Q:

Freely accessible manga/anime (e.g. webcomic, online anime) and scanlation/fansub

I know that generally, scanlation & fansub are considered illegal, and I have no problem with that.
Now, I recently stumbled upon this question (again): Where can I continue reading Battle Through Heaven?. I noticed that there's a deleted answer mentioning a link to the scanlated version. At first, I thought that's reasonable to be deleted.
Now, after revisiting the MangaUpdates link, I realized that it's actually a Chinese webcomic (link) that anyone can access, and it made me questioning about the scanlation, since not everyone understand Chinese.
So, is the policy the same with general scanlation & fansub (e.g. forbid them since they're illegal)? Is there any exception to answering this kind of question with link to scanlation & fansub?
*I don't contest the deletion of that answer, since a comment on that answer gave a good reason to be deleted (it links to other illegal scanlation/fansub)

A:

My Opinion is to err on the side of caution. The Manga/Novel/Manwha may be freely accessible now but we don't know if that will always be. there are some legal sites which provide some chapters free but either hide the rest behind a paywall or remove the free chapters after so long.
an example is with Shounen Jump on Viz. as we can see Dragonball Super and Kuroko's Basketball some chapters were offered for free but has since expired. Now while the examples may be English Licensed Manga i'm not sure if it's the same in Japan for stuff not licensed in English and if they do we don't want people posting links full translations of chapters which aren't free just because a couple were.
however even if a web comic/novel is available fully for free by the writer themselves or on a site they still have the right to then not make it free, especially when if it because of a publishing agreement. an example i have is The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night, a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fanfiction which was freely available in spanish and was translated to english. however the translation was taken down when it got published

I got contacted moments ago by Nura, the author of this book, and she just confirmed me that she finally signed the publishing contract for this book, so congratulations again to her for this accomplishment. We're going to have to take down the English translation of her novel as we agreed to avoid problems, so if you're still reading it you have until the 30 of June before we edit out all the translations in this thread, if you don't think you will have enough time to finish I think you can make a local copy for you, as long as you don't re-upload it.
The book is going to come out with the title "La Profecía de las Espadas" in two volumes since it's so long, and of course in Spanish only as far as I know. If you want more information ask Nura.

now if we allowed posting unofficial translations on third party sites when The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night was free then when it got published we would either

have to edit the link out of the answer which we can and would do, however that would mean someone would need to either remember that we have the link or we get a notification from the copyright owner in some way.

rely that the linked site is decent enough so that the link is invalidated in some way, the very least have a different landing page. generally not a problem if the author hosts the translation themselves and then pulls it themselves

I know that generally, scanlation & fansub are considered illegal

while yes you are right i would like to use this to point out when a scanlation (if you call it that) is legal. a good example is Yuri-ism who, while does translation of Shoujo Ai/Yuri Doujinshi and makes them freely avalible, have partnered with Isya (434notfound) to help translate her Shoujo Ai/Yuri doujinshi for English and sell it on Fakku and DLSite (the latter not allowing uncensored stuff and it seems Isya wants it to be uncensored). to quote the post on site by Chansu for the release of Rules of Zero  Chapters 1 and 2 (i wont put up a link but understand there is NSFW stuff)

After a long time waiting, we're finally able to announce our next collaboration with Isya (434notfound). We will be publishing her original manga series "Rule of Zero" for you all. We have two chapters ready for you now, and you can expect two more to be ready by the end of April/early May. If you're new to the site or don't remember. Over a year ago we reached out to Isya to help her release her works legally in English to the west. It's been a learning experience for us all, but it's been an amazing one.

most of Yuri-ism's releases would be scanlations that we shouldn't be posting links to so in the above case it would be ok to be talking about Yuri-ism's work but the links to Isya's stuff should be the product pages where you buy (with NSFW Warnings) and avoid linking to Yuri-ism itself

