Junk food for thought.

When you buy a game, book, DVD, etc you can share it privately for free. You cannot broadcast it publicly or for a profit, as One Manga did.

Did I offend you? And yet, you replied. Bravo. Well, thank goodness that the whole open source software movement is changing the very fabric of intellectual properties, including copyrights of entertainment assets like videos or songs. Or like this.

You clearly know very little about manga publishing.

It took uniting with Japanese publishers and American publishers to be able to afford shutting down the biggest piracy site on the Internet. Manga publishers, creators and artists are not riding around in limos.

Should we ban the internet? Thanks to the internet, piracy is everywhere and very big from sharing Japanese manga to Hollywood movies.

Uniting and taking OM down is similar to Music Industry took down Napster. It comes down to dollar and cents. We are talking about being reluctant to allow piracy on the internet. It has nothing to do with knowing manga publishing or not, rather about money being lost from not buying manga and reading it for free.

Why do you think you offended me? Was that the goal?

Why are you saying "bravo" because I responded? Did you not think I would respond?

You have clearly missed the point of open source software.

The point of open source software is to give the public an alternative to mainstream pay software, like Windows and Office. It is not about stealing Office and Windows and distributing it for a profit.

If you want to make your own manga, movies and music and distribute them for free on the Internet as an alternative to "pay media", then you are following the open source software pattern. One Manga was not that pattern.

Haha. No, since you're unusually strange for a mod.

And did you know that open source lawyers have been challenging some of the copyright laws indirectly for years? Especially in the States? Especially the SCO Group lawsuits? Open source isn't much about alternative as to bring balance between proprietary and open (i.e. downloading for free) worlds.

Yes, I believe I have read that somewhere back in 2007. If money is involved, there's a law suit. I would not be surprised if one day someone were to be suited for online quoting of a phrase.

It's different in that case though due to the law. It's fine if you borrow manga/books/CDs/DVD's off your friends, the point is that sites like OM deal in ~wholesale distribution~ on a massive scale. This isn't one bloke lending his personal collection out to everyone he knows in person, it's a ring of people copying copyrighted material and producing a public release of the item against the wishes of the publishers and writers. It's exactly the same, and just as illegal as someone filming a movie in a cinema, burning copies and selling it as a bootleg. The fact that OM doesn't charge the reader is negligible, they're still piggybacking a fat profit off of it. Buying books, passing them on, borrowing them and swapping them with friends etc, is a viable and legal way to spread interest that actually genuinely supports the writers, artists and the rest of the people who put massive effort into the production of the work.

Otherwise. You want to stop internet piracy for good? Then shut down the internet since the internet is too efficient to share and copy contents. Welcome to the internet, everyone.