27
votes
Tachiyomi removes Mangadex and Bato.to repositories due to DMCA takedown from Kako
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- tachiyomi-extensions/REMOVED_SOURCES.md at master · tachiyomiorg/tachiyomi-extensions
- Authors
- tachiyomiorg
For those unfamiliar with it, Tachiyomi is an app for Android for reading manga. It works by accessing repositories from various sites, which require you to install extensions to access them. It's been my preferred way of accessing many webtoon-style series for a while now, as those are designed for mobile reading and Tachiyomi's interface is well suited for it. I even prefer reading the few Webtoon comics I still follow on Tachiyomi over the official app because I can just tap the bottom of the screen to scroll, and it shows reading progress for each chapter.
Now the Korean publisher Kakao has issued a DMCA takedown request to Tachiyomi to remove access to some repositories, the two biggest casualties being bato.to and Mangadex. It's a big hit, since those are two of the main sites for reading manga.
It's personally frustrating to me, as that's 95% of my own reading library on the app. I get them requesting the removal of Bato because people will reupload copies of official translations of licensed series there. However, Mangadex is almost entirely fan scanlators, and doesn't support uploading official translations. It often links directly to chapters on official sources such as Shueisha, and tries to cut down on hosting fan translations of licensed content. The only official licensed translations I see on there are scans of series where the license expired, usually much older manga.
It's just a big disappointment to me that the Tachiyomi devs didn't even try to resist. From what I can tell, Kakao didn't issue a formal request or do it through Github. The Bato site is generally just not good (I remember they briefly used scripts to incorporate ads or something similar), and the site just always gave me sketchy vibes. And while I use MD regularly, I ultimately prefer using Tachiyomi for reading long strip-format series at this point.
I don’t think this is a reasonable reaction. The tachiyomi developers don’t even get paid, to expect them to seriously resist a takedown request from Kakao is just not within the realm of possibility.
Not to mention the app is open source to begin with, so any modifications particular users would like to have, they can have, on their own (and more practically, other people with the same interests that are developers will have forks of).
All manga scanlations is grey to begin with. Actually it’s pretty black in most legal jurisdictions, as not only do translations usually not count as separate works copyright wise, but the images of the series are not transformed at all. It’s not a winning fight for tachiyomi, they don’t have the resources for it, and they understandably don’t want to potentially risk court judgements that can permanently ruin their life financially.
It's a similar fight anime went through a few decades back. The Shounen Jumps of the world will fight but they really don't bother much (they pretty much won the fight with MangaPlus). Meanwhile, most manga don't even acknowledge the overseas audience nor have english facing websites/storefronts. Why fight in a market you don't serve?
And as we'll see here, this won't end it. Tachiyomi will probably have some fork (on or off Github) adding back Mangadex and some users will maintain that, since Mangadex is so popular.
Logically I know you're right and knew that when posting this, but a part of me is still disappointed though. At last report, it doesn't seem to be listed in Github's official DMCA repository, so they likely didn't submit it through Github. If they had, it could have given Github itself ground to get involved and help counter it, which they ultimately did for youtube-dl.
There's also the fact Tachiyomi isn't directly hosting series, but simply a means to access other sites through an extension. It doesn't allow you to bypass restrictions on official hosts, such as episodes on Webtoons locked you need to pay to read. I think some extensions for official sources even support logging in through Tachiyomi somehow so you can still read it on Tachiyomi without bypassing pay walls. Basically, the app is in a bit of a gray area even among manga sites.
I do get the developers have no responsibility to fight legal battles and understand why they wouldn't bother challenging it, but part of me is still just disappointed, logic be damned. And it also makes me concerned on what other sources will get removed in the future, since they capitulated so easily to removing two of its primary sources.
The pedant in me can't help but point out that no DMCA claim was filed.
You can tell since a rights holder would normally contact GitHub saying "Hey you're hosting content that infringes on my IP", and GitHub would take some action. GitHub makes such claims public at https://github.com/github/dmca, and there are none for Tachiyomi in the last two months.
I'm pretty such Kakao just looked through commits to find contributor email addresses, and sent them scary messages saying "Take this down or we'll pursue legal action".
There's a bunch of questions as to whether Kakao could go after Tachiyomi in the first place, since the app hosts no content and is just a hyper-specialized web browser. Clearly, the Tachiyomi devs would rather not fuck around and find out so they complied.
I don't know that this would hold up as a defense. I would not be surprised if a particularly litigious rights holder is successful in getting Mangadex shut down in the distant future.
My impression is that Mangadex has had its impressive longevity despite its size because it's the lesser evil, and they're generally cooperative with rights holders. History has shown that another scanlation site will rise up if mangadex dies.
Separately, I don't know that Mangadex leaving is as impactful as it seems:
Off topic: Are there any rules on Tildes about discussing piracy?
This is true, but it's helpful to keep in mind the normie users only follows a few major series with very consistent browsing habits. They also don't follow developer drama until it directly affects their habits. Mangadex always experiences a serious traffic spike on days a new Solo Levelling chapter releases, so I'm sure there will be a flood of users asking what happened to their weekly fix when Tachiyomi stops working with Mangadex.
I'm still able to use the extension on my current version, I think I'll hold off on updating the app. Astonishing that MangaSee didn't get hit seeing as it does host actual official licensed translations.
Unfortunately I only learned about this after updating the app today. Especially annoying because I haven't opened the app in a while and am way behind on everything. Got the prompt to update it, then someone mentioned it on Discord a few hours later.
The older apk are still just on the github release page as of right now
The good news is Tachiyomi's newest version (0.15) allows for external repos to be added. I just added this one recommended on reddit posts, and it seems to be working fine so far. The two series I tried both loaded instead of giving the "can't find the site" error. Was incredibly simple for me to install, though a few commenters indicate varying levels of success with accessing series from those sites.
Update 2: Kakao has publicly announced they will be taking legal action against the Tachiyomi developers, the github repo for the app, and all forks of it: https://twitter.com/kakaoent_pcok/status/1744889648265175197
Transcription below:
(felt this was big enough to bump the thread, sorry if it wasn't)
This is just... Comic book villain levels of evil. The development of the app is now in serious jeopardy, even if it is open source.
It's also a shame that the devs respected Kakao's wishes by removing the extensions and Kakao proceeded with legal action anyway.
Huh, I'm only just realizing that that account is an official Kakao Entertainment account. I'd seen links to individual tweets that read more like satire to me, and thought it was just a troll account.
I wonder what they consider "strong legal and institutional responses".
A big part of their strategy seems to be public disclosure of actions they've taken, so scrolling through their Twitter suggests that they either:
I would imagine if they'd found success in something more punitive through a court, that'd be plastered anywhere they can.
This is echoed in a white paper published by Kakao: http://newsroom.kakaoent.com/wp-content/themes/kakao-ent/assets/files/P.CoK%20Whitepaper%20Vol.3_Countermeasures%20against%20Illegal%20Content.pdf
About their strategy in the English speaking world:
There doesn't seem to be any mention of anything beyond that, which is said more explicitly when they describe the challenges they face:
I'm getting déja vu, since this feels like the Manhwa industry going through what the Manga industry has been going through for the last 20-30 years.
Manga publishers have been fighting this battle for a long time, and despite how litigious they've been I'd argue their biggest victories have only come with distribution improvements (e.g. MangaPlus).
It's not clear to me that Manhwa publishers like Kakao will find more success now. Even looking at the results from Kakao taking down scanlation groups, a lot of them just come back with the same content under a different name.
I'd be interested to see if Kakao experiments with their business model to draw more people away from piracy like the Manga industry ended up doing.
They don't need to have legal merit to have a chilling effect. Unlike website operators, who take more seriously their anonymity due to their higher legal risk, the tachiyomi developers are one court discovery process from Github having to fork over their personal information (if it isn't already obvious on their account).
If you're a developer, who's been volunteering their time, for free, and you're now actually facing a civil suit, which would require you to pony up money for your own lawyer no matter how without merit you think the suit is, until the case is over and any appeals are done, I would honestly just disappear and stop developing. Anything you say or do at this point can and will come up in discovery if it does come to a suit. Not to mention it just isn't worth it when you had no reward anyway.
And that would be a serious chilling effect on Tachiyomi development.
Update: All non-self-hosted extensions have now been removed in order to avoid future legal troubles, and the dev team will no longer provide support for extensions on their official channels.
Official statement: https://tachiyomi.org/news/2024-01-09-extensions-removal
From now on, Tachiyomi users will have to point the app to an extension repository if they want to use other extensions. There is already a repository with all extensions but I'm not sure if I can link it here.
The reaction to this has been both somewhat entertaining but also deeply disappointing, although not surprising at this point. The sheer amount of entitlement people have towards volunteer developers is disgusting. You are not in a customer/service provider relationship. You are in a charity/recipient relationship.
You give nothing and deserve nothing in particular.
Not to mention that the change is not particularly cataclysmic to begin with, and is common with other grey area software vessels like emulators and other manga apps.
Don't know if you've ever spent any time in the Tachiyomi discord, but that's what they get on the daily. They have a team of volunteers dedicated just to providing support, and it's wild how often people will come in with the tone "This thing is broken, fix now (p.s. I'm not going to give you useful debugging information until you ask)".
I wonder if Paperback, which is something of an iOS counterpart to Tachiyomi, will manage to dodge this as a result of how it complies with App Store rules.
A fresh install of Paperback is basically a blank slate… it’s just a manager for local manga files. There’s not even a list of sources/extensions to install. To add sites like Mangadex you need to install source extensions which are found elsewhere, not hosted by the dev, and not pointed to in any way by the app. Additionally with how these sources work, anybody can host them so trying to take down sources would be a bit like whack-a-mole.
The Neko fork still seems to up ironically. Not sure if it’s next.
Neko is a dedicated app so it would basically kill the app if it does.
I say "kill" but what I really mean is "people will make 10 forks to maintain and the cat and mouse chase begins". These apps aren't on a store so the users will just go wherever they can to host it. Even on a MEGA file.
In case anyone's looking for a legitimately licensed alternative, I'm happy with Manta app. Flat subscription fee for unlimited access to all its manga/manhwa (mostly romance). I got the annual subscription which comes out to about 2 USD per month. Much less content compared to Webtoon or scanlation sites, but I really like these features:
Mangadex still seems to be up for me, and indeed, I got an update for Aishiteru Game this morning.
Fwiw side note. Mangadex might be big... But many times I've found their collections are incomplete and missing random chapters from various series. Other sources are more complete (are we allowed to talk about them ?)
There's an easy explanation for that. Mangadex has several rules about removing chapters, namely:
If the scanlation team requests it
If a rights holder requests it
If the chapter is a rip of the official release
Other sites don't have such rules and just upload anything.
Mangadex always had a goal of respecting the wishes of the people behind the chapter releases. Other sites are more or less just rehosting content without a care in the world.
Yep, that's one of the reasons I primarily use MD. As I said in my original comment, the only time I see rips of official releases is when it's a manga with an expired license. Those are usually pretty old and obscure manga that aren't likely to ever get translated or licensed again, the most common examples I've encountered are old horror manga anthologies or short series. (On that note, always a bit jarring to encounter a manga that's read left to right due to how it was published in English.)
It's also one of the only sites that doesn't try to profit off of hosting manga. It has no ads and all donations go to maintaining the site. It's basically the most ethical option for reading fan translated manga, which sounds like a weird way to describe what's technically piracy. While it's important to support official sources when possible, as someone else noted, there are many manga that won't ever get official translations. Unfortunately, a lot of my tastes tend to lean towards those types of series. It is hard liking old horror manga and series about assassins and the criminal underworld c':
Scanlation is an interesting case — there’s definitely an element of piracy, but at the same time many official sources for English versions are either awful or even nonexistent. I wonder what kind of business model publishers could build to leverage the (currently) volunteer work of the scanlators to fairly compensate the artists and possibly even compensate the volunteers in some way.
Employ them?
Scanlators, especially from a lot of the bigger groups, are producing work that a lot of people consume and sometimes prefer over official releases. They are often so motivated that they work for free, despite the fact that scanlation is not easy.
This actually happened a few years ago. Kengan Omega used to be scanlated unofficially by a group called Hokuto no Gun. They were approached by the official English publisher, and ended up negotiating a deal to produce the official version. The series' author even commented on how they had to delay the official English release because the initial translation samples were worse than what had been scanlated.