Japan’s prolific manga comic industry has been charged with being sluggish to provide youth with digital manga materials, and some of those who entered the black market of pirated manga in response to the demand are now facing criminal charges.
Two defendents in their twenties were publicly charged on September 9, 2019 in the Fukuoka District Court (western Japan) with beginning to gather, modify, and save digital data of the popular Onepiece manga series, in Mangamura’s publicly available server. They supposedly continued to upload and update online materials as work.
In 2018, the Japanese government approved the closure of the wildly popular Mangamura online (pirated) manga content website. The Japanese courts have worked hard to clamp down on the piracy, going so far as to seek and gain information from the American platform supplier Cloudflare used by them. Two alleged ringleaders also are to be charged (one of them was extradited from Manila after trying to leave the Philippines for Hong Kong).
Shimazaki accepted the charges, while Itoh denied collaboration. An organization that seeks to promote the international spread of manga estimated that Mangamura had caused about JPY 300 billion (over US$ 2.7 billion). Whether or not that figure is accurate, the demand for manga is evident, and respect for the creators’ productions and respect for the readers’ wishes seem both to be lacking so far.
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Taro Yaguchi
Sources
Nikkei Shimbun, “漫画村収集役初公判、1人起訴内容否認 1人は認める [Mangamura data gatherers in first public court day; one denies charges, one admits guilt],” https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO49562140Z00C19A9ACX000/, September 9, 2019, accessed September 12, 2019.
