Hello, this could be my first post in years… I'm very surprised to see a step like this, so I hope writing this here is not a problem. Please delete this if this is not the place. I've been a member since 2009 and until a couple of years ago, I used to log in daily and love chatting around, loved seeing all these news and translations, and fun discussions about OP here. I used to recommend AP forums to all my friends who loved OP. It was like reading the newspaper in the morning for me.

But eventually I started noticing some very rude answers and some obvious favoritism of some more "popular" people of that time. Not necessarily always against me, but as in generally to others. These people were given a bit more authority over time despite being very rude obviously. Knowing that any form of reply or post we make could be replied by someone making fun of it took the fun out of things. Sometimes people needlessly took sides or only paid attention to what they post. So I started thinking "I'd better not say anything at all" most of the time. This pattern started to become an unwanted stress… I lost my enthusiasm for logging in daily and eventually stopped by only to read what's going on.

By the way, this is by no means pointing fingers, I even have no idea if the people I'm talking about are still active here since I'm not following everything like I used to. Anyway, it's in the past now.

Just wanted to say these since I saw first post and it pointed out "We've received complaints of favoritism and bullying/harassment; we want to address this, and will be revising our rules as a first step." and "While discussing things with the staff, we've seen a need for some more active moderation; we may be looking to adjust our roster."

Thank you for paying attention.

I hope things get better for everyone.

@zorospride:

I'm not really going to apologize for Mangastream. We all know that piracy is wrong. I do think that if Viz did a better job of releasing the chapters on time and not squatting on series they own but don't release then they would limit the number of valid excuses and complaints people have. If Funimation can do it with the anime, why can't Viz do it with the manga?

I'm not going to go into anything about the right or wrong subject here, I understand this is not the place, but I just want to say something very quickly if you excuse me.

Please watch this:

!

Or read it if you can't follow comfortably word by word.

You may not change your opinion, you're free to think whatever you want, but you should at least consider that piracy is not everything the media makes it look like. There are many, many people actually benefiting from it in their sales after all; because these days if you're not on the internet, you're not on anywhere.

I'm sure there are millions of fans who got to know One Piece through pirated ways around the world and then got into buying the volumes, DVDs, merchandise and other stuff. At least I know I did; I followed the entire series online and then spent a significant amount of money into merchandise at some point - heck, this is nothing considering people doing much more than that. But nobody can make me feel bad or wrong about following something online, considering the fact that many (at least top-level) artists make enough money to buy my house when they publish one issue of their work. And as many people pointed out, they will not be able to completely stop it after all. All I'm sad about is losing MS's (considerably) satisfactory work for all this time.

@nanly:

http://peacetheory.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/its-a-sad-sad-day-for-manga-fans-analysis/

I understand your argument and agree on generally, but it's not exactly true what it says on that link. MS was not shut down; in fact, they're talking about now having time to pick up a few new series. They just dropped the ones licensed by Viz.

@Dan:

I feel a good number of people in here don't quite fully understand the nature of the internet, as Viz clearly doesn't themselves.

Remember last year when they went after the online readers? Didn't change a thing. More recently and generally speaking, Megaupload and other similar filesharing sites went down, and not even a week later the stats indicated the shutdowns didn't even put a dent in the amount of piracy going on. Other sites simply picked up the slack.

Scans will continue. I doubt the release schedule will even be impacted much if at all. Maybe for a week or two. Before long the status quo will resume, everyone will have forgotten about this, and Viz, like the MPAA and RIAA, will probably be too fucking stupid to realize the folly of their pointless efforts.

I realize this has happened before and happens every time some company tries shutting down some other scanlation/online reading websites. Yes, this has happened before, and I think we got pretty comfortable with MangaStream for a long time - at least a long time considering how fast things change in the online world.
However, I think the real thing people (like the thousands of comments around social media) are upset and worried about this time is because this was one of the few groups who were working on so many Jump series on a regular schedule and doing a good work, and now people don't know who will pick their favorite series, if they'll be picked by good groups at all, or how long will that take, will it live up to MS's quality in terms of speed and resolution, how will the translations look, what will become of them, etc.
This same thing will happen and getting a C&D is a matter of time for every group out there (I don't know, do they even send out C&Ds anymore or has that changed into another warning? Sorry about that if it's something else now).

@Hiroy:

Other groups are nowhere near as ballsy or an easy enough target like MS, so at most… I don't think Viz would go taking down anyone else. Could be wrong, but I can't say I didn't see this coming.

I see; I honestly hope you're right. I hadn't noticed MS being ballsy, or even that could be dangerous against Viz though They were really taking chapters down regularly and all… Anyway, these first couple of weeks might be though to find a good release for every title, but I'm sure new teams would appear.

@Hiroy:

Soo… 99 cents a week and 25 bucks a year?

Looks like I'm supporting this in 2 weeks. Especially if Viz were to improve on the idea.

Now; I wouldn't mind paying for One Piece if they really went all-out against scanlation groups (though I really doubt they can actually prevent it), however if they're not up-to-date with other series I follow -like mentioned above, they're half way behind KHR just as an example- and I have to wait for months or even years until they catch up with them because they're taking scanlation teams down, I would be pissed. And no, my logic here is not "I'm paying for it, dammit"; it'd be because leaving many large fanbases out there with no option but to wait. For ridiculous long periods of time.

@Aaronrules380:

Not really. Equivalents exist for the other series on that list that are at worst only a bit slower on average

Honestly; just for an example; I don't know any equivalents -slow or not- for KHR better than MS. I'm not trying to defy though, I respect your opinion. But Alpha is half way behind that series and that was just an example. I'm well aware that MS have their flaws in translations, but speed and quality-wise they were really the best fix for some titles on that list for the past 2 years because the other releases I saw were generally and unfortunately worse. I hope some better teams appear after this.

@GearSecond:

Are there any major HQ English groups out there at the moment? NULL is gone and they were always behind (with good reason) but it seems like MangaStream was the only English scan site out there doing releases (and they had watermarks). Even our release section contains primarily Italian releases.

I'd like to know as well.

It's actually really sad to see MS dropping those series. One Piece might have been getting some better translations and better quality scans thanks to the larger fanbase; but as for most of the series on that list, MS was the best option out there for their fans.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but sadly we won't be reading One Piece from MangaStream anymore

http://mangastream.com/content/jump

@bran-chan
Ah yes, now that you mention it, I guess there was something like that said about PayPal a long time ago o_O
Then I guess this means that rule only includes stores and other stable selling places; not auctions because I sure made some doujin sellers filthy rich a long time ago OTL;;;

@Cyber-Robin:

drop me a PM with the doujin. I might be able to help you with it. I got some thats yet to be scanned yet.

Thank you, I did ^^~

@Al!naJames:

Hohoho, that's clever, Mandarake

haha aren't they? not taking any risks…

well, it's reassuring to know I haven't chosen some wrong payment method at least °3°