Citing Kotatsu’s recent shut down, two of Mihon’s devs said that misuse of Mihon’s name and branding by a group may endanger the project.
I copied the text if you don’t want to go the link. It’s a bit long so I spoilered it.
spoiler
Hello everyone,
With Kotatsu’s recent shutdown and due to some ongoing issues over the years, I believe Mihon is also under threat. If you care about the project’s future, please take a moment to read this message.
Who is behind the threat, and how?
A group going by iiTachiyomi and recently Miyomi has built a massive following by impersonating Tachiyomi (Mihon’s predecessor) across various platform. They only rebranded to iiTachiyomi after years of request and only on platforms where they had a low following.
Their blatant impersonation was one of the key reason behind the legal threat Tachiyomi received, which ultimately led to its shutdown. When we announced Mihon and exposed their behavior, iiTachiyomi promised to change their ways and not impersonate Mihon.
However, just months after Mihon launched, they resumed the same behavior by:
- Creating a new brand “Miyomi: Tachiyomi and Mihon community” to capitalize on Mihon’s name
- Posting Mihon release notes and announcements without attribution
- Sharing updates of third-party extension repos without attribution
- Failing to clarify they are not the developers behind Mihon or those extensions
- Selling fake Mihon branded merchandise
Why does this threaten Mihon?
When P.CoK, the anti-piracy division of Kakao requested the removal of extensions, the Tachiyomi team complied. iiTachiyomi, however continued distributing them in a misleading way, causing confusion that escalated into legal pressure, which resulted in Tachiyomi shutting down.
Now, they are doing the same thing with Mihon. Their misrepresentation and misuse of Mihon’s name, branding and work puts the project at risk, despite Mihon having already corrected the mistakes Tachiyomi made. It could also cause problems for other apps they promote.
What to do from now on
iiTachiyomi claims to serve the community, but their actions prove otherwise. To protect Mihon:
- Report iiTachiyomi or Miyomi pages that mislead users
- Correct people who confuse Mihon with iiTachiyomi or Miyomi
- Don’t share or support unofficial Mihon merchandise
- Spread the word: Mihon has no connection to them
Signed by:
- Antsy, Mihon Developer
- jobobby04, TachiyomiSY Developer
This is after the action that Kotatsu manga app shutting down due to Kakao’s continued war on manga piracy, and Google’s future policy of limiting what Android users can install on their own devices.
screenshot
Important
In light of recent challenges — including threating actions from Kakao Entertainment Corp and upcoming Google’s new sideloading policy — we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Kotatsu and end its support. We’re deeply grateful to everyone who contributed and to the amazing community that grew around this project.
One year ago, Tachiyomi shut down due to Kakao’s efforts, as per this post here.
After submitting myself to torture by back reading a bit of their discord’s general chat from the point of the two announcements, it’s a crashout and some pirates’ beef with each other.
So now I wished I reported on Kotatsu’s shutdown only, not this annoying drama.
Wait Kotatsu is shut down? Shit…
Yeah. I considered Kotatsu before when Tachiyomi shut down, but stuck with Mihon as it’s a direct successor. Although I use one of the forks though because… panda time.
Never really did tried Kotatsu.
Well that sucks as Kotasu is my bedtime reading app to prevent doom scrolling.
Definitely open to suggestions on a replacement app that does similar functions.
This sucks, been using mihon on my ereader pretty much since tachiyomi died. Excellent app that improves on it’s predecessor in pretty much every way and I don’t even use it for piracy directly, I have a komga server that I read from (which tbf is filled with pirated content lmao though I do sometimes buy raws for niche stuff that’s not like chainsaw man).
Best client app around though, imo. Hope they navigate this successfully
Wait, how do you use Mihon to connect to your own server? Do you need to build your own source app for that? Is that what Komga is? Idk please explain. I’m already self-hosting othet stuff.
Pirates complaining when they get pirated, and they don’t understand why that’s funny.
How’s about you go fuck yourself?
pp too short, visions of disappointment
It’s not even piracy. The license permits redistribution and profiting of it.
The issue is that this increases the risk of Mihon getting shut down. Mihon devs don’t make any money. Nobody profits of those downstream developers using the name of the original project to make money besides them. It’ll just result in Mihon ceasing to exist.
Everything would be so easy if we just had a good local comic reader for smartphones 😭
Mihon does support local sources.
Oh my word, I need to see if this work well with Western comics.
Better back up your list somehow in case they go down.
But also just my luck as I submitted this post, Antsy updated on their discord lol.
Here’s the post:
screenshot
Hello @everyone again,
Sorry for acting childish on the whole situation. 1.5 years of frustration bursted out with Kotatsu dying and iiTachiyomi pushing the “Mihon Community” thing. After a good night of sleep and staff being angry with me (love them) I’ve decided to end this whole thing again. I’ve 4 reasonable demands for iiTachiyomi. I won’t escalate it even if they disagree. But I hope the community will hold them accountable if they do.
https://xcancel.com/mihonapp/status/1986331231274082805
https://xcancel.com/mihonapp/status/1986331233522200961
https://xcancel.com/mihonapp/status/1986331235816440171
https://xcancel.com/mihonapp/status/1986331238148546834the demands. xcancel screenshot
Better back up your list somehow in case they go down.
Given the list is local Mihon would continue to work for the foreseeable future. The first thing to break are the extensions which doesn’t impact exporting the reading list.
I don’t see what the problem is. Sure, someone else taking credit and making some money off some merchandise, but how does that threat their existence?
Missed donations? And making Mihon more of a legal target? (Although how exactly?)
If an entity makes money using a name similar to Mihon, rightsholders like Kakao are more likely to issue a cease and desist.
Kakao likely doesn’t care to differentiate between the original developers who don’t make any money and the other entity using a similar name. They might even think both projects are from the same people. Thus the downstream making money threatens the existence of the original project.
Okay I see but I thought they immunized themselves against legal business likes cease and desist letters, since that’s what got the original project Tachiyomi into Jeopardy.
I thought they accomplished this by going fully anonymous, but this has always been a guess on my part.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer.
In my opinion they should be safe legally because extensions are developed and distributed separately.
But I don’t think companies like Kakao care for that. If they DMCA (or sue) Mihon devs, they’d have to de-anonymize themselves to properly fight the claim. If not, at least their website or source code repo could get taken down. If they’ve used Discord or a similar platform, chats could be used to identify them.
Ryujinx, a Nintendo Switch emulator, stopped development a year or so ago. As far as we know, it was developed cleanly without doing anything illegal. But Nintendo somehow found the developer (in Brazil I believe) and threatened them so they folded. Nintendo didn’t even need to sue them.
