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Japan's Kyoto District Court has sentenced 39-year-old Shōji Sakai to a one-year prison sentence and a three-year suspended sentence on Friday for distributing anime on the Winny file-sharing network.

Japanese doujinshika---at least at this sort of amateur level---are often very leery of publicity. This might be a reaction to the arrests of several doujinshika in apparently random, token copyright enforcement cases in recent years (such as the infamous Pokemon doujinshika incident), or it might simply be a sign of how negatively "fringe" behavior is viewed in Japanese society

Snape is gorgeous---or at least that's what the djka at this show seemed to believe.

it's how Snape is depicted emotionally that's most telling on a cross-cultural level.

Over the first years of the new millennium these trends continued, with a robust market emerging that combined improved distribution with wider interest to generate revenue for some circles that could no longer be termed “amateur” in any meaningful sense.

The doujinshi market grew steadily via promulgation through the internet and pop culture media. This resulted in the viability of the doujin as a means of part time and increasingly full time employment. “Kojin circles” emerged, consisting of a sole creator (kojin) who handled all aspects of production and received all the benefits of income from publications. Larger circles formed semi-professional units to produce doujin software that would compete with professional releases. Otaku goods shops expanded their scope as doujin vendors, acting as proxy sellers for hundreds of circles both via brick and mortar outlets and via online mail order. Online-only doujin shops such as DLsite emerged, selling digital copies of doujinshi via download. Advances in printing technology and cheap, high quality labor (mostly Chinese) allowed for the proliferation of doujin items to media beyond the traditional books (and less tradtional CD-Rs), including towels, pillowcases, fans, cups, trinkets, and figures.

new class of semi-pro and professional creators

(Chatsworth, CA) The Animation Co-Op Defense League (ACDL), a consortium of Adult Animation Distributors & Studio's, is pleased to announce they have made significant progress in their efforts to educate and combat the proliferation of web sites illegally hosting and offering for sale selling unlicensed content which is owned by the major Animation studios.

Said Crawford, “Every day we speak with web sites, tube sites, and affiliate programs, who have knowingly or unknowingly displayed content that they do not have the rights for. We have discovered that some of them were misinformed and want to legally comply with the Co-Op's members to obtain legitimate licenses to resell the material. This year alone we have already taken down a total of 10,738 infringers, including: 5006 Movie file-sharing links, 2123 Picture file-sharing links and 3609 Blog posts.

digital manga...? I have mixed feelings about how well this will work out. Unlike anime, the format of reading a book doesn't translate as neatly as the format of watching a show on a screen. Manga sales haven't lagged as much as DVD sales partially because many people still prefer holding a physical book in their hands as opposed to reading on a computer screen (the other reason might be because they're cheaper).

I'm not sure if scanlations have as much an impact on manga sales as fansubs do on DVD sales though. Various experiments conducted by both fiction and nonfiction authors suggest that the availability of an e-book actually boosts real book sales.

The pricing model Digital Manga is using is kind of interesting. It's cheaper than buying the physical thing by more than 50%. The experiment I mentioned above had the people release their e-books free, which spurred their real book sales.

However, it was noted at the meeting that users might visit a site that happens to have unauthorized material, and therefore run afoul of the revised law without realizing it.

held twice a year in August and December at the Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo, Japan, and attracts over 450,000 participants over its three day run.

primary focus of the event is the buying and selling of doujinshi

Comiket is also known colloquially as the birthplace of cosplay and thousands of visitors come dressed as their favorite anime, manga and game characters as well.