Sony Music Goes After Piracy Portal 'Hikari-no-Akari' (torrentfreak.com) 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Hikari-no-Akari, a long-established and popular pirate site that specializes in Japanese music, is being targeted in U.S. federal court by Sony Music. [...] The music download portal, which links to externally hosted files, has been operating for well over a decade and currently draws more than a million monthly visits. In addition to the public-facing part of the site, HnA also has a private forum and Discord channel. [...] Apparently, Sony Music Japan has been keeping an eye on the unauthorized music portal. The company has many of its works shared on the site, including anime theme music, which is popular around the globe.
For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted "Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!" from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series "The Tiger and Her Wings." Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER, a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", was shared on the site. Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action. [...] They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week.
Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn't a surprise considering the 'hnadownloads' name. Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions. It's unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online. Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one. However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.
For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted "Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!" from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series "The Tiger and Her Wings." Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER, a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", was shared on the site. Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action. [...] They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week.
Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn't a surprise considering the 'hnadownloads' name. Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions. It's unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online. Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one. However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.
Say (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't Japanese pirates called Ronin ?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ronin are samurai with no master, typically because their master was slain or died without an heir.
Pirates are called kaizoku in Japanese, although I think when they refer to Western style pirates like those seen in popular manga One Piece they use a transliteration of the English word.
The site name is interesting too. It means "light of illumination". Figured they would go for something sound related.
Re: (Score:2)
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No need to worry about it, since none of Sony's products are worth the money. Their cameras suck. Their phones suck. Their consoles suck. Their TVs suck. Their movie studios suck. Their headphones suck.
The last decent product they had was the discman - and it was only certain models.
They had to be ready for this (Score:3)
Certainly the people running HnA had to be aware that the publishers would come after them eventually, no? Which is why they would have to found new sites under different names run by different people to do the exact same thing. And so it continues.
Why did it take so long? (Score:2)
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The latter. It wouldn't do to catch them for just one violation they might be able to pay for, give them a legal problem they can overcome and avoid.
To put a finer point on this, a single violation involves risk. The judge might be willing to reduce the fine, or the defense attorney might be able to squeeze a not-guilty verdict out due to some technicality. Get 20 violations together, even if half get dismissed and the judge reduces the fines by half, they've still got ten violations to stick and they got five times the money they would have gotten had they stuck to a single charge.
Everytime I see one of these stories, I wonder (Score:1)
So how about, give us a way to legally listen then (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to listen to a Japanese music streaming service I need that and a VPN.
Importing and storing a CD for every song I want to listen to is impractical, and honestly, I don't even have a CD player anymore.
If they can enforce copyright internationally, they can make licenses internationally. They need to drop the geolocked bs and let people give them the money they're supposedly losing to pirates.
Re: So how about, give us a way to legally listen (Score:2)
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REMEMBER SCO? (Score:1)
5 years from now, when ALL popular music is AI generated, empty shell, bankrupt rightsholders like SONY will exist only for their capacity to constantly sue anything and everyone related to music. Short shellers for everything music related win, everyone else loses, especially actual musicians.