No Kuma, but some other text is here

This is a message by our captain Xant

(You may have heard of him from the name of this website)

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Hey guys, I haven’t really opened my mouth in a while for these announcements.

This time though I really do need to say something. Yes, this is about Kuma.

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When a series gets licensed, it’s proper manners to drop the work. There’s a few reasons behind this:

First, when something in our sphere gets licensed, the publisher typically looks into cracking down on (the now) illegal translation of the IP. If it had stopped, they tend to leave it be. If it hasn’t stopped…well you might be too new to remember the big DMCA sprees of the past. Big F in chat for BT.

Second, it’s a sign of respect to both the author and publisher(s). We already do gray-area work with these translations. Stepping on the toes of the people who more or less ignore us and let us do our thing isn’t really inviting pleasant feelings.
They leave us to our devices, we respect their territory, everyone wins in the end.

Finally, putting those two points together, we’re walking a tightrope in a sense. If every translator plays by the rules and respects each other and the author/publisher(s), we have a mostly well-oiled machine.
Once someone throws a wrench in by, let’s say continuing a series once it’s been licensed or they’ve been approached by the IP holder to stop but summarily ignore it, they put a lot more than just themselves on the chopping block.
In the past, when a series got an official DMCA notice, other works under the same publisher umbrella got slapped too. Not all of them, and not every time, but enough to be concerning. Even if the work was on someone else’s site and was a completely different series.
By sticking your neck out to continue translations, you put not only yourself under the blade but you also put possibly unrelated parties there too.

This isn’t about just respecting the author and/or the publisher, it’s about respecting the other people in the community who bust their balls providing translations.
Respect that they don’t want their series getting removed summarily due to your decision.
Respect that they don’t want their site possibly getting nuked due to your decision.
Respect that in our grey-area line of hobby work you sometimes might have to stop cold turkey.
Stop being a selfish, entitled censored and recognize exactly what it is you’re risking.

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So why did I say all that? Well we’ve heard murmurings of other teams that will just ignore the licensing and continue translating Kuma. It’s ultimately their decision to do so and we can’t stop them.

But in that vein, the 139 unedited chapters we had planned on releasing to all of you in the coming couple weeks will no longer be coming out. We don’t wish to be caught in the DMCA trap these disrespectful idiots might set off, thus we are washing our hands of the entire series. The chapters we’ve done will remain up until we are approached to remove them, but we will not do further work on Kuma unless given the green light by the license holder. Which won’t happen.

We’ve officially dropped Kuma cold turkey. Good luck to every other team who decides to continue. I hear Russian Roulette is great to get the blood pumping this time of year.

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Last time’s next linked to this song.
Here’s a new one, with extra sorrow for this week.