Japanese and U.S. Publishers Form Coalition Against Scanlations

Publishers Weekly reports that  the 36 member Japanese Digital Comic Association and U.S. manga publishers Vertical Inc, Viz Media, Tokyopop and Yen Press have banded together under a new coalition to address the issue of online scanlations and aggregator sites such as OneManga and MangaFox that illegally distribute unofficial and official translations of copyrighted titles, many currently licensed in the U.S. by the aforementioned publishers.

The issue has recently become a polarizing topic with the increasing popularity of devices such as the iPhone and iPad, with many developers uploading apps that provide access to  manga aggregators without the proper licensing to do so, which has had the effect of the App Store rejecting legitimate applications developed by book publishers on the basis of duplicate content.