Comix Blocks Manga Reader Apps as Emails Show It Scraped Rival Kagane

Manga piracy site Comix is blocking third-party reader apps such as Mihon, and their operator has defended the move in public. At the same time, emails published by rival site Kagane show Comix scraping Kagane's library and offering them money to be allowed to continue.

The dispute played out this week on both sites' forums and on Reddit, where readers have reported blocks, captchas and outages at Comix since late September.

Blocks for apps, VPNs and mobile readers

An announcement on Comix's forum, posted in late September and edited in October, says the site automatically blocks IP addresses that send an unusually high number of requests. Blocks last from 3 to 30 days depending on the type of connection, and some providers' address ranges are blocked permanently.

The announcement tells readers to avoid VPNs and shared connections and not to use third-party apps to read or mass-download chapters. It also says blocks will not be lifted on request. OtakuDown reported earlier this month that such blocks were hitting VPN users at Comix and other sites.

Since October 17, readers using apps have also been shown a notice saying Comix does not support third-party apps or extensions. They call it a game of cat and mouse and points mobile app users to the official website, which it says can be installed as an app from the browser.

Reader apps such as Mihon pull chapters from sites through extensions, so readers never load the sites' pages. Many readers use them to keep their libraries in one place, which matters when a site disappears, as KaliScan's readers found earlier this month.

The admin's case

In replies on Comix's forum, posted as screenshots to Reddit, the site's admin said crawlers take up bandwidth and slow down image loading for people reading on the website. In another exchange, the admin described app users as bandwidth stealers.

A Reddit account presenting itself as Comix's developer, whose statement a Comix moderator also posted on the admin's behalf, explained the policy on October 15 and 16. It said third-party apps use bandwidth and servers that Comix pays for, so the site limits them to keep loading fast for people using the website.

The developer acknowledged that Comix scrapes other sites and said that sites scrape each other and pirate sites take content from legal ones. They argued that Comix's own bot reads a scan site like a single reader, while an app with many users loads far more.

The developer also argued that blocking reader apps is no different from scan sites blocking Comix’s own scraper. They defended the bandwidth stealers remark too, saying the other user had insulted them first.

The Kagane emails

Kagane, another unofficial manga and manhwa site, published two email chains with Comix on its forum on October 16. Its administrator posted them after a user asked about a claim by Comix's developer on Reddit that Comix had donated enough to cover Kagane's running costs for a month.

Comix's email address is redacted in the published version. On Reddit, Comix's developer did not dispute the emails and confirmed a donation of about $1,000.

In February, Comix urged Kagane to stop blocking scrapers, calling it a cat-and-mouse game that Kagane could not win, the same comparison its notice now makes about apps. Comix said it had already downloaded 60 to 80% of Kagane's data, asked Kagane to turn off its IP blocking and promised to list Kagane on a credits page.

Kagane replied that it knew it was a losing game against Comix's funding and that it would have liked some credit. Comix also named two other sites, Mangataro and Mangaball, as scraping Comix itself.

In March, Comix sent a donation in the cryptocurrency Monero, which Kagane's administrator later put at $300. In May, Comix asked which torrent sites Kagane took its content from. Kagane replied that its chapters are bought.

A $300 offer

In late June, Comix wrote that it knew Kagane had a system to rip chapters from official platforms and could build the same itself, but lacked the time. It offered $300 a month to share the cost of buying chapters, in return for Kagane whitelisting its bot and accepting that Comix would not show Kagane's credit banners on every chapter.

Comix put its own server costs at about $3,000 and said it paid about $200 for proxy services that let it get past sites' blocks.

Kagane turned the offer down, saying $300 would not offset the cost of being scraped at scale. Comix then wrote that it had already crawled 99% of Kagane's site and would be fine without a deal, and a day later said it had sent $1,000 whether or not Kagane whitelisted its bot.

Kagane's administrator wrote that the site's server costs run to thousands of dollars a month. Neither donation was offered or accepted as payment for a month's costs or as permission to scrape, the administrator said.

Readers split

On Reddit, many readers say they are moving their libraries away from Comix, pointing out that the site blocks apps while scraping others. Others side with the admin, saying running a large site is expensive and that the extra load from apps is real.

Comix's announcement says blocked readers should not contact the site, as blocks will not be lifted on request.

Email chain

Here are screenshots of the email chains.