Justin Nakao | February 14th, 2022
Anime and Manga have exploded in international popularity over the last few years with series like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, One Punch-Man, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Fruits Basket, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, and many others capturing the hearts and minds of international viewers. If you’ve watched any anime legally inside North America, you were most likely streaming those shows or movies on Funimation and Crunchyroll. Though in reality, and many avid anime fans are guilty of this, watching anime on piracy sites is incredibly common since the cost of these streaming services, the alternative, is quite expensive. Japan has decided that it is time to enforce the law and protect its anime and manga industries from intellectual property theft (1).
Japan unveiled new copyright law amendments on October 1, 2020, and partly enforced it with the official rollout on January 1st, 2021. These two amendments to existing laws covered the digitalization of print media mainly manga as the law already covered music, movies, and anime. The first amendment will target websites that host the content on their site or are used as databases with links to torrents or other download sites. This law essentially makes it illegal to operate websites, apps, or posting of download links on forums, with penalties of up to five years in jail or a fine of 5-million-yen equivalent to $46,800 USD (2). The second amendment aims to halt illegal downloading of manga and other material, with penalties of up to 2 years in jail or a fine of 2-million-yen equivalent to $18,700 USD. These laws only apply to Japanese residents.
More importantly, Japan is launching the International Anti-Piracy Organization (IAPO) in April this year aimed at cracking down on anime piracy. This coalition will include over ten countries with notable members being Japan, the US, and China. This organization will be operated by Japan's Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), comprised of thirty-two Japanese companies including major publishers. Joined by the Motion Picture Association of the U.S, which has six members including Netflix, and the 450-members of Copyright Society of China, as well as copyright organizations from South Korea, Vietnam, and many others (3).
Succinctly put, the goal of this coalition is to share information with each other to pinpoint the pirates and their infrastructure. This crucial information will be then given to local authorities where these servers are maintained and will be brought offline. Though Japan already handles its internal piracy, they cannot take down pirates if they are in other countries- this coalition aims to target hosts overseas and the organization is willing to escalate the matter to other governments and courts if police are slow in arrest. The proof of concept is when one of the CODA members, Shueisha, requested a US court to track down the host and operators of Mangabank, a popular pirated manga distributor, that has now shut down its operations (4) (5).
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