Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-24967434-20140827102857/@comment-945885-20140828111639

Sorry I wasn't around yesterday to clarify this situation. I'm currently typing this up very slowly on my tablet, so pardon lazy formatting.

The raws (untranslated bootleg scans) used by scanlation groups have historically come from "raw providers" who have access to the physical magazines before they go on sale, either through the shipping industry or stores that receive and/or sell them early. Shipments for WSJ arrive in stores on the Wednesday before they go on sale. WSJ officially goes on sale on Mondays in Japan.

The spoilers (brief recaps with perhaps a photograph or two) similarily used to come from Japanese posters on the ni channel message board (most notably ohana) who had access to the books before they went on sale. These spoilers trickled off as the Japanese publishers cracked down on prosecuting copyright violations, focusing on spoiler and scan hosting sites.

More recently, scanlators have continued to use their own personal raw provider contacts to release scanlations on Wednesdays, as they're relatively safe from prosecution due to operating outside of Japan. However the release of untranslated bootleg scans in Japan have been delayed by several days, out of fear of prosecution. Japanese spoilers have actually been replaced by text retranslations of English scanlations back into Japanese.

Now, in the last week or so, the major Japanese manga publishers, namely Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha, have launched a new anti-piracy campaign. This includes a change to their shipping methods to delay if not prevent the leaking of bootleg scans before the books hit newsstands and officially go on sale.

This means that English bootleg scanlation sites will not be able to obtain raws until just shortly before they go on sale in Japan; for WSJ series, this probably means Sunday at the earliest (we'll need to wait and see).

Also keep in mind that this anti-piracy push will probably include cease and desist notifications being sent out to well known bootleg scanlation aggregators in the near future; at least those based in countries with copyright laws. Viz is owned by both Shueisha and Shogakukan so it has the legal power to help enforce those copyrights.

For those of you who live in territories where the official digital English Weekly Shonen Jump is published (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa), I strongly suggest subscribing. 48 issues a year, adding up to about 20,000 pages of manga, for only $25; simultaneous release with Japan at 1 PM (EST) / 10 AM (PDT) every Monday. The image and translation quality is higher, and it includes special features, interviews, one-shots, even free bonus issues when the magazine goes on break in Japan (ex: last Obon it was a Naruto retrospective with a 70+ page color cover and spread gallery, the one-shot pilot, and a Kishimoto interview). Starting next month they'll also be publishing English translations for every new series in the Japanese magazine to evaluate serialization potential via English/Japanese reader surveys, so you might actually be able to influence stuff.

If it's not available in your region, tweet/email/write Viz to show you're interested.