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NEWS: Adult Website nHentai Files Motion to Dismiss Copyright Infringement Lawsuit




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Turtleboy76



Joined: 06 Jun 2023
Posts: 176
PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2025 5:33 pm Reply with quote
AHHHH that explains the massive purge of certain artists works on there at the time
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Piglet the Grate



Joined: 25 May 2021
Posts: 854
Location: North America
PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:41 pm Reply with quote
The real winners here will be the lawyers on both sides who will collect hefty fees. Rolling Eyes
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MiniMarps



Joined: 08 Mar 2022
Posts: 106
PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 12:41 am Reply with quote
I Googled PCR Distributing out of curiosity, and came up with a Twitter account that hasn't been active since 2016, and a series of redirection links that ultimately led me to an inaccessible domain. Just in case anyone was wondering how legitimate of an operation this company that has nothing better to do than chase petty lawsuits against random porn sites is.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
ANN Publisher


Joined: 29 Dec 2001
Posts: 10470
Location: Do not message me for support.
PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 9:33 am Reply with quote
PCR is JAST's US distribution company. They aren't a public facing company, so they don't maintain anything like a Twitter account. It's stated in the lawsuit that PCR operates under the brand (dba) JAST USA, so the website you should be looking for is jastusa (eg: jastusa.com).

So no, they aren't just a copyright troll.
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Turtleboy76



Joined: 06 Jun 2023
Posts: 176
PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:31 am Reply with quote
Bravo for covering topics like this. I remember Peter Payne who runs the J-List site said he was always salty that ANN never covered hentai topics. Maybe this will appease him.
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revolutionotaku



Joined: 19 May 2011
Posts: 907
PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 1:33 pm Reply with quote
Reading hentai on nHentai always make me want to purchase the physical manga.
Kind of like listening to music downloads from Napster/Kazaa/LimeWire & pay to go see them perform at concerts.
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Daizo



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 140
PostPosted: Wed Jan 15, 2025 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Here's a question for you all to ponder upon: How does a pirate site afford to fight back with lawyers of their own against a copyright holder? And why would they care to do so instead of just taking down the copyright holder's content on their site to make the problem go away (as that would be the first thing to have happened before getting to the point of escalating legal threats like the one in question here)?

The answer is fairly simple: Because the site in question is a for-profit pirate operation that is making a considerable amount of money for its owner. Said money being made through advertisements, which are pure profit for the owner since they don't have to share any of it with those pesky artists or other creators whose content the site is illegally hosting without permission.

While piracy is generally illegal, you can fit a wide range of activities underneath it, ranging from true "sharing is caring" motivated hobbyist operations all the way to purely in-it-for-the-money for-profit enterprises. Nhentai as a website firmly leans towards the latter end of these, as the entire site is not just a leech on the creators but on the rest of the pirate ecosystem as well, as all the scanlations and rips on the site are simply scraped from a different pirate site that scanlation groups and individuals actually upload them to. The entire site exists in the first place because the owner saw this aforementioned other site respond to takedown notices by actually taking the content down, which in turn made them think "What if I rip all the content on this site... but don't take anything down in response to takedowns? And then I can slap ads on top and make bank!"

And that's nhentai in a nutshell. A multi-layered parasite that only exists to make its owner money at the expense of creators, publishers, and even other pirates!

And speaking of publishers, let us not forget that the English publishers of hentai manga aren't some sort of big megacorporations like Sony. They're basically all small independent companies trying to make it in a market so rampant with piracy that a lot of pirates don't even realize they're pirating and assume that hentai manga is just naturally free (even though 99.9% of it is actually commercial in nature, ie. you're expected to pay for it in order to read it).
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