Boutique label SuBLime Manga, which specializes in the boys-love genre, had some of their materials shared to an aggregation service recently and after being notified, and defended vigorously on said site, responded publicly. Because the company is one that provides downloadable PDFs of its materials, it’s in a bit of a different space than some of the other online manga publishers in how they offer their materials. It’s not often that you see things called out this way at this point at time, but it’s definitely worth sharing and remembering for those that do participate in such ventures that it can have a cost.
It pains me to even have to write this post, but I must. As some of you may already be aware, yesterday one of the readers of SuBLime’s books illegally uploaded said book to a scanlation aggregator site. Let me be very clear, this is illegal to do and there will be consequences for such actions. I am not going to discuss what site and please do not do so in the comments or I will have to delete your comments. That’s not what this is about.
First, I would like to thank the readers who informed me immediately that this happened and the many readers on the aggregator site that were also appalled by this and came to SuBLime’s defense. You are greatly appreciated by us and also by fellow yaoi fans who do not wish to see us discontinue our download-to-own PDF option.
I have made it very clear from the start that if fans abuse the system and do this that we would stop making this available. Please understand the consequences of this. This doesn’t just prevent us from doing it, it also makes the Japanese publishers less interesting in letting any manga publisher do this. Do not punish the fans of this genre or any genre through your actions.
Now, as for the consequences I mentioned above. If you do this, we will suspend your account and you will lose all access to your purchased books. Can we do this? Yes. It is in our Terms of Use:
“SuBLime respects the rights of all copyright holders and in this regard, SuBLime has adopted and implemented a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of users, members and account holders who infringe the rights of copyright holders.”
Japan is a copyright holder of their material and so are we.
What other consequences? If you like visiting your scanlation aggregator sites and wish to see them continue, bringing them to the attention of a publisher that has a legal department is not a good idea. We can go after the entire site for illegal content. Do we want to do this? No. We want to publish our books for our fans and not deal with this at all, but in order to do that we have to make money from the sales of our books to pay for the licensing, the printing, and not to mention to provide financial support to the many employees and freelancers who work so hard to bring these books to you.
This is not a thread for debate. These are our policies. Please respect and understand that when you purchase a book from SuBLime and upload it for all to see that you are breaking the law.
And now I’m going to end this on a happier note. I can honestly say that 99% of the fandom that have purchased our books have been absolute wonderful in not only respecting the above but also policing others who may not be. You are why we do this! Continue to be the wonderful people you are as you are the ones giving us the financial support we need to stay open and bring you the best yaoi we can from Japan. 🙂 Thank you!
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