Japanese manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites, whereas other categories have seen their growth stall. In contrast, manga piracy continues to grow.
This unauthorized activity is a thorn in the side of publishers, who are increasingly fighting back against this piracy activity, wherever it takes place in the world.
Japan’s largest publisher Shueisha has taken a variety of legal actions, also in U.S. courts. The company obtained several DMCA subpoenas hoping to expose the operators of dozens of pirate sites such as Manganato.com, mangakoma01.net, truyenqqvn.com, and manga-zip.is, for example.
These cases are filed in the U.S. because the manga publisher requests information from third-party intermediaries such as Cloudflare, PayPal, Visa, and Google.
One Piece ‘Pirates’ on X
This week the manga mogul was back in court, requesting a DMCA subpoena from another American intermediary, Elon Musk’s social media platform X. The application targets the X accounts of ‘spoilerplus’ and ‘mangaraw’, which stand accused of repeatedly sharing ‘One Piece’ content without permission.
These are not random X accounts that incidentally shared pirated material. On the contrary, they are linked to well-known pirate sites that have been targeted by similar efforts before.
Spoilerplus and Mangaraw domain names were listed in a broad DMCA subpoena that targeted Cloudflare last year. Not much later, these domains also showed up in a separate request in a California federal court, where Google, Visa, and PayPal were asked to provide information on the alleged operators.
The latter information request is tied to legal developments in Japan, where Shueisha aims to bring the ‘anonymous’ operators to justice. The status of the Japanese process is unclear, as the manga publisher continues to seek information, including sources like X.
X DMCA Subpoena
The request for a DMCA subpoena, filed at a Californian court this week, specifically seeks information on twitter.com/spoilerplus and twitter.com/mangaraw_jp.
Shueisha previously sent a notice to X, asking it to remove both accounts. While X disabled all the highlighted posts that are tied to allegedly infringing material, the Mangaraw account is still online today, linking to the mangaraw01.net website.
Both accounts posted infringing ‘One Piece’ material according to Shueisha. According to a declaration from attorney Hiroyuki Nakajima, these posts were made by “anonymous internet users” without authorization from the rightsholders.
Japanese Lawsuit & Free Speech?
The DMCA subpoena request doesn’t mention a potential lawsuit in Japan. However, the manga publisher stresses that it needs all information tied to these accounts to protect its rights.
While ‘anonymous’ users have previously been shielded by free speech rights under the First Amendment, the rights of copyright holders should carry more weight here, the request argues.
Shueisha specifically cited jurisprudence from a U.S. court which previously held that “to the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement […] it is unprotected by the First Amendment.”
In this case, the account holders are suspected infringers at the center of potential copyright litigation. That sets it apart from previous instances where the anonymous speech of Redditors was protected because they were merely seen as potential ‘witnesses’.
Email, IP-addresses, Access logs & More
The request for a DMCA subpoena has yet to be approved by the court but, absent any protest from X, that’s just a formality.
Shueisha already shared a list of all the details they would like to receive about the two X accounts. This includes names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment details, IP-addresses, and detailed access logs.
Whether X has access to all this information has yet to be seen. And even if it has, it’s unclear how usable it is. Ostensibly, Shueisha’s previous attempts at Cloudflare, Google, PayPal, and Visa were not sufficient to identify all the culprits with certainty.
Update: There’s a separate DMCA request from Shogakukan looking for information on X user @WeET_COLLECTION (pdf).
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A copy of Shueisha’s DMCA subpoena request at the California federal court and the associated paperwork is available here (1, 2, 3, 4).
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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