Mahouka has been licensed

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Qaz123mtr86
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by Qaz123mtr86 »

Man this stinks. Mahouka was the first manga/anime that made me seek out and discover the wonderful world of light novels and now it's gone. Does anyone have any recommendations for teaching oneself Japanese? I'm only half-kidding here.
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Darklor
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by Darklor »

Shouldnt this whole section by now be placed in the abandoned section?
Please don't mind my bad english since I'm german.

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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by Cthaeh »

Darklor wrote:Shouldnt this whole section by now be placed in the abandoned section?
The text for some volumes is still on the wiki for the moment, so I don't personally see an issue with it being the main section. But since the removal of the last text should be coming up soon, it's true that it should be removed in the near future at least.
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larethian
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by larethian »

May I know why is volume 14 still up?

Also, I'd like to propose deletion of all illustrations of licensed works even if alternate language projects exist. I feel that illustrations are much more obvious infringement than the text itself and should be removed as well.
In fact, my future contributions will be devoid of illustration uploads, unless it is absolutely necessary (such as maps and diagrams), in which case I'll just use a low res low quality version. Book covers should be fine however.
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by Cthaeh »

For deletion, there's a lot of flexibility in the the policy, in that things can be deleted earlier, but only "have" to be gone 2 months before 1st volume publication, which would put it at no later than Feb 19 (April release). The general practice has been gradual deletion in the past, and I'd guess some definition of "gradual" is why it stopped there, though since it wasn't me I can't speak with certainty. When the policy was being discussed/made, I was in favor of instant deletion, but that was a clear minority, so I tend to follow "gradual" even when I'm doing the deletion myself.

Just my personal opinion, but for illustrations, I'm not sure I agree that they should be deleted because there is an English release. The links removed from the English page sure, but deleting them because of an English release would imply that the English release is somehow different than a release in any other language, including the original Japanese, for which we are currently fine with hosting the images; and I don't immediately see why it would be different. I could understand not hosting any novel illustrations at all, regardless of whether or not there is an English license, as I've never really been able to come up with a rationale for how hosting illustrations is consistent with the rest of our licensed/raw policies, but that'd be a pretty big change.
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larethian
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by larethian »

Cthaeh wrote:For deletion, there's a lot of flexibility in the the policy, in that things can be deleted earlier, but only "have" to be gone 2 months before 1st volume publication, which would put it at no later than Feb 19 (April release). The general practice has been gradual deletion in the past, and I'd guess some definition of "gradual" is why it stopped there, though since it wasn't me I can't speak with certainty. When the policy was being discussed/made, I was in favor of instant deletion, but that was a clear minority, so I tend to follow "gradual" even when I'm doing the deletion myself.

Just my personal opinion, but for illustrations, I'm not sure I agree that they should be deleted because there is an English release. The links removed from the English page sure, but deleting them because of an English release would imply that the English release is somehow different than a release in any other language, including the original Japanese, for which we are currently fine with hosting the images; and I don't immediately see why it would be different. I could understand not hosting any novel illustrations at all, regardless of whether or not there is an English license, as I've never really been able to come up with a rationale for how hosting illustrations is consistent with the rest of our licensed/raw policies, but that'd be a pretty big change.
You are coming from the point of treating translated series equally, I'm coming from the perspective of reducing infringement and mitigating risk of BT shutting down.

But regardless of whether there is an English license or not, like I mentioned, I think illustrations should be deleted for all series unless they are absolutely necessary to the understanding of the story. Because
1. this is just me personally, but they serve no purpose in fulfilling my primary objective in fan-translation, ie. to translate the story of an unlicensed series from Japanese to English so that English speakers can understand and enjoy the story (and maybe worship the author) without being deprived by the language barrier. Illustrations are often just eye candy which serve no purpose in improving understanding of the story except in the case of diagrams or maps of a few selected series, in which case only a lower quality post-processed version of the illustrations should be uploaded. Unlike fan-translating, where effort is involved in converting a medium from an incomprehensible form (in the perspective of non-Moon readers) to comprehensible form, illustrations are merely 'taken' and 'uploaded' as they are and do not 'add' to the story itself. In the shoes of a writer, I may or may not be ok with fan-translations to serve a group of audience that I cannot reach, but in the shoes of an illustrator, I'll definitely not be happy that what I draw is freely scanned and shared on the internet. My opinion of course.

2. the illustrations may be easier targets for infringement notices compared to text even in the absence of licenses given what happened to certain Korean light novel fan translations, and the rights holder do not actually need any form of verification other than visual inspection to ascertain the infringement.

With the recent spate in manga scantalation crackdown at the source, Shueisha's irreconcilable stance on fan translations for unlicensed light novels, I'm more inclined to favor more cautious approaches towards light novel fan translation activity in order to extend, if not preserve, the longevity of the site and effort of fan-translators.

Regardless of whether intentions are good or not, fan translation activity without the explicit permission of the author is an infringement under current laws (which I feel should be altered but that is out of the scope of the discussion).

I am thus of the opinion that BT should proactively minimize infringement rather than adopt the stance of "since infringement technically occurred already with the text, then it doesn't matter whether the illustrations are infringed or not". Covers can stay since Amazon also have them (the publicly available images can be used) and they should provide sufficient promotional functionality for the illustrator's art and the series in question.

More and more raws are also available from digital releases these days. I don't know whether any of the current digital publishers employ them, but it's possible to embed hidden watermarks in digital releases using digital steganographic techniques. Of course, this may only impact the actual uploader and not hurt BT or any fan-TL directly, but still, I do not think BT needs to position itself as a potential contributor to any possible kind of source crackdown of digital release uploaders as a result of hosting what they uploaded.

I hope this motion can be tabled to TLG and/or the current executive committee. At any rate, I will be deleting what illustrations I have uploaded under my account in the near future. You or anyone, of course, can feel free to re-upload the same illustrations from your own raw sources. I will not stop or delete images that were not uploaded by myself (not that I have the power to). :)
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vallor
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Re: Mahouka has been licensed

Post by vallor »

I totally agree on every points larethian just gave us.
Nothing more to add.
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