China Shuts Down Major Manga Piracy Site Following Complaint From Japan (torrentfreak.com) 12
Anti-piracy group CODA is reporting the shutdown of B9Good, a pirate manga site that targeted Japan but was operated from China. In response to a criminal complaint filed by CODA on behalf of six Japanese companies, which were backed by 21 others during the investigation, Chinese authorities arrested four people and seized one house worth $580,000. TorrentFreak reports: Manga piracy site B9Good initially appeared in 2008 and established itself under B9DM branding. SimilarWeb stats show that the site was enjoying around 15 million visits each month, with CODA noting that in the two-year period leading to February 2023, the site was accessed more than 300 million times Around 95% of the site's visitors came from Japan. B9Good had been featured in an MPA submission to the USTR's notorious markets report in 2019. Traffic was reported as almost 16 million visits per month back then, meaning that site visitor numbers remained stable for the next three years. The MPA said the site was possibly hosted in Canada, but domain records since then show a wider spread, including Hong Kong, China, United States, Bulgaria, and Japan.
Wherever the site ended up, the location of its operator was more important. In 2021, CODA launched its International Enforcement Project (CBEP), which aimed to personally identify the operators of pirate sites, including those behind B9Good who were eventually traced to China. Pursuing copyright cases from outside China is reportedly difficult, but CODA had a plan. In January 2022, CODA's Beijing office was recognized as an NGO with legitimate standing to protect the rights of its member companies. Working on behalf of Aniplex, TV Tokyo, Toei Animation, Toho, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and Bandai Namco Film Works, CODA filed a criminal complaint in China, and starting February 14, 2023, local authorities began rounding up the B9Good team.
Wherever the site ended up, the location of its operator was more important. In 2021, CODA launched its International Enforcement Project (CBEP), which aimed to personally identify the operators of pirate sites, including those behind B9Good who were eventually traced to China. Pursuing copyright cases from outside China is reportedly difficult, but CODA had a plan. In January 2022, CODA's Beijing office was recognized as an NGO with legitimate standing to protect the rights of its member companies. Working on behalf of Aniplex, TV Tokyo, Toei Animation, Toho, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), and Bandai Namco Film Works, CODA filed a criminal complaint in China, and starting February 14, 2023, local authorities began rounding up the B9Good team.
Bummer (Score:3)
That's really gonna crater somebody's reputation score.
Likely reason (Score:4, Interesting)
The site owners didn't pay their tribute to the Chinese government officials. Or perhaps they ran afoul with the whole "Pooh bear" fiasco.
I doubt China shut them down out of sense of justice and international copyright law.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They got to seize a house in the operation. What governments love even more than sticking it to a foreign government is sticking it to someone they can steal property from. Asset forfeiture is a huge source of income in all corrupt nations.
Re:Likely reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubt away but that's exactly what happened. China is motivated to respect intellectual property because it produces a lot of it and wants those protections in other countries.
As an example, Huawei makes quite a lot of money licencing out technology it invented, which is now part of various global standards like 5G. That licencing relies on international copyright law, and on the ability of Huawei to sue infringers in foreign courts to get their products banned and confiscated at the border.
In the case of manga and anime, China is motivated because it produces both manga and anime domestically, and provides services to Japan e.g. inking and colouring sketches, and producing animation from storyboards. Any suggestion that material was being leaked would be very harmful.
How did this site avoid the great firewall? (Score:2)
I thought China had massive firewall infrastructure. How did this thing manage to operate for over a decade?
Re: (Score:3)
The Great Firewall only blocks traffic the Chinese government disapproves of. You know... like a Wikipedia page that explains what happened in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A site that pirates Japanese manga probably wasn't very high on the list.
My guess is that they shut it down mostly because it could potentially contain subversive content and poison the minds of their citizens with unwholesome ideas, not that they give a rat's ass about those Japanese publishers.
But honesty compels me to admit I
Re: (Score:2)
Did you miss the part about them having servers all over the world? It's the operators that were in China. And you can get out via VPNs, just not reliably or quickly. Don't need a ton of bandwidth to administer a VPS.
Derivative work (Score:2)
If reaction videos are legal, where there is a person is continously talking over from the corner, then fan translated mangas should be as well. I see absolutely no difference.
legjobb magyar online casino (Score:1)