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Staff of 'Biggest' Pirated Anime Site Aimed at Japanese Viewers Found Guilty
posted on by Joanna Cayanan
On December 26, the People's Court of Taizhou Pharmaceutical High-Tech Industrial Development Zone of Jiangsu Province sentenced Male A to three years in prison, suspended for three years and six months. Male A was also charged with 1.8 million yuan (about US$250,024) fine for copyright infringement by a joint crime in which Male A is the main offender. In court, Male A admitted to the charges against him and expressed his remorse and apology. The court took into consideration that this was the first offense and that Male A voluntarily admitted to the charges and was willing to accept the punishment. Hence, the punishment was reduced to a suspended sentence. (If Male A remains on good behavior for three years and six months, he will not serve time in prison.)
Additionally, Female B, who was paid by Male A to upload anime and other contents on the site without the rights holder's permission, was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for one year and six months for copyright infringement, as a joint offender with Male A. Female D, who was also paid to upload illegal contents on the site was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for one year for the same offense. A third uploader, Male C, who was being investigated at the same time, was subject to exemption measures stipulated by the Chinese Criminal Law.
Male A rented servers in China, Canada, Japan, and other countries from 2008 to February 2023, operating the site for approximately 15 years, changing the site name and domain to "BLUE920," "B9DM," and "B9GOOD." The site's contents were uploaded by either Male A himself, or by Female B or D. It was found that a total of 45,880 anime and other contents had been posted on the site illegally. It was also found that Male A had obtained 1,777,000 yuan (about US$246,836) in unfair advertising revenue.
On February 14, 2023, Chinese authorities arrested Male A, then from February 18 to March 21, 2023, Female B, Female D, and Male C were searched and interrogated. The Public Security Bureau also seized a 4 million yuan (about US$555,625 now) house that Male A had purchased with money from the site.
Between January 2021-December 2022, the total number of visits to the site have exceeded 300 million. CODA began issuing removal requests for the site in October 2016, and has since sent over 10,000 removal requests.
CODA had filed a complaint with China regarding the piracy site. Six companies that submitted requests to CODA for criminal detection were Avex, Inc., TV Tokyo, Toei Animation, TOHO, NHK, and Bandai Namco Filmworks. Several other CODA companies also confirmed damages caused by the piracy site, including Kadokawa, Kodansha, Shogakukan, Studio Ghibli, Tezuka Productions, TV Asahi, TMS, Pony Canyon, Yoshimoto Kōgyō Holdings, Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation, and WOWOW.
According to CODA, this marks the first time that criminal charges have resulted in the criminal arrest of operators and uploaders of pirated Chinese websites.
CODA, with support from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), launched the Cross-Border Enforcement Project (CBEP) in 2021 to identify operators of piracy websites by conducting digital forensics and open source intelligence research. In January 2022, the CODA Beijing office was recognized as an non-governmental organization, and one of its business activities was to protect legitimate rights of member companies. These developments facilitated in the identification and criminal prosecution of the piracy site operator.
CODA and Tokyo Otaku Mode started the "Manga Anime Guardians Project" (MAGP) in 2014 in order to protect manga and anime content overseas. CODA began posting manga specifically created to counter piracy on its official website as part of the MAGP in June 2020.
Sources: CODA, Comic Natalie
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. (Sunrise) is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
