Anime pirate site owner arrested, May Face US$45,600 Fine

Anime and manga piracy become a very big problem for the industry. Piracy cost the manga industry alone in Japan roughly 800 billion yen (US$6.95 billion) in the January-October period of 2021. But the piracy will go down as Japan started tightening up their copyright law and taking action against anime & manga piracy by silencing, copyright striking and even arresting the owners of pirate site and charging US$45,600.

In January 2021, Japan passed a copyright law that mostly covers illegal online material like manga and magazines. According to the law, If you download any of these illegally with in Japan, you could face 2 years in prison. Not just prison but $18,000 fine on top. This rule is only for Japan natives and has no effect on countries outside Japan.

Japan also has a law to combat ‘leech’ sites. These are the sites which generally provide links to pirated content hosted on external servers. Running such sites without appropriate licensing is now an arrestable offense.

Police Arrested Man For Running Anime Pirate site

Last month, the Metropolitan Police Department Ayase Station filed charges against a man who operated a linking site that provided links to a pirate site that offered around 30,000 pieces of unauthorized content, including adult animations.

The self-employed 37-year-old is said to have earned the equivalent of around US$4,000 in a recent two-month period. Police arrested him and he may also face a fine of $45,600 and 5 years in prison for doing piracy.

He also confessed after being questioned. He said, he just wanted to make some pocket money by providing links of Japanese animation overseas.

Multiple anime and manga companies are coming together from different countries and forming an organisation. The main goal of this organisation is to tackle the piracy of anime, manga and similar copyrighted contents online. This could be a greater step towards controlling the piracy. There are chances that Toei animation will also join this organisation. We don’t have to remind you how active Toei Animation actually is in terms of copyrighted contents.

Source: TI