling 52.5 billion visits. Nearly half of this traffic (48%) goes to TV-related content. The publishing category takes second spot with 27%, followed by the film (12%), music (7%), and software (6%) categories. The traffic increase is noticeable across all types of piracy but the publishing category stands out. Compared to the first quarter of 2021, the number of visits in this category has grown explosively. Software piracy is lagging behind, but the category still continues to grow. The strong growth in the publishing category is largely driven by manga, comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Some of the pirate sites dedicated to this 'niche', such as Manganato.com, attract well over 100 million 'visits' per month. That's more than iconic pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay and Fmovies.to.
The United States is the country that sends most visitors to pirate sites. With well over 5.7 billion 'visits' in the first three months of the year, the U.S. is good for more than 10% of all piracy traffic. With a 39% increase compared to last year, pirate audience growth exceeds the global average. Russia and India follow at a respectable distance with just over 3 billion visits to pirate sites, followed by China and France, with 1.8 and 1.7 billion visits, respectively. There is no single explanation for the apparent piracy boom. However, MUSO sees the upward trend as an alarming signal and expects that the 'streaming wars' and growing subscription fatigue may play a role.
The United States is the country that sends most visitors to pirate sites. With well over 5.7 billion 'visits' in the first three months of the year, the U.S. is good for more than 10% of all piracy traffic. With a 39% increase compared to last year, pirate audience growth exceeds the global average. Russia and India follow at a respectable distance with just over 3 billion visits to pirate sites, followed by China and France, with 1.8 and 1.7 billion visits, respectively. There is no single explanation for the apparent piracy boom. However, MUSO sees the upward trend as an alarming signal and expects that the 'streaming wars' and growing subscription fatigue may play a role.
Pricing (Score:2)
Not saying that justifies piracy, of course. Just saying manga is frequently read by kids who don't have jobs and so have low levels of discretionary purchasing power.
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Also, at least some of the manga being pirated are fan scanlations of manga not licensed for release in English (or other relevant non-Japanese language). A quick search of manga on the front page of the Manganato site listed above shows that this is true for quite a few titles there.
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It's true. Manga is often printed on the grade of paper you'd find in a phone book, and recycled.
There's three main ways that manga piracy can go down:
1) Adapt. Just put everyone online in the first place. This is largely what Indie western comics have done and it works. The 100 or so people who actually want YOUR comic will give you $10 to read it, and the 1000 other people who pirate everything will eventually steal it anyway.
2) CrunchyRoll/Funimation route. Actually start translating same-day manga relea
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In Japan there are tiers. You have the weekly and fortnightly publications with several different stories in them. Similar to how Western comics used to be, before characters started having their own publications.
Then you have the collections for popular manga, which are printed on better quality paper and often have some corrections or improvements to the original artwork.
There are also digital releases now.
Piracy is an issue. There have been lawsuits against manga pirate sites in the last few years. The b
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It's TOO easy to just steal the content if it's on a website.
The vast majority are not depriving the original owner of their property by making a copy. If you decide to put something that can be easily copied on a copy machine and make that copy machine accessible to the world, you deserve to see that thing's worth drop to zero. Don't put crap on the Internet if you aren't prepared for the consequences of doing so.
yoink the app's credentials to the site (which is how youtube-dl and such work)
PSA: Nope. Not even close. youtube-dl works specifically because YouTube doesn't protect it's content by default. The only times youtube-dl cannot get some
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A manga volume that sells for $5 in Japan is sold for $10 in the US. Obviously translation does add some cost, but it's priced way too far above many competing entertainment options. A Crunchyroll subscription for example can be had for $8 / month and you can watch or read as much as you like.
The same applies to books too. It costs far more to buy and read A Song of Ice and Fire ($75) than it does to watch the entire TV series on HBO ($15).
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Hell, the light novel that the manga is based on is typically cheaper than the manga. (Most LNs tend to be around $6.00 to $8.00.)
You also tend to get more time with LNs. When you can read one LN for an entire day and still not finish it, or get the manga and finish it within an hour at an inflated cost with entire sections cut out / re-written / otherwise not what was in the original, which would you choose?
Don't get me wrong. I do like manga, and sometimes it can be better than the source material. The ma
Out of context? (Score:3)
The United States continues to harbor the most pirates in absolute numbers.
Maybe of manga specifically, though even that is doubtful. There's this little country called China who would like a word... Maybe they're not officially pirates, but they're pirates. My cousin lived there for over a decade. They're ALL pirates. And the most populous country on Earth.
So bullshit assertion is bullshit. The US pays for tremendous amounts of media of all kinds and that hasn't changed in generations.
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dwi (Score:1)
1) "Piracy is a service problem"
2) Western comics made their choice
Not that it's a problem since they'll just buy their way into being shareholders/owners of whatever does end up taking #1's cake. If anything the problem could be too many hyenas doing their "netflix of ___!" pitches to VCs and making a clusterfuck (but I've Got Mine right). Everyone wants to build that machine yet forget balkanization and consumer-milking greed are poor lubricants.
This may all take a while, as corpos also aren't interested
It has to do with delays in publishing (Score:1)