From what I gather Shou was caught for tracing glamour photography, the sort of thing the photographer makes a living off of, and is very invested in protecting their copyright. Going out and taking pics of Tokyo or wherever it happens to be and making alterations to fit as backgrounds is definitely a different sort of thing both from a copyright and an ethical point of view.
From what I gather the use of photos in manga backgrounds is very common, at least in stuff that takes place in realistic urban settings. But the use of traced photos for character art is frowned upon, and the use of traced copyrighted glamour photos is even more so. Not to mention, it presents a pretty obvious black eye to the magazine within the publishing industry, so you can see why they'd discourage it.
last edited at Jan 9, 2016 12:38PM