Grey Acumen said:
I'm fairly certain that Japan has different copyright rules than America, and all of these are original japanese manga that has been translated by fans into english. Many of these manga either haven't released anywhere near these current chapters and even more I've never even heard of in America and doubt if they'll ever come overseas. I know there are a few manga on the site that has been taken down at the request of those holding the rights to the manga, so I'm fairly certain everything is on the up and up. If companies have a problem, they should be able to contact the site to take down whatever they're having problems with. For many companies, this type of thing offers a lot of overseas advertizing that could potentially put their series into exporting to the US, and that's the big thing for and manga/anime company is getting the exports to bring money into the country. I'm hardly a legal authority, but that's my best grasp of the situation.
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Modification and distribution of copyrighted work without the author or respective copyright owner's permission is always illegal. A lot of people like to skirt this issue by saying "Well it's not released here" or "The copyright holder doesn't care" but neither make it any less illegal. Indeed, were the author to request the website owner take those manga down, the website owner would have to do so or face legal proceedings*.
Edit: *To further clarify, in this case the legal proceedings I speak of would be taken not by the copyright holder but by the appropriate law enforcement agency responsible for protecting the copyright holder's work.
