For those not fully invested in the global manga/webtoon phenomenon, the scale and depth can be a bit disconcerting.
The fans are knowledgeable, passionate and growing in number; Many older enthusiasts were introduced to content through pirate sites, at a time when it was impossible to legally purchase content.
Availability has improved a lot today, but old habits die hard; Pirate sites have not disappeared either, which is a major challenge for content owners around the world, in all content categories.
One of the companies trying to reduce piracy of its webtoon content is South Korea-based Kakao Entertainment. Unlike other large copyright holders that have combined strong anti-piracy responses with generally moderate public profiles, Kakao prefers a different approach. The company's anti-piracy team constantly interacts with the public on social media, often with controversial results.
Of course, Kakao is entitled to these freedoms. The company owns the content it seeks to protect, and since almost all anti-piracy strategies fail to a greater or lesser extent, trying something different could breathe new life and generate new ideas.
That said, the history books show that some scenarios should be approached with caution; When certain ingredients are combined, there is a greater risk of unpredictable results.
Open Source Manga Reader 'Tachiyomi' Receives Legal Threats
For the past ten days, the open source software 'Tachiyomi' has been in the spotlight following a focus by Kakao's anti-piracy team. But first, what does the software do? A manga fan familiar with the software informed TorrentFreak the following:
โTachiyomi is probably the best Android-based manga/webtoon reader with lots of features and extensibility. The development team behind this has worked hard for almost 9 years since 2015 and iterated tirelessly to create possibly the best type of reader that exists today.โ
Tachiyomi is free to use, with the added advantage of being completely open source. Like similar tools such as web browsers or torrent clients, Tachiyomi does not include third-party content and does not attempt to block users to specific sources.
However, through various extensions, users are free to choose their own, including unofficial sources from where it is possible to download content, including pirated content, without paying a single cent.
We are informed that on January 2, 2024, project contributors received a communication from Kakao representatives who made several demands regarding this functionality.
A source familiar with the events informs TorrentFreak that Tachiyomi's lead developer was instructed to end the nine-year project by removing all versions of the app, including those from GitHub.
Additionally, he was ordered to delete all comics uploaded to the app, even though the app had no third-party content, period. Another lawsuit sought the immediate removal of all Tachiyomi forks on GitHub.
Tachiyomi starts removing her extensions
We understand that later, on January 2, Tachiyomi's lead developer advised Kakao that the best way to remove the actual content would be to file DMCA notices on problematic sites, over which the project has no control. He also offered to help, informing the company that he was willing to remove individual sources from the separate Tachiyomi extension repository if they were considered a problem.
Three days later, Kakao allegedly submitted a spreadsheet listing allegedly infringing content available on five third-party sites. For one of those sites, Tachiyomi had no extension; For the remaining four, Tachiyomi's team would soon take appropriate measures.
New versions of Tachiyomi were released between January 6 and 8 without a list of extensions having been preloaded. In the future, those who download Tachiyomi will find that extensions are no longer part of the "out of the box" experience.
January 9: Official announcement
an advertisement in tachiyomi.org on January 9 spoke of โextenuating circumstancesโ and a decision to purge the extensions to โensure the long-term sustainability of Tachiyomi.โ
โAs of now, Tachiyomi is transitioning to a fully owned content model. What this means is that you can still enjoy Tachiyomi to read manga, but you will need to search and add your own content,โ the statement added.
24 hours before
As detailed above, the Tachiyomi team responded quickly to Kakao's complaints and took significant action. Arguably, new versions of the app could have been released even sooner without a 48-hour delay in determining certain details.
However, what appeared to be an amicable solution led to an unexpected Twitter post from Kakao's anti-piracy team. It implied that installing Tachiyomi carries a virus risk.
The post has now received 59,000 views and, to quickly summarize the first dozen responses, people didn't particularly like that a long-established open source application was described as a virus risk. One of the more polite answers can be seen below.
For reasons that can vary from person to person and sometimes between communities, people often feel protective of open source projects. In some respects, its open nature seems to provide a small oasis of trust and when surrounded by free and open source software, any perceived threat risks an unpredictable response.
It seems that two can play that game.
January 10: Kakao threatens Tachiyomi Forks
Having obtained compliance from the Tachiyomi team without problems, and then declaring the software a virus risk, Kakao's anti-piracy team on Wednesday took to Twitter once again, this time to threaten the people who forked the Tachiyomi repository .
With over 154,000 views, this post reached a significantly larger audience and generated almost 500 comments. If any were not critical, we apologize for not seeing them; They are not particularly easy to find. The same can't be said for the Community Notes panel that features user responses to complaints in the original post.
Kakao is a huge company overall, so communication policies may vary from unit to unit. Anti-piracy issues may even be completely exempt or considered fair game, but it would be interesting to see how the negative results so far fit with a report released earlier this month.
According Korean timesReform measures are in the works to "reverse negative public sentiment" toward the company as a whole, not necessarily Kakao Entertainment in its own right, but nothing exists in a vacuum.
At least things didn't get worse... right?
When any type of site, service or application is subject to legal threats, it is worth being alert to the possibility of unintended consequences or mere consequences. From basic DMCA notices to informal discussions to full-blown lawsuits, the overall goal is often evident from the nature of the requests.
In this case, it seems that a complete end of Tachiyomi or an effective end due to limited functionality would amount to the same thing; a massive loss of interest in the software and ultimately the end of the game. However, while Tachiyomi no longer supports third-party extensions, it does support third-party repositories, suggesting that the development and functionality of extensions is now the responsibility of others.
Meanwhile, Tachiyomi's popularity seems to be trending up, not down as expected.
'GitHub Trending' is a daily report that presents the popularity trends of repositories on a particular day. Through RSS feeds, trending repositories arrive here daily; This week, the Tachiyomi repository appeared on the list, along with at least two others, one of which may have appeared twice, at least from memory.
But at least things didn't get worse from here, right? Goodโฆ.
There are many mechanisms for measuring an app's popularity on GitHub, some more accessible than others by default. Since receiving a gold star on GitHub is universally considered positive for most projects, another project on GitHub offers a great way to quickly visualize current and historical stellar data for a given project.
The image below shows that between December 14 and 29, Tachiyomi received an average of 15.87 stars each day. In the following two weeks, during which Tachiyomi was threatened, the daily average more than doubled to 43.92 stars each day.
Despite efforts to shut down the project and the imposition of less out-of-the-box functionality, it appears that support for the software has actually increased. While somewhat counterintuitive, targeting open source software always runs the risk of unpredictable results.
