Although many scanlators stop working on a manga series once the North American license is announced, John Jakala turns up a whopping 484,000 results in a Google search for “Bleach scanlations.”
Even better, he finds some unintentionally funny legal disclaimers, at least one of which is more than a little contradictory, given that the site is, essentially, dedicated to violating copyright: “… Although we did not create the BLEACH series, we did create this website to be as original as possible. We ask that you respect the originality of our work, and not take anything without expressed written permission by the owners.”
There’s more hilarity at the link.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:05 am
If your EULA is written broadly enough, then it must be legally bonding. It works for Microsoft.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
And this is why I’m glad I escaped the asinine world of anime/manga fandom like a bat out of hell.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
They can’t seriously believe that a lawyer would back them up?
August 31st, 2007 at 8:37 pm
It’s amazing what people think is true if they just say it loud enough. People have made claims about Fair Use that were so broad that they must think Fair Use supercedes all copyright laws.
They probably don’t believe it’s true, but are hoping the reader will. If just a few people back off and don’t bother them about something, then they probably think it was worth the effort of writing the fake legal warnings.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
While there’s no doubt that there are indeed scanlations out there a Google search for “Bleach scanlations” returning 484K results does not mean there are 484K Bleach scanlations our there. F’r instance, one of those results is this very post.
I’m not minimizing the complaint about preserving copyright. But I do get annoyed at the frequent “Google results=reality” outrage.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:17 am
I never claimed there were 484,000 sites hosting Bleach scanlations; I just reported that was how many results you got for searching on those two terms together (which now returns 496,000 results).
I’ll admit, I should have been clearer that my search was for ‘Bleach’ and ’scanlations’; a search on the exact phrase “Bleach scanlations” only returns 369 results, which I imagine is probably closer to the number of sites actually hosting scanlations.
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Your point is taken, John. The more that figure gets reported away from your original post, however, the less clear it becomes.
“Google results=reality” is a pet peeve of mine, but I completely admit you haven’t used it egregiously inaccurately as so many seem to. My apologies; no personal attack meant.