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Developer: 30% of Kodansha Manga Rejected by iTunes
posted on by Egan Loo
The ZDNet Japan website posted the second part of an interview with releasing e-manga. Hagino and his company advocated a shift away from copy protection, and he described DRM as an "illusion" for the flawed sense of security it provides. He added that DRM is being pushed by the paper-based publishers, but noted that the pirated copies on the net are being scanned from DRM-less, paper-based books and magazines anyways.
Hagino also discussed the issue of censorship, specifically on Kodansha comics that Voyager adapted into iPhone apps were rejected by the iTunes Store. According to Hagino, "a scene where a character is bleeding not because of violence, but because of a disease might be labeled as excessive cruelty."
Hagino cited the specific example of posted Hataraki Man in the iTunes Store in the summer of 2008, but only the first seven installments, split across four apps, are available.)
While discussing the ZDNet Japan article on was one of the earliest manga creators to post apps on the iTunes Store.
The Reuters news service and the Mainichi Shimbun paper posted reports this past week on how the Japanese publishing industry is responding to the e-book reader launches from Apple and other companies in Japan. 31 Japanese publishers, including the top three companies Kodansha, Shueisha, have established the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan to control the distribution of digital books in the country.
[Via Eastern Standard, Ko Ransom]
