The Mahou Sensei Negima!/UQ Holder mangaka has been elected to Japan's House of Councillors

[Antvasima]

The good news are that Ken Akamatsu will fight against pressure from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to selectively censor Japan-produced entertainment strictly according to their ideological preferences, and says that he sympathises with people who have been afflicted with hopelessness and depression, so hopefully he will try to help them integrate better into society and receive constructive psychiatric help, rather than face massive amounts of social stigma.

The bad news are that, from what I recall, he has said earlier that he wants to work to shut down all illegal manga sites online, which would also automatically shut down the vast amount of all exposure to the medium for global audiences.

Love Hina Mangaka Ken Akamatsu Elected to Japan's House of Councillors After Campaigning for Creators' Freedom of Expression

Today Japan held the election for the House of Councillors of the National Diet, and popular mangaka Ken Akamatsu managed to win a seat.

twinfinite.net

 

[Antvasima]

However, please keep all comments to this thread as non-political as possible.

If other staff members legitimately think that it was a bad idea to inform our community about this, please feel free to mention it here or to close this thread.

 

[Bernkastelll]

The good news are that Ken Akamatsu will fight against pressure from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to selectively censor Japan-produced entertainment strictly according to their ideological preferences, and says that he sympathises with people who have been afflicted with hopelessness and depression and will hopefully try to help them integrate better into society and receive constructive psychiatric help, rather than face massive amounts of social stigma.

The bad news are that, from what I recall, he has said earlier that he wants to work to shut down all illegal manga sites online, which would also automatically shut down the vast amount of all exposure to the medium for global audiences.

Love Hina Mangaka Ken Akamatsu Elected to Japan's House of Councillors After Campaigning for Creators' Freedom of Expression

Today Japan held the election for the House of Councillors of the National Diet, and popular mangaka Ken Akamatsu managed to win a seat.

twinfinite.net

.

Japan-produced will be less censored

illegal manga sites deleted

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

The second part is quite unfortunate, but glad someone is wanting to help people. Let's just hope the good parts are the primary focus and keep things positive.

 

[Antvasima]

The second part is quite unfortunate, but glad someone is wanting to help people. Let's just hope the good parts are the primary focus and keep things positive.

Yes. Strongly agreed.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

While the latter part is unfortunate to hear, I don't believe people are going to stop anytime soon. Certain piracy sites are infamously difficult to kill for good. That being said, I do think there should be a concentrated focus on preserving translated manga that can only be accessed through piracy sites.

...Which reminds me that the vast majority of Touhou manga have never had official english releases. Shit.

 

[Noneless21]

While the first news is good and all, i think there's gonna be some turmoil regarding the second news, we all know just how massive the piracy community is, especially with Manga and Anime so it'll be a pain to try and shut down all of those websites

kinda have a complicated feelings for this since on one hand, there won't be manga and/or anime access for us who didn't exactly want to spend their money on entertainment that's "technically" free, but at the other hand, if this piracy continues then who knows how many revenues some studio's missing out because majority of the manga and anime enjoyers is stingy (including me who had read manga from the pirated website for about more than 8 years and never bothered to even look and buy the copy)

Overall, I'll just hope for the best for all of us, didn't know much bout the politics, I pretty much swear to never touch that topics unless it was nessecary

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Reminder that a study on piracy found that it did not actually negatively impact sales. The primary reasoning being that the vast majority of people who pirate things are people who wouldn't even buy the product in question if piracy wasn't an option.

 

[Lilixa]

I would say this is major breakthrough for japanese mangaka. While economically whatever piracy has positive or negative impact to sales, morally and ethically it is not good if your works got reproduced to another website without your permission.

The bad news are that, from what I recall, he has said earlier that he wants to work to shut down all illegal manga sites online, which would also automatically shut down the vast amount of all exposure to the medium for global audiences.

Well while they can shut down all illegal manga, they should give us better legal platform to buy those manga with cheap and easy access to user (able to read and save your manga via online and cloud storage stuff, so far website that have this is DLSite .

 

[Antvasima]

Reminder that a study on piracy found that it did not actually negatively impact sales. The primary reasoning being that the vast majority of people who pirate things are people who wouldn't even buy the product in question if piracy wasn't an option.

That is very interesting. Thank you for the information.

 

[Antvasima]

Well while they can shut down all illegal manga, they should give us better legal platform to buy those manga with cheap and easy access to user

Strongly agreed. We need a good Crunchyroll-style subscription service that is available globally, not just in a few countries, and that contains most of the manga from all the major publishers.

 

[Damage3245]

I'm happy with this. Hope his platform of less censorship and exporting more anime/manga products succeeds.

I'm a huge fan of Negima and UQ Holder.

 

[Confluctor]

In theory piracy doesn't exist because people don't want to pay for stuff, it exists because of the current distribution channels - which are downright terrible.

If he plans to get rid of piracy but develop proper distribution channels overseas - i.e like Jump did - I don't think most people would have issues with paying for the entertainment they consume.


And as someone else pointed out, those who pirate probably won't consume it unless it was free.

 

[KLOL506]

Reminder that while this isn't about promoting piracy, CORPORATIONS ARE ALSO NOT YOUR ******* FRIEND. NEVER WILL BE.

 

[KLOL506]

Either way, half is good news and half is bad news but life will go on as always. Piracy is unstoppable, and time and time again the Streisand Effect will show us just how pitiful it is to restrict access to entertainment like this. If there is a will, people will always find a way.

As Lord GabeN once said, piracy is an issue of service, not price.

 

[KLOL506]

Strongly agreed. We need a good Crunchyroll-style subscription service that is available globally, not just in a few countries, and that contains most of the manga from all the major publishers.

There is also the issue that most third-world countries have citizens who straight up do not have credit cards to be able to access online sites and yet most of the fanbase originates from there.

 

[Confluctor]

There is also the issue that most third-world countries have citizens who straight up do not have credit cards to be able to access online sites and yet most of the fanbase originates from there.

On top of that, we have other laws preventing this. Too many shitty rules ngl.

 

[Lilixa]

There is also the issue that most third-world countries have citizens who straight up do not have credit cards to be able to access online sites and yet most of the fanbase originates from there.

why would they use credit cards rather than debit cards ?

 

[KLOL506]

why would they use credit cards rather than debit cards ?

Prolly because at times they straight up refuse debit cards, not all of them but most of them do to my knowledge.

There's always PayPal but even that isn't exactly available all over the world (28 countries to be exact, including my homeland of Bangladesh).

 

[Antvasima]

why would they use credit cards rather than debit cards ?

I strongly agree about that we should definitely not accidentally encourage anybody to buy things on credit.

 

[KLOL506]

I strongly agree about that we should definitely not accidentally encourage anybody to buy things on credit.

I wouldn't do it either even if I had one. Hell, I'm still of the whole "cash-on-delivery" mindset since my entire country runs on that premise, for fear of getting scammed.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I don't agree with everything in his platform but he's a cool guy. Supports health coverage and better work conditions for manga and anime industry workers, wants copyright reform, more legal protection for creators, etc.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, those seem like very good intentions. The work conditions for most of the people who produce anime in Japan, for example, are generally horrendous.

 

[Jibz]

Can someone explain this to me because its all jargon to me

 

[Antvasima]

What is hard to understand here exactly?