If you’ve “bought” anything from JManga, this is some bad news for you:
It is our regret to inform you that JManga.com will be concluding its retail and viewing services. All existing accounts and private information will be deleted without further notification… As of May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time) users will no longer be able to view digital manga content on JManga.com. At this time all purchased and free digital manga content will be erased from all JManga Member’s accounts.
Yes, that’s right: All purchased manga content will be erased.
Here’s the thing, though; this is how ComiXology works, too. If that company went out of business tomorrow – God forbid – then that would be happening with all of your purchases there, and on the various apps for the various publishers that they power. There’s nothing special about the JManga model of purchasing/really-paying-to-lease, aside from the fact that it’s the first to collapse. A lot, if not most, of digital comic purchasing works in a similar way.
Think about what happened when ComiXology was side-swiped by the traffic following Marvel’s #1 promotion this past weekend; it’s not just that you couldn’t buy new material, many people couldn’t access the material that they’d already paid for. Between that and this news about JManga, it’ll be interesting to see if ComiXology starts considering offering the right to download/back-up purchases anytime soon.
March 14th, 2013 at 9:40 am
and i’m supposed to feel guilty for torrenting comics? well i don’t.
March 14th, 2013 at 9:52 am
Yeah, I actually have to agree with threadkiller on this. To support creators, I buy from Comixology, but it’s just smart collecting to go grab a downloadable copy illegally.
It’s kind of amazing that this hasn’t been really talked about up until now. I’d be shocked if Comixology or any publishers comment on it, though.
March 14th, 2013 at 10:13 am
This is hardly news — this is how digital publishing works. If you didn’t think about this when you first heard about iTunes, you’re behind the curve.
You’re not purchasing books, you’re purchasing a non-transferable license issued by the distributor. If the distributor goes under, tough luck. The best outcome would be that the distributor sells the reading rights (and corresponding user information including email addresses) to a different distributor, but no one would reasonably buy that when they can sell their own licenses for a profit.
Sure, “buy” digital to support creators (and publishers, and distributors, and ISPs, and mobile carriers) but you get what you pay for.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
That’s not even remotely how digital publishing works. I own every song I’ve ever downloaded from Amazon or eMusic. I don’t even use eMusic anymore and those songs are perfectly fine.
There are a ton of eBook sites out there that sell epub versions and you actually own those — they are stored on your computer and can be read with a variety of apps.
Expecting to own copies of what you buy isn’t unrealistic, unless you believe iTunes is the only option out there to buy things.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Heck, for that matter, if you burn a CD with songs you got from iTunes and rip the CD, you’re no longer even beholden to iTunes.
You can’t say the same for Comixology.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:26 pm
You don’t even have to do that in most cases nowadays. iTunes sells unprotected files now. When it comes to music there’s pretty much no case you don’t own what you buy.
March 14th, 2013 at 2:12 pm
“If that company went out of business tomorrow – God forbid – then that would be happening with all of your purchases there, and on the various apps for the various publishers that they power. ”
This actually isn’t entirely true. David Steinberger, CEO of Comixology, has stated that should they “go away” so to speak, they would work out a way for people to keep purchased content, whether directly through the publishers or in another way.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
blacaucasian – If David Steinberger really intends to do that, he should create versions of the book that can be read with other readers TODAY and ensure there is no DRM.
March 15th, 2013 at 5:29 am
Why would they invest the tech to do that now if they are completely solvent as a company and have no intention of closing? The speculation of the health of the company would begin immediately. I currently use their app on my phone, kindle, and via my computer at home and reading books is seamless. While I wasn’t able to purchase books during the Marvel hullabaloo this past weekend, all the books I had already downloaded to my devices I was able to read without a problem.
1st, they aren’t going to create books with no DRM, if nothing else, likely as an agreement with the publishers. I guarantee you that creating DRM free files of these books will result in rampant file sharing of the books and I guarantee less digital sales. At least at this point, it’s just simply not an option for an industry that is still in it’s infancy in the digital world.
I see people’s points and it’s definitely right to ask more specifics on what a contingency plan is, but I don’t think they’ve brought it up beyond the statement above because it really hasn’t become a serious concern as of yet. There are so many monumental differences between the business models and how JManga was run versus Comixology (if I’m not mistaken it was consistently in the top ten or twenty iStore apps all year last year) that trying to compare the two is ludicrous.
I can download their app on all of my devices (which as I understand was not an ability for JManga until just recently, and even then the app was not working on that great a level) and quite frankly, short of the blip this past weekend with Marvel, I’ve yet to have any major problems downloading or reading books purchased through them to any of my devices.
There’s a lot of false information also being shared. Once I’ve downloaded a book to my device, I don’t need to be connected to Comixology to read it. I have multiple books downloaded to multiple devices. Don’t have to be connected to Comixology to read them once they are downloaded. So you do download a book once you’ve purchased it, you are not reading it from the cloud as many people have intimated, and you do own the content…just in the format they have the file in (Comixology is no different then the iBooks and Kindle reader in this regard).
March 15th, 2013 at 6:58 am
blacaucasian –
You, too, have false/misleading information.
1. Your purchases are not ALL just downloaded and available off-line. The books you choose to DL to that particular device are available offline on THAT particular device. I bought the full run of Transmetropolican when it was on sale. I do not keep that on my device because if I just kept every 60 issue run I buy on my iPad at all times, I’ll run out of space real fast. If I decided to read Transmet during that outage I in fact could not, even though I bought and paid for those comics.
2. If you’re reading from a desktop you are in fact reading from the cloud as many people have intimated. There are no local files when reading on a desktop.
3. You do NOT own the content, in any format. The terms of service are very clear on this. You are buying a license to read. Nothing more. A license that can be revoked at any time for any reason. Read the terms of service.
Then there’s this: “I guarantee you that creating DRM free files of these books will result in rampant file sharing of the books and I guarantee less digital sales.”
You obviously have no idea about the state of piracy in comics. It is literally impossible for the creation of DRM-free file to create an increase of piracy because 100 HUNDRED PERCENT (100%) of comics released today are already available for download on bit-torrent sites. No DRM can stop a guy with $2.99 and a scanner. Hell, even digitally exclusive books like Monkeybrain manage to find their way up there. DRM-free wont cause the system to fail because the system is already failing.
March 15th, 2013 at 7:46 am
“Why would they invest the tech to do that now if they are completely solvent as a company and have no intention of closing? ”
because when the company is sold or goes bankrupt or belly up, everyone making these promises will be too busy running for the hills or not in a position to do it at that point.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:34 am
threadkiller nailed it.
And the flip side is true too: to encourage new customers, you want to lower fear. This is a huge, valid fear for digital purchasers: “what happens when (if) you go out of business?”.
As a vendor, they would be smart to address it now.
I see a time where Marvel and DC say “forget this – we are providing our own apps (not via Comixology).” It would gut CMX’s business overnight whether they were solvent or not the day before.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Marvel and DC wouldn’t even have to develop their own app (don’t they already have their own?). They would just have to stop doing business with Comixology and use a competing app instead.
I would imagine the deal with Comixology works on a licensing basis — kind of like Dark Horse licensing Star Wars. Once that license expires, the material can vanish from that distributor instantly. Just like Boom lost the Disney stuff, and Dark Horse will lose Star Wars to Marvel.
There really is no 100% solution to a company going into bankruptcy. Even if they promise something now, it won’t matter once the company closes. There’s really nothing you can do if you leave your comics on the cloud. Might be best to download everything onto your computer at regular intervals even if you can then only read them on your computer.
Right now the company seems stable, but it’s not a public company so we really don’t know what their finances are. A bankruptcy from a private company will come without any warning signs whatsoever.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:18 pm
Imagine going to Netflix and streaming Arrested Development for $2.99 an episode – that’s Comixology for you.
$2.99 an episode? Fine, then give me a file I can keep.
Streaming? OK, then give me unlimited content, like Marvel’s DCU.
$2.99 an episode that I have to stream? The worst of both worlds? No way.
March 15th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
ComiXology does have their content in downloadable form. I was able to read on my tablet just fine during the time their servers were offline.
Right now, it’s only available through the mobile apps. Add a download button to each issue on the website and that part of the problem is solved.
(Better: add an offline desktop reader. Even better than that: add a “Download my whole library for offline reading” button.)
You still have DRM to contend with, but that’s a smaller problem than losing the data completely.