Obviously this is entirely up to the instance owner, but it seems to me that, if anything, all of this actually makes our position stronger.

Scanlation’s always been a sort of gray area. It’s technically piracy - that part’s black and white - but the publishers have generally turned a blind eye to it, at least in cases in which there are and will be no licensed translations available. The publishers appeared to generally see it, and correctly, as free advertising (and in fact, scanlation is the ENTIRE reason that manga has gotten as popular as it has outside of Japan).

So the basic rule of thumb for more or less legitimate scanlation has always been that if the series isn’t licensed, it’s fair game, and if the publishers take exception anyway, all they have to do is say so and we’ll immediately “cease and desist.”

In one sense, this is just a massive version of what’s happened to MD all along. They’ve gotten takedown requests from the start, and just immediately comply with them.

The things that are notable about this one are the scale of it, and the fact that many of the titles do not have and likely never will have official translations, so it seems to be entirely vindictive. The publishers aren’t losing anything by allowing scanlations of titles that they’ll never license anyway, so they’re not protecting themselves from any nominal loss - they’re just being dicks.

And that’s undoubtedly what’s rattled MD - it’s not the fact of the takedowns, which have happened from the start but the seeming vindictiveness of them.

But their response has been to formally shift responsibility to the uploaders. They’re saying not just tacitly but explicitly that anyone who uploads anything effectively claims to have the legal right to do so, so if they don’t, that’s their problem and not MD’s.

Which actually removes us even further from any liability. From our position, the uploaders claimed to have the right to do so, and MD accepted their claim, and all we’re doing is taking everyone else at their word.

For whatever that’s worth.