In recent months, with the joint efforts of anti-piracy organizations and government agencies in various countries, many animation piracy websites have been closed down in Brazil, Vietnam and other places. In addition, an American website suspected of providing pirated Japanese adult content was also sued for copyright infringement.
CODA cooperates with Brazil to shut down 16 anime piracy websites through “Anime Action”
The Japanese Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), an organization that aims to reduce global piracy and actively promote the international distribution of Japanese content, revealed on August 26 that through criminal proceedings filed by CODA member companies, a number of Japanese anime piracy websites in Brazil4 was exposed in the month and subsequently shut down. These sites have Portuguese animated subtitles and have region-locked Japanese IP addresses that make them inaccessible, ostensibly to prevent discovery by Japanese rights holders.
Brazil launched the “404 Action” public-private initiative to combat piracy in 2019. As part of the plan, it carried out “Operation Animation”, the “second phase” of which will begin around September 2023.
As part of “Phase 2”, toei animation, Thatand Bandai Namco movies Through CODA, criminal proceedings were initiated against multiple piracy websites in Brazil. Three sites were closed as a result. The investigation also resulted in the shutdown of three additional websites (which the report named Animeshouse.net, animationsbr.cc and meuanime.io) and 10 related websites. CODA said the 16 websites had an average of about 21 million visits per month in the three months between November 2023 and January 2024. , now displays a message from CODA regarding shutdown.
As part of the “second phase” of operations, CODA is also collaborating with the Korean Copyright Overseas Promotion Association (COA). These organizations targeted a total of 8 websites: 3 websites were exposed through CODA member companies, and the other 5 websites were pirated online comics exposed through CODA member companies.
CODA said the first phase of the operation, which took place between February and March 2023, resulted in the closure of 36 anime piracy websites.
Closure of Fmovies, Aniwave, AnimeSuge
News website Torrent Freak reported on August 27 that many non-anime piracy websites such as Fmovies and animation piracy websites such as AnimeSuge and Aniwave (formerly 9anime) have been shut down. Aniwave posted on Reddit in late August that it had shut down its website. Reddit users similarly noted in late August that the AnimeSuge website had been shut down. ANN can confirm that since the closure of these two websites, multiple anime piracy domains containing URLs for AnimeSuge or Aniwave have appeared and are still accessible at press time.
Torrent Freak noted that the original Aniwave had around 170 million visits per month before it was shut down.
Days after the “Torrent Freak” report, the Motion Picture Association’s Alliance for Creative and Entertainment (ACE) anti-piracy group said it worked with police in Hanoi, Vietnam to shut down Fmovies and “many other notorious piracy websites.” ACE said the Hanoi-based Fmovies operating company was linked to piracy websites including Aniwave. ACE claimed that Fmovies, Aniwave and other related piracy websites involved in the operation had a total of nearly 374 million monthly visits, with more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024.
PRC Distribution sues nHentai for copyright infringement
California-based PCR Distributing filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the adult website nHentai on August 30. PCR Distributing claims it operates under the jurisdiction of DBA JAST USA, and alleges in the lawsuit that nHentai distributed “thousands” of pirated works, including five registered works owned by PCR Distributing. PCR Distributing said nHentai did not attempt to comply with previous DMCA takedown notices, and noted in the lawsuit that nHentai does not rely on user-generated or user-uploaded content. The lawsuit claims that in July 2024, nHentai’s average monthly visits were approximately 79.38 million, with visits from the United States and Japan being the largest markets.
The lawsuit is seeking damages and seeking to block U.S. users from accessing the site, among other requests that would effectively shut down the site and transfer the domain to PCR Distributing.
The case is ongoing and a hearing is scheduled for October 30.
Source: CODA (Link 2), PACER, ACE, Torrent Freak (Link 2, Ernesto Van der Sar)
