Between fan culture and copyright infringement: manga scanlation

Abstract

In recent years, the Japanese comic book or ‘manga’ has gained remarkable popularity outside Japan, particularly in the US and Europe (Fishbein, 2007; Hickley, 2005; JETRO 2005a, 2005b, 2006). There might be a variety of driving forces for this phenomenon: Western society’s increasing fascination with contemporary, popular culture in Japan; the critical and commercial success of Japanese animation, which is often based on manga; Japanese governmental agencies’ support for manga-related studies and events overseas; and a variety of manga for girls, which immediately created a new, rapidly growing, market (Deutsche Welle, 2002, 2006; JETRO, 2005b; Kelts, 2007; Kinsella, 2000: 12-13). Behind the successful globalization of manga there exists manga scanlation (Deppey, 2005; Macias, 2006; Yang, 2004). ‘Scan(s)lation’ refers to the phenomenon where ardent fans scan in manga titles, translate them from Japanese to another language and release the translated version free of charge via the internet. It can be argued that scanlation has been driven by two main factors: first, demand exceeding the supply of manga outside Japan; and second, the availability of digital technologies and the internet, which allow the digitalization of manga and its international distribution through internet chat channels, peer-to-peer file sharing, scanlation distribution websites and simply websites run by scanlators.