First things first, this whole situation sucks, and not just for us (users of MD). It is going to suck for these publishers as well. Without sites like MD spreading manga to international audiences, those audiences are simply going to stop reading it and consume some other form of entertainment. The official avenues to get this content largely don't exist in many parts of the world, and where they do exist kinda (very much) suck. As readership drops, the value of their IP for licensing will also decrease.
I have a lot more understanding for these companies issuing takedowns for IPs that have been licensed, but the vast swath of unlicensed content (that is almost guaranteed to never be licensed) makes this feel punitive to the community as a whole and vindictive.
As for the future, I fear that scanlators are going to go a couple different routes:
- Some scanlators will likely just stop.
- Some will move to uploading to a different aggregator.
- Some will only upload to their own site.
- Some will probably only post on less public forums or chatrooms like a discord server.
In any case, it is inevitably going to fragment the community.
