Gambler wrote...
Since I am not too well-versed with computers, networks and the law, I shall present a noob-ish question.
Can the authorities shut a site down if it is hosted on a personal server?
Yes, they'll present a order to cease and desist the sharing of material copyrighted within that country (if it's not published in the US, for example, they won't have a leg to stand on for telling a US site to stop sharing the files. There's rumblings about changing this, which would be the near pinnacle of money grubbing since it's essentially saying "well if it's popular, we'll go ahead and publish it. Go retroactively charge them with copyright infringement.") as well as fine the owners of the site for every download, force them to give up their data and logs so the users can be tracked down and then sue the "users" for copyright infringement. You know, what the RIAA does. MPAA acts a bit more responsibly, but that's not to say they couldn't do so. I would hope any manga publishers were smart enough to not commit terrorism on their own fanbase. Granted, leechers don't generate direct revenue, but if they provided them with free, lower quality materials and allowed anyone to modify them under a creative commons license for the purpose of either satire or fan based publicity, they would spread their product out a lot farther and reach more folks who might pay for it (for those not in the know, this crackpot fly-by-night school called Harvard had their business school (it's a masters program that is so bad it counts against you on a resume) do a study and long term those that do the most file sharing also buy the most material. That's right, because they could get a version for free to evaluate, they bought the actual material.
And just in case you don't know what Harvard is (for those not familiar with US schools and couldn't detect my sarcasm), it's actually a well respected Ivy league school who's business school is also well respected, arguably more so that the actual main school.