Chinese authorities, who have been investigating at the request of Japan industry groups for operating the largest anime pirate site for Japan, have found that they have caught four men and women in Japan.
According to the group, this is the first time that the operators of China-based pirate sites have been caught by local public security authorities in the wake of the Japan's efforts.
According to the "CODA = Overseas Content Distribution Promotion Organization", which includes Japan anime companies, four men and women in their 30s were arrested in China, and they are suspected of being involved in the operation of "B4GOOD", the largest pirate site for anime for Japan.
Since its establishment in 9, this site seems to have distributed a large number of works such as movies and dramas, mainly Japan anime, without permission, and the number of accesses in the two years to last month exceeded 2008 million, and in the most months, there were more than 2.3 million accesses per month.
Most of them are from Japan, and CODA has repeatedly requested the site to delete it by e-mail, but has not responded, and as a result of the investigation in cooperation with cybersecurity experts, it has been found that it is based in China.
This discovery was triggered by the provision of such information to the Chinese authorities, and the public security authorities of Jiangsu Province, China, started to expose it from last month to this month, and the site was forced to close.
It seems that the operation of the site was making 1 million yen in revenue of Japan yen.
As pirate sites shift overseas, CODA is taking measures to eradicate them, such as providing information to local authorities, and in China, the operator of a manga pirate site was ordered to be fined by the administrative authorities last year, but this is the first time that the public security authorities have caught it.
Pirate sites Accelerating the movement to move bases overseas
Pirate sites that publish popular anime and manga on the Internet without permission are accelerating the movement to move their bases overseas, and it is not easy to identify and expose the operators.
CODA is currently increasing its surveillance of 25 anime pirated sites by classifying them as particularly malicious, but it is suspected that their bases have shifted to Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Servers are placed overseas to make it difficult to identify the sender, and even if they are tried to identify, it takes time and cost to cooperate with overseas judicial procedures and related agencies, and anti-piracy measures vary from country to country, so a fundamental solution has not yet been reached.
In addition, there are pirate sites that change the name of the site and the "domain" corresponding to the address on the Internet one after another, and try to avoid detection of illegal activities by "geo-blocking" that blocks access from a specific area, and the method of evading tracking is becoming more sophisticated.
For this reason, Japan industry groups are taking measures such as requesting overseas advertising companies to cut off "advertising revenue," which is a source of revenue from pirated sites.
Regarding this revelation, CODA Representative Director Kenro Goto said, "It is epoch-making that a pirated site was criminally caught in China due to our accusation," and said, "This pirate site was viewed by a very large number of Japan, which increased advertising revenue on the site side and led to the promotion of criminal acts. It is important for each and every one of us to be aware of this, and we would like to further strengthen international cooperation and promote countermeasures."