pirates – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today. Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:00:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.4 https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/05/en_rocket_1024.png?w=32 pirates – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com 32 32 176746664 Abandoned pirate pleasure ship sinking south of Tokyo Bay, city orders destruction https://soranews24.com/2026/06/16/abandoned-pirate-pleasure-ship-sinking-south-of-tokyo-bay-city-orders-destruction/ https://soranews24.com/2026/06/16/abandoned-pirate-pleasure-ship-sinking-south-of-tokyo-bay-city-orders-destruction/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:00:36 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=735706 
Avast, here not be free mooring, declares Kawasaki.
Even without much of a background in Japanese geography, I’m willing to bet that a lot of people would assume, correctly, that Kawasaki Ward is inside the city of Kawasaki. What far fewer people would be able to guess, though, is that inside Kawasaki Ward is a pirate ship.
And yet…
▼ Yarrr!!!
That 24.7-meter (81-foot) long vessel is the Anniversary Cruise. Okay, maybe not as intimidating a name as the Queen Anne’s Revenge or Night Rambler, but still a fitting-enough moniker for a party boat rentable for excursions in Tokyo Bay or the waters of the capital’s neighboring coastal prefectures of Kanagawa and Chiba. Or at least the Anniversary Cruise was available for rent, until its owners docked it in the Port of Kawasaki, directly to the south of Tokyo, in October of 2018.
Now, you might be thinking that the building it’s moored at looks like neither a pirates’ den nor a cruise office, and you’re right. That building behind it is the facility of Nihon Dust, a recycling and industrial waste management company. And if you’re surprised that a pleasure boat would be docked there, so too was Nihon Dust. Not only does Nihon Dust not rent out mooring space to other companies, extended mooring at that part of the canal is prohibited under the port’s regulations.
And yet, the Anniversary Cruise’s owners decided to park there anyway, apparently in the hope that no one would notice, or mind, a giant pirate ship that had suddenly appeared. Things, of course, did not turn out that way, and in November of 2018, Kawasaki City ordered the ship’s owners and operating company to remove the ship, but economic and legal issues hindered swift enforcement. So for nearly eight years, the Anniversary Cruise has remained abandoned in front of Nihon Dust.
You may have also noticed, though, that the Anniversary Cruise seems rather dramatically angled for a vessel that’s been sitting idle for close to a decade. On a day this past February when especially fierce winds were blowing, the ship tipped far enough that it began to take on water, and with the owners not in the mood to come by with a bilge pump, the listing is getting worse, as photos taken since then show that it’s partially sinking.
▼ April
ド派手な海賊船アニバーサリークルーズ号、川崎で何年間も放置された挙句浸水という可哀想な船
過去に鶴見線の橋梁に衝突したことがある pic.twitter.com/dLLTks8WBR— レ 鉄 (@16_MCV) April 11, 2025
▼ May
まもなく川崎市の強制代執行で解体される、白河運河で座礁している海賊船アニバーサリークルーズ号
2枚目は鉄道の架線柱の間から女神像を
4枚目機銃掃射後と海賊船アニバーサリークルーズ号を#海賊船アニバーサリークルーズ号#白河運河 pic.twitter.com/7RDR8gGFN0— MP (@mp_project2023) May 24, 2026
▼ June
「川崎の工業地帯に廃船がありますよ。」と教えてもらったので急遽見てきたんだけど、工業地帯で想像する船にしてはメルヘンすぎるだろ。
近々撤去されるらしい pic.twitter.com/iBL74RUUJ4— toshibo｜書籍『8月32日』｜廃墟と写真 (@JIYUKENKYU_jp) June 15, 2026
Should the ship capsize and or/drift away from its mooring, it could severely disrupt shipping lanes and other port traffic, and so now Kawasaki City has decided that enough is enough, announcing on June 16 that it will begin demolition and removal of the Anniversary Cruise, scheduled to begin the next day. The process is projected to take approximately one month and cost roughly 33 million yen (US$209,000), an amount the city plans to charge the owners with covering.
Source: Sankei Shimbun, Funeco
Top image: Wikipedia/Binnette
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2026/06/16/abandoned-pirate-pleasure-ship-sinking-south-of-tokyo-bay-city-orders-destruction/feed/ 0 735706 ks 1 Japan’s Pop-up Pirate game turns 50 and changes up the rules https://soranews24.com/2025/04/21/japans-pop-up-pirate-game-turns-50-and-changes-up-the-rules/ https://soranews24.com/2025/04/21/japans-pop-up-pirate-game-turns-50-and-changes-up-the-rules/#comments Sun, 20 Apr 2025 15:00:59 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=698992 
That little guy’s still popping like a teen though.
Every once in a while, I come across something that I’ve known all my life but never realized came from Japan. Pearl brand drums and rock-paper-scissors are but a few, and now I’m going to have to add the game Pop-up Pirate to that list.
This is the game where you have a plastic pirate hiding in a plastic barrel and each player sticks plastic swords into the slots on the side of the barrel. If a sword goes into a certain spot it causes the pirate to pop out and that player to lose the game. It was originally created by Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy under the name Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu (literally, “Blackbeard’s One-shot Crisis”) in 1975. Because it required no speaking or reading, the universal appeal of the game made it a hit in 47 countries around the world, regrettably but wisely under the name of “Pop-up Pirate” rather than a literal translation of the Japanese title.
Now in its 50th year, over 20 million games have been sold, and if we assume each one was played at least once that little pirate’s 10-centimeter take-off would amount to 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles), or enough for five trips to the International Space Station.
▼ “Ken-chan! Look at the pirate, not the cam… Oh, well.”
In honor of this, Takara Tomy will release the seventh edition of Pop-up Pirate and will revert it to the original rules set in 1975. As surprising as it may sound, this simple game has undergone a few rule changes throughout its history. When the game was originally designed 50 years ago, the concept was that all the players were pirates trying to free their boss, Blackbeard, who was trapped inside the barrel. This meant, that whoever made him pop out was the one who saved him and thus won the game.
▼ The original Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu design from 1975
In 1979, that rule was loosened so that popping out Blackbeard would cause the player to either win or lose the game, as long as it was clearly defined prior to playing. However, around the ’80s there was a television game show in which players lost points or prizes either for making the pirate appear or failing to catch him when he did appear. This strengthened the association of bringing out Blackbeard with losing such that in 1995 it became the game’s official rule.
But with this newest edition of Pop-up Pirate, the official rule will once again be that making Blackbeard emerge is a victory. This is because Takara Tomy wants the game to be about the joy of winning rather than the fear of losing.
▼ The 2025 Edition of Pop-up Pirate
The new version will come with a booklet that gives the history of the game and some related trivia. It also will have a redesigned pirate, which is actually more in line with the overseas version of the pirate and probably won’t look redesigned at all outside of Japan.
▼ Left: The old Japanese Blackbeard, Right: The new Japanese Blackbeard
Also in honor of Blackbeard’s 50 years of crises, a series of Line messaging app stamps have been released to communicate those complex emotions that can only be expressed in Pop-up Pirate terms.
▼ “I’ll fly over!”
So, whether it’s buying the new Pop-up Pirate when it hits Japanese stores and e-commerce sites on 5 July, downloading some pirate stamps, or just dusting off your old game and hoping you haven’t lost too many swords, be sure to take a moment to honor this long-running game for its half a century in existence.
Source, images: PR Wire
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2025/04/21/japans-pop-up-pirate-game-turns-50-and-changes-up-the-rules/feed/ 0 698992 Tokyo woman in trouble with the law after selling high-priced Evangelion bootleg posters https://soranews24.com/2021/04/21/tokyo-woman-in-trouble-with-the-law-after-selling-high-priced-evangelion-bootleg-posters/ https://soranews24.com/2021/04/21/tokyo-woman-in-trouble-with-the-law-after-selling-high-priced-evangelion-bootleg-posters/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:00:25 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=540085 
Fans of the anime baffled by backgrounds for Rei Ayanami posters.
Generally speaking, the idea behind bootleg anime merch is that it’s supposed to be a win-win, at least for the buyer and seller. The seller gets to widen their profit margin by dodging licensing fees, and the buyer gets the item they want (or a substitute copy, to be precise), at a price below what they’d pay for the official product.
So it’s hard to see how a 45-year-old woman from Tokyo, who has a day job as an office worker, managed to convince a 60-something man at a flea market to buy a single bootleg Evangelion poster from her for 7,900 yen (US$76), but somehow she did, and she now finds herself in trouble with the law.
According to the Kanagawa Prefectural Police Department’s Yokosuka precinct, the sale took place on September 12, and involved an unlicensed poster of Evangelion’s Asuka Soryu Langley. In late November, a search of the woman’s house in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward turned up 52 other bootleg posters, the bulk of which featured various members of the Eva cast.
▼ The investigators’ evidence display looks like a dealer’s table at a small-town anime convention.
Rather than exact duplicates of official posters, some of the items appear to be a mix of copied official artwork on new backgrounds, while others look like straight-up fan art renditions of the characters. Charges have been filed against the woman for violation of copyright law, which she has admitted to, saying “I sold them to earn extra spending money.” Investigators say that the woman bought the posters in bulk online from an “American artist” who printed them, then resold them at inflated prices, earning roughly 1.2 million yen (US$11,600) since the start of last summer.
Online commenters found the numerical data involved with the case, as well as the aesthetics, puzzling.
“Wait, there’ actually someone who’d spend 7,900 yen on one of those?”
“[45 and 60-something.] Aren’t they a little old to be getting into this kind of trouble?”
“Maybe the guy was buying it for his grandkids.”
“The style of those posters doesn’t fit with Evangelion at all.”
“Dude, what’s up with all those flowers in the background of the Rei posters?”
If those smiling flowers look familiar, it’s because they’re pretty blatant copies of the signature motif of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, because why just rip off one artist when you can rip off two, apparently.
▼ Murakami’s flowers, as seen in their afternoon tea set.
While the anime industry in Japan does have a long history of leniency towards fan artists, as proven by the massive crowds at doujinshi events like Comiket where comics and illustrations of copyrighted characters are openly sold, there are a couple of criteria sellers are generally expected to meet, such as having produced the artwork they’re selling themselves, offering it for a limited time, and a revenue stream that, at least ostensibly, is meant to offset costs and allow the artist to go on creating. With none of those boxes checked, it seems there’s no fan art goodwill to get the seller of the hook.
Sources: Kanaloco, The Sankei News via Otakomu, YouTube/FNNプライムオンライン
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Insert image: PR Times
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/04/21/tokyo-woman-in-trouble-with-the-law-after-selling-high-priced-evangelion-bootleg-posters/feed/ 0 540085 EP 0 Nintendo is suing Bowser to stop his latest evil plan https://soranews24.com/2021/04/19/nintendo-is-suing-bowser-to-stop-his-latest-evil-plan/ https://soranews24.com/2021/04/19/nintendo-is-suing-bowser-to-stop-his-latest-evil-plan/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2021 13:00:46 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=539957 
King of the Koopas remains in fine legal standing, but someone with his namesake is headed to the courtroom.
Over the years, Nintendo has supplied Mario with all sorts of power-ups. Super Mario Bros. had the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, and its sequels quickly added to his arsenal with tanooki suits, flying capes, and more. And yet, no matter how many times Mario “defeats” the bad guy, he always comes back.
▼ Sometimes he even gets marquee-billing, like in Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
So it makes a certain sense that this time, when Nintendo wants to stop Bowser’s evil ambitions once and for all, they’re not calling in the plumber, but instead their lawyers, as Nintendo is officially suing Bowser.
We should clarify, though, that Nintendo isn’t brining the legal fight to the fictional character it owns, but to one Gary Bowser, said to be the leader of hacking group Team Xecuter. This isn’t a case of Nintendo picking on some small, for-fun fan game ROM hackers either, as their issue with Team Xecuter is that the group sells device that allow buyers to bypass security systems built into the Switch, allowing it to play pirated games (Bowser also sold simmilar devices for the 3DS). Nintendo of America is now suing Bowser and his associate Max Louarn via a lawsuit filed in Seattle. According to Polygon, the company is seeking damages of “$2,500 for each trafficked device, as well as $150,000 for each copyright violation.”
Team Xecuter’s alleged for-profit sales of the devices make it hard to see them as mere gaming historians promoting preservation, and Twitter reactions in Japan have been less than sympathetic towards the hackers.
“Once Nintendo’s lawyers have you in their sights, you’re finished.”
“For a guy named Bowser, he’s not any smarter than a grunt Koopa Troopa.”
“Will they punish him by swinging an axe to cut the rope on a bridge and drop him into a pit of lava?”
“Mario should testify for the prosecution.”
“It’s his job to restore the peace when Bowser is getting out of line, after all.”
However, despite all the talk of Mario, it should not be forgotten that Nintendo of America’s current president is a man named Doug Bowser, meaning that the upcoming legal battle is actually one of Bowser vs. Bowser. Who knows, maybe the lawsuit will inspire Nintendo to take a page out of the Ace Attorney playbook and make a Super Mario spinoff where the mother of the Koopalings comes back and you play through the ensuing custody battle.
Sources: Livedoor News/Gigazine via Hachima Kiko, Polygon, Twitter/@livedoornews
Top image: YouTube/Nintendo
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/04/19/nintendo-is-suing-bowser-to-stop-his-latest-evil-plan/feed/ 0 539957 NB 1 Kodansha promises worldwide prosecution of illegal uploaders of Attack on Titan https://soranews24.com/2021/03/31/kodansha-promises-worldwide-prosecution-of-illegal-uploaders-of-attack-on-titan/ https://soranews24.com/2021/03/31/kodansha-promises-worldwide-prosecution-of-illegal-uploaders-of-attack-on-titan/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2021 06:00:58 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=537929 
Warning posted in English and Japanese comes just days before manga’s series finale.
Some anime and manga series are all about maintaining the status quo, their whole appeal wrapped up in allowing fans to leisurely spend time with the settings and characters established in their earliest segments. That’s not the case for Attack on Titan, though, whose rollercoaster ride of mysteries, betrayals, and warfare is about to come to an end.
The final chapter of creator Hajime Isayama’s tale of fearless heroes and pantsless monsters is set to be published in the next issue of manga anthology Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. No matter how Attack on Titan’s conflicts resolve themselves, though, publisher Kodansha is making it very clear that its fight against manga pirates continues, and will be a worldwide one as well, as shown in a tweet from Shintaro Kawakubo, the Japanese editor for the Attack on Titan manga.
Regarding illegal upload and pre-release leakage of Attack on Titan.
We’ve begun to take legal actions against several accounts & individuals. We'll take measures against illegal uploads of images & texts regardless of country.
Thank you for choosing our official products!— 漫画編集者・川窪 (@ShingekiKyojin) March 30, 2021
While Kawakubo doesn’t mention Attack on Titan’s final chapter specifically, the timing, coming just a little more than a week before the next Bessatsu Shonen Magazine issue’s street date, can’t be a mere coincidence. Of particular note is the assertation that Kodansha will pursue legal action against unauthorized uploads “regardless of country,” implying that the company is in no way willing to turn a blind eye to uploaders located in countries where the final chapter is yet to go on sale and/or local fans may object to the pricing and/or localization choices of the officially license version.
▼ The same statement was issued in Japanese (with the Japanese tweet currently having some four times as many likes as the English version).
「進撃の巨人」違法アップロード、発売前漏洩について
複数の個人、アカウントに対して訴訟の手続きを進めました。
今後もインターネット上での画像やテキストによる違法投稿について、国を問わず対応します。正規商品をお楽しみいただいている皆様に感謝します。引き続きよろしくお願いします。
— 漫画編集者・川窪 (@ShingekiKyojin) March 30, 2021
Attack on Titan’s series finale will appear in the May issue of Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, which actually comes out on April 9.
Source: Twitter/@ShingekiKyojin via Otakomu
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/03/31/kodansha-promises-worldwide-prosecution-of-illegal-uploaders-of-attack-on-titan/feed/ 0 537929 AT 1 Online manga piracy surging by users in Japan as people are stuck at home during the pandemic https://soranews24.com/2021/01/29/online-manga-piracy-surging-by-users-in-japan-as-people-are-stuck-at-home-during-the-pandemic/ https://soranews24.com/2021/01/29/online-manga-piracy-surging-by-users-in-japan-as-people-are-stuck-at-home-during-the-pandemic/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2021 04:00:15 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=530400 
Industry group gives staggering figure for cost of pirated manga in just one month.
The New Year’s season is usually a pretty festive time in Japan. Along with late Christmas parties there are end-of-the-year parties (called bonenkai, literally “forget the year parties”) and start-of-the-year parties. Most people also get about a week off from work straddling New Year’s Day, which they use either to travel back to their hometowns to spend time with relatives or for pleasure trips both inside Japan and abroad.
This year, though, not a whole lot of that was happening. With coronavirus infection numbers surging, people were encouraged to stay home, and apparently a lot of them kept themselves entertained by reading pirated manga online.
According to a study by Japanese publishing industry group ABJ (Authorized Books of Japan), the Internet’s 10 largest manga piracy websites were accessed by users in Japan some 200 million times during December of 2020. That’s nearly three times the figure for January of 2020, which was around 72 million. “The increased amount of time people are spending at home during the pandemic is likely a factor,” said an ABJ representative, and the organization estimates the total cost of the content illegally viewed by Japanese users in December, had it been purchased instead, would have been somewhere in neighborhood of 41.4 billion yen (US$400 million).
While widespread piracy of anime and manga has long been an open secret in overseas fan communities, it hasn’t traditionally been a high-profile issue within Japan, particularly for manga. While prices for anime in Japan tend to be higher than officially licensed DVDs or Blu-rays overseas, manga is a fairly low-cost hobby in Japan, where weekly anthologies and collected volumes are often priced at 500 yen (US$4.85) or less, and used volumes can be bought at second-hand stores for as little as 100 yen. But as advances in technology make it easier for pirates to set up sites, and also easier for tempted and curious individuals to find them, it seems an increasing number are finding the allure of getting something for nothing too strong to resist, even as it angers and frustrates the art’s original creators.
Source: Asahi Shimbun via Livedoor News via Otakomu
Top image: Pakutaso
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/01/29/online-manga-piracy-surging-by-users-in-japan-as-people-are-stuck-at-home-during-the-pandemic/feed/ 0 530400 MP 1 If you’re reading pirated manga, one artist would prefer you just not read their work at all https://soranews24.com/2021/01/09/if-youre-reading-pirated-manga-one-artist-would-prefer-you-just-not-read-their-work-at-all/ https://soranews24.com/2021/01/09/if-youre-reading-pirated-manga-one-artist-would-prefer-you-just-not-read-their-work-at-all/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:30:27 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=528220 
“We’re not drawing manga as volunteers.”
To say that the relationship between anime/manga fans and piracy is a complicated one is an understatement. In the modern, digitally connected age, you’d be hard-pressed to find an otaku who’s never read a single chapter or watched a single episode that was illegally posted online.
It likely has something to do with the hobby being overwhelmingly youth-oriented, and many teen or young adult otaku’s desire for content far outstripping their earning power and ability to pay for it. Further complicating the situation is that unlike stealing physical media, pirating anime/manga doesn’t inflict immediate direct harm on the rightful owner, and the accounting gets even murkier when enthusiastic pirates boast that their actions are increasing interest in the medium, and thus boosting demand for future content.
Recently manga creator Gino808, author/artist of Yukionna to Kani wo Kurau (“Devouring a Snow Woman and Crab”) and Doteibanashi (“Virgin Story”), took to Twitter to add a few of their thoughts on the subject.
海賊版、無くしていきたいです。
海賊版が次から次へ湧いて出てきても、読者の方々が海賊版を読まないでいてくれさえすればいいのです。
お金を払ってまで読みたくないな、と思われたならそれは私と作品の実力不足なのでそれはそれでいいのです。海賊版で読むくらいなら読まないで欲しいです。— Gino0808@
ドラマ化！ (@0808gino) January 4, 2021
“I want pirated manga to disappear. Even if they keep getting posted, if people would just not read them, that’d be fine,” a frustrated Gino808 pleads.
A common justification for reading pirated manga is that it’s something the reader wasn’t going to buy anyway, so there’s no harm done, but Gino808 has something to say on that front too. “If you don’t think you want to read my manga badly enough to spend money on it, that’s a sign that I, and my manga, aren’t good enough, and that decision is yours to make. If you only think it’s good enough to read pirated, though, I don’t want you to read it.”
But wait, don’t all artists want people to enjoy their work? Maybe so, but a key distinction here is that Gino808 is a professional, putting in professional-grade effort and time on their manga, and needs financial security in order to continue doing so.
ボランティアで漫画描いてるわけじゃないんです商品なんです。よく聞く漫画を広めてあげたいから海賊版やってるなんて建前で、お店の棚から勝手に持ち出されてタダで配られたらそれで作者はどうやって飯を食ってその漫画の続きを描けばいいですか？漫画の価値を暴落させていることを知っていますか？
— Gino0808@
“We’re not drawing manga as volunteers. It’s a valuable product. I often hear people say that they pirate manga because they want to spread recognition of it, but that’s tatemae” Gino808 says, referring to the custom of saying one thing while actually thinking another.
It’s not just the individual author whose livelihood can be adversely affected by piracy, as Gino808 points out elsewhere in the threads. “Do pirates think manga is made by a person with talent who just has an idea pop into their head, then draws it up with no effort at all?…Manga is a result of the creators using years of their lives and taking on the risk of going into the red so that they can pay their assistants.”
The mention of assistants is particularly thought-provoking. The logic behind the “piracy increases the number of manga fans” justification is that pirated manga makes it easier for a new fan to get into the hobby, and once their fandom takes root they’ll start supporting the industry by buying legitimate releases and merchandise. To be fair, that is sometimes (though not always) how things shake out. However, if reading a pirated version of Manga A from Author B published by Company C turns you into an otaku who later goes out and buys Manga D from Author E published by Company F, that’s not doing anything for the parties on the victim side of the piracy. Even if you’re of the mindset that any monetary contribution to the industry as a whole will eventually somehow cycle back towards Author B and Company C, Author B’s assistants, whose jobs are less lucrative, probably need to get paid now, not at some unspecified point in the future when some sort of financial karma visits them.
So while pirating manga may not make you a monster, it’s probably too much to expect a professional creator to be OK with it, especially when there are free chapters of Gino808’s manga available online legally here through Kodansha’s Comic Days app.
Source: Twitter/@0808gino via Otakomu
Top image: Pakutaso
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/01/09/if-youre-reading-pirated-manga-one-artist-would-prefer-you-just-not-read-their-work-at-all/feed/ 0 528220 MP 1 Weekly Shonen Jump manga pirate given three-year suspended prison sentence in China https://soranews24.com/2020/04/29/weekly-shonen-jump-manga-pirate-given-three-year-suspended-prison-sentence-in-china/ https://soranews24.com/2020/04/29/weekly-shonen-jump-manga-pirate-given-three-year-suspended-prison-sentence-in-china/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:00:33 +0000 http://soranews24.com/?p=499411 
The long arm of Japanese publisher Shueisha’s manga law reaches all the way to Shanghai.
On Tuesday, Shueisha, the Japanese publisher of manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump and smash hit titles such as One Piece and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, issued a statement saying that a conviction had been made in the trial of a man charged with illegally uploading Shueisha manga to a website he administered. The man has been given a suspended prison sentence and will be required to pay a large fine.
Given the Japanese legal system’s traditional lack of tolerance for pirating entertainment media, that might not ordinarily seem so surprising. What makes this situation unique, though, is that the court case took place in China, a country that tends to have a far more lenient attitude about the concepts of trademark and copyright.
The trial in Shanghai’s Xuhui District People’s Court, which ended last Friday, brought to an end the legal fight against the site administrator who police in Shanghai arrested on October 30. According to investigators, since approximately 2013 the man had been running a website which hosted illegally uploaded manga, primarily titles published by Shueisha, with Chinese translations to the website, posting them even before the chapters’ corresponding issues of Weekly Shonen Jump went on sale in Japan. Shueisha claims the site, which also hosted paid advertising, had some 400,000 unique users and caused significant damage to the company and its authors.
The man admitted to the charges, and following his conviction has been given a three-year suspended prison sentence (effectively a form of probation) and is being ordered to pay a fine of 80,000 yuan (US$11,300). He also wrote a letter of apology to the publisher, a portion of which reads “During my time in incarceration, I have been reflecting on the error of my ways, and sincerely regret my actions…I apologize deeply for the ill effects of my infringement.”
In addition to the completed criminal case, Shueisha is also pursuing civil court charges against the man, and in its announcement of the court ruling also pledged:
“To fulfill our obligation as a publisher to protect the works that their creators have poured their hearts and souls into making, Shueisha will continue to take a firm stance against damage to our creators, both inside Japan and abroad, working with investigators and civil organizations.”
The Shanghai conviction is the latest chapter in Japanese publishers’ expanding fight against overseas piracy, following the forced repatriation of one wanted pirate from the Philippines to Japan (where the authorities wasted no time, arresting him as soon as his plane entered Japanese airspace), and a multi-publisher lawsuit against pirate sites filed in New York last autumn.
Source: Shueisha via Animation Business Journal via Anime News Network/Rafael Antonio Pineda
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