As reported in 2019, several leaders of the once-popular Manga-Mura (Manga comic village) portal of illegal manga data were arrested and tried. Finally, on June 2, 2021, Hoshino Romi was convicted for his role in uploading content passed along to him to the Manga-Mura site.
Hoshino’s defense had claimed that he had done nothing wrong as Manga-Mura was merely a “go-between” for the illegal (violating the Copyright Act) content, but the Fukuoka District Court determined Hoshino should serve three years in prison and pay a fine of about US $90,000 plus back payment of the proceeds he had gained in advertising (worth about $570,000) and partly hidden in foreign bank accounts.
The case took one and a half years for Hoshino, which seems late, but hopefully the result will still deter other would-be copyright violators to be careful as Japan shows increasingly strict stances toward piracy. However, issues within the manga publishing industry still need to be addressed.
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Contact: Taro Yaguchi
Sources
Hiratsuka, Yuta. “Japanese man sentenced to 3 years in prison over pirated manga site content.” https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210603/p2a/00m/0na/009000c Mainichi Japan, English article. June 3, 2021. Accessed June 10, 2021.
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