Decades of experience supports the theory that intellectual property infringement is often viewed by China as a problem to be solved by those complaining of violations on home territory.

That the loudest voices continue to import mountains of Chinese-manufactured goods, including items that in some cases violate copyright and trademark laws, serves to illustrate why differences on IP enforcement are likely to continue.

Other conundrums, including IP rights owned by U.S. companies being strategically infringed by Chinese citizens, in ways that avoid liability in China itself, has led to limited enforcement opportunities and in some cases, rampant piracy.

Early March we reported on the work of Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA. After formulating an impressive strategy and demonstrating significant patience, the company now benefits from having its own office in Beijing.

From there, big things are playing out, including collaboration with Chinese authorities which led to three people behind pirate anime site B9Good being convicted earlier this year .

CODA Files Criminal Complaints Against Pirate Services

New information published by CODA on Wednesday reveals success in two other cases relating to pirate streaming. The services offered mainstream movies and TV shows owned by companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, among others.

Since a library of more than 30,000 anime episodes were also available for viewing, CODA’s Beijing office was prompted to file criminal copyright complaints with the Public Security Bureau of Jiangsu Province.

11 Arrests, Servers and Other Hardware Seized

In the first case, CODA reports that the Public Security Bureau of Taizhou City sent 54 investigators and other personnel to the Chongqing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, Hebei, and Anhui provinces to conduct simultaneous searches of multiple suspects in various locations.

“The searches revealed that a subscription-style website called Shenlan had been established and operated, which copied a large amount of Japanese content, mainly anime, without permission from the rights holders, and uploaded it to a personal media server, which is a legal service, to enable streaming playback from various devices,” the anti-piracy group reports.

“As a result of the investigation, a total of 10 people, including the main culprit A (36 years old), a man living in Chongqing, who operated Shenlan and sold account information for accessing ‘Shenlan’ from the website and app on his own website, were arrested on suspicion of copyright law violations.

“In addition, nine laptops, two desktops, two servers, 11 mobile phones, and multiple storage devices were seized during the search, and the administrative accounts and passwords were obtained, and all data on the servers was preserved as evidence,” CODA reports.

Another suspect was arrested in Hubei Province on January 24th, making a total of 11 arrests in connection with the now shuttered service.

Intelligence Obtained, Police Target Second Pirate Operation

On June 5, 2024, the Public Security Bureau of Yangzhou City sent a total of eleven investigators and cybersecurity experts to the home and workplace of two other men. Information about the suspected brothers was obtained via another suspect’s testimony following the raids in January.

During the searches investigators identified a subscription piracy service called COCO operating in similar fashion to the Shenlan service previously taken down. Even greater volumes of pirated content were accessible via COCO , however; around 100,000 TV episodes were available for streaming which included 20,000 episodes of Japanese content, mostly anime.

“ COCO was opened by male B in May 2021, and male B was mainly responsible for its operation and maintenance. He operated the site from December 2023 until his arrest in June 2024, recruiting his older brother, male C, as a member of the operation,” CODA reports.

“During the search, PCs, server equipment, etc. were seized, and the administrative account and password of COCO were obtained, and all data on the server was preserved as evidence.”

China Prosecutes More Pirates Than Outsiders May Think

Research on the CODA cases led to an unexpected discovery. In contrast to reports implying a lax approach to infringement, Chinese authorities seem remarkably busy when it comes to prosecuting operators of pirate sites.

An article published on a government website late February, titled: “I just wanted to release pirated movies to earn some advertising fees, but I didn’t expect to be convicted and sentenced…” tells the story of a person identified as ‘Ke’ who chose piracy as an easy way to make money.

The report notes that since Ke majored in computer science, he figured that running a piracy service would be a low-cost, high-return business model that would generate some much-needed cash. Details aren’t specific but Ke reportedly began by “buying a website and the services it contained” which may suggest some kind of streaming template and content derived from a third-party source.

Whatever it was, Ke reportedly became more adventurous, soon deploying web crawlers to identify movies and TV shows available elsewhere on the web before storing them on his own server. He ended up running his own pirate streaming site and a ‘cinema app’ which attracted attention from advertisers in early 2022.

In May that same year, authorities received a complaint from rightsholders. At this point, Ke had a library of more than 50,000 movies and TV shows and after an investigation, he was sentenced in April 2023 to three years in prison, suspended, and fined 400,000 yuan, around US$55,000

More Prosecutions Recently Than the United States?

A February 2024 report in local media is just one of many detailing the prosecution of pirate site operators in China. This particular case was supervised by five government departments, including the Copyright Bureau and Intellectual Property Office.

A man identified as ‘Deng’ was the operator of a website where “video enthusiasts” could view movies, TV shows, and documentaries. Authorities say the plan was to attract people prepared to pay for ultra-high definition content to be delivered to their homes. When police raided Deng’s home, they found more than 317,000 pirated films and TV series, 17 computers, and 200 large capacity hard drives.

Investigators later revealed that between December 2019 and February 2023, Deng had purchased over 30,000 master discs from multiple suppliers in China, and used those as a basis for a wholesale piracy business supplying other groups around the country. At trial , the court sentenced Deng to three years and two months in prison, fined him 150,000 yuan (~US$20,600), and confiscated his illegal gains.

As recently as this April, authorities were reporting another crackdown against sites illegally offering Spring Festival films, plus an additional 200,000 movies and TV shows obtained from various platforms.

Seven suspects were arrested and 20 websites were reportedly shut down . Following a recent trial, a court sentenced three men to prison for copyright infringement, with terms ranging from ten months to four years, plus fines. Two other men received suspended prison sentences.

While China’s priorities differ from those of the United States, there appears to be consensus on the need to clamp down on movie and TV show piracy. Whose movies and TV shows should receive priority protection remains an argument for another day.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

L'été ne sera pas forcément chaud, mais au moins, on aura de quoi lire en vacances.

Bandai Namco continue de se reposer sur les arena fighters en dépoussiérant cette fois-ci la franchise Bleach de Tite Kubo.

Cette icône des émissions jeunesse des années 80 et 90 s'offre une adaptation en long-métrage animé de toute beauté.

From Terminator-eyed strikers to flame-wreathed shots on goal, no bombast is too much in this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular series

Like Squid Game meets Shaolin Soccer, this feature-length extrapolation of Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s popular manga and anime set in a football training academy treats the beautiful game like an epic showdown between demonic forces or a Kurosawa-esque assault on a mountain fortress. Terminator-eyed strikers, flame-wreathed shots on goal, players zoning out in an amniotic limbo; no bombast is too much when hammering home Blue Lock’s key message: a star centre-forward must have an almighty ego.

The head coach is even called Jinpachi Ego. In trying to identify a unique attacking talent for the Japanese national team at the elite Blue Lock academy, he is unimpressed by the close-knit bond between the two final recruits: rich kid Reo (voiced by Yuma Uchida) and his diffident schoolmate Nagi (Nobunaga Shimazaki). The latter especially is an enigma: a twinkle-toed footballing genius who declares everything a “hassle” and would rather be gaming than on the pitch. Both Nagi’s Eeyore-ish attitude and the pair’s alliance may have to be jettisoned if one is to triumph in Ego-san’s elimination process.

Continue reading...

L'œuvre de Kohei Horikoshi entrera très prochainement au panthéon des mangas Shonen Jump officiellement terminés.

Whether it’s Hollywood movies, TV shows, music, or static publications such as books and magazines, millions of people are now very comfortable consuming content via apps.

In many cases, third-party apps simply act as a hub, utilizing content made available by other services. When developers dedicate themselves to a particular content niche, mobile apps can become very popular indeed, especially so when they outgun legitimate apps produced by rightsholders themselves.

Tachiyomi Down, Aniyomi Up

This January, manga reader app Tachiyomi paid the ultimate price for its roaring success . South Korean webtoon publisher Kakao reportedly reached out the app’s developer with an offer they couldn’t refuse, but predictably not the good kind. The developer’s response was to terminate the project, a sensible move under the circumstances.

Since Tachiyomi was an open source project, it would never truly die if any of its many forks were still in play. A fork called Aniyomi ensured a piece of Tachiyomi lived on, in an app that broadened the content scope of the original project. With anime (Japanese cartoons) entering the mix, Aniyomi’s upwards trajectory continued; the downside was another set of rightsholders to contend with.

At this point it’s worth pointing out that the developer of Aniyomi clearly understood the risks associated with supplying infringing content directly to users. When direct infringers find themselves on the sharp end of a lawsuit, most cases end badly for the defendants.

That’s presumably why Aniyomi and its predecessor were supplied ’empty’ to users and relied on third-party extensions to provide content discovery and acquisition functionality. Be that as it may, an email can wipe everything out in an instant.

200+ Aniyomi Extensions Targeted by Sony

When assessing the Sony Pictures DMCA takedown notice filed at GitHub, it seems clear that Sony’s agent understands the requirements of the DMCA, and appreciates how much time it would’ve taken to fulfil its requirements by providing appropriate detail.

The challenge when targeting over 200 different extensions with different uses is that the same claim is unlikely to apply to all 200. That means investigating each one individually and reporting the basis for infringement based on the findings.

So, in response to GitHub’s request to “provide a detailed description of the original content” that has allegedly been infringed, anti-piracy company Markscan provided the Sony Pictures website URL instead. Detailing exactly where to find over 200 extensions proved no problem at all.

Part of the takedown notice is in letter form and it begins by explaining that Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. authorized Markscan to issue a takedown notice to GitHub.

Supporting Evidence

The meat of the notice carefully describes the steps needed to access infringing content using various extensions.

“To access full content, users must install extensions listed in the application settings. By clicking on the settings button, we found an extension option leading to a list of extensions stored within the application. We installed several anime extensions such as Witanime, AnimeOnsen, Egydead, Fasel HD, Animeworld India, and Torrent Anime,” it reads.

“After installing the extensions, we navigated back to the anime page showcasing all anime titles. We selected ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ and clicked on one of its episodes. The option ‘Source’ appeared, indicating the source/extension from which the content can be watched for free. We selected AnimeOnsen, chose the video quality, and successfully watched the content.

“Following the above-mentioned details depicting copyright piracy using various technological measures and utilizing Github services, we would like to request suspension/removal of above-mentioned URLs.”

Details Are Important

If we embrace the ‘spirit’ of the law rather than its requirements, the majority of the extensions do appear designed to infringe, if only because many of the source sites specialize in infringing content. The aspect that stands out here is the high level of detail provided so the extensions could be effectively removed, but almost no detail to show why they should be removed for infringing Sony’s rights.

Considering that accuracy is a persistent problem , and having just waded through yet more DMCA copyright complaints filed by Markscan on behalf of Plex, DAZN, AliExpress, and others, asking Google to take content down for trademark infringement , the details seem especially important ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) .

In this case, the notice seems to suggest that only a handful of the extensions were installed, and just one was actually tested. Based on the provided statement, there’s a good argument that AnimeOnsen infringed Sony’s rights in ‘Jututsu Kaisen’ so it would be completely reasonable to take the related extension down.

Beyond that, the notice mentions a single copyright work and extrapolates that to over 200 extensions, the majority of which weren’t tested. Any suggestion that they all offered ‘Jututsu Kaisen’ or any other unspecified content owned by Sony is a guess at best.

To be clear, this shouldn’t be construed as defending the already precarious legal standing of the repo in question, but as a reminder that vague claims continue to cause damage to non-infringing users and content, despite being regularly called out as abusive.

Collateral Damage

As it turns out, the presumed guess mentioned above was also a bad guess. Three of the extensions relate to legal services, two for Google and another for media player Jellyfin. On paper that might sound like a less-than 2% error rate but not carrying out tests isn’t an error.

Because GitHub cannot disable access to specific files within a repository, it appears that Aniyomi’s developer was provided the opportunity to remove the extensions voluntarily. The alternative would’ve seen the entire repo deleted by GitHub, but after the removal of “some” extensions, only the repo, and the Google and Jellyfin extensions survived.

That brings us full-circle to the theory that attempting to separate apps from third party (or supposed third party) extensions actually works. That aspect didn’t receive a mention, and yet almost everything came down regardless.

A well constructed DMCA takedown notice would’ve achieved exactly the same end result, of course, but at least everyone would know why.

The alleged DMCA takedown notice is available here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Any content that can be digitized is immediately vulnerable to being pirated. The speed and scale at which that happens is ultimately governed by two key factors; how easily the content can be obtained, copied, and distributed, and how popular the content is with consumers.

In this respect, Japanese comics, better known as manga, effortlessly earn top marks across the board. That has led to unprecedented levels of piracy on what appears to be a near perfect consumer product, one for which ongoing demand is relentless.

Based in Japan, the leading manga publishers are facing a monumental struggle, and not only due to the scale of the infringement. Enforcement challenges exist at almost every turn, in particular the overseas locations of the largest pirate sites and the apparent reluctance of local authorities to intervene in any meaningful way.

What the publishers aren’t doing is giving up. Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), which represents companies including Shueisha, Kadokawa , Kodansha, and Shogakukan, estimates that between 2022 and 2023, through various means, piracy rates reduced by 25%.

At the start of 2024, piracy rates were still around 80% higher than they were in 2020, with 1,176 pirate sites still offering publishing content in various languages; 277 sites offering content in Japanese, 446 offering English translations, and the remainder offering everything from Chinese and Vietnamese, to Turkish, Italian, and Russian language content.

Obtaining Personal Data From Cloudflare

A persistent issue according to the publishers is pirate sites’ use of Cloudflare. They view the platform as a benefit to many pirate manga sites but a hindrance to their investigations. Meetings have taken place with Cloudflare in Japan over the past couple of years, but it’s unclear what progress has been made, if any.

In the meantime, working on the basis that Cloudflare may hold useful information on the owners of sites using its services, publishers including Shueisha file DMCA subpoena applications at courts in the United States. These compel Cloudflare to hand over whatever information it holds on site operators.

Shueisha Obtains a DMCA Subpoena in the U.S.

In general, the usefulness of information obtained this way tends to vary. That being said, other major rightsholders use the same mechanism regularly, so it seems likely that the process can be useful.

After Shueisha filed DMCA takedown notices with Cloudflare on May 2, the company followed up by filing a DMCA subpoena application at a California district court on May 10. It was signed off this week, so Cloudflare will soon be handing over information relating to around two dozen domains that offered titles such as One Piece without permission.

The domains and their recent estimated monthly traffic are listed in full at the end of this article. The stand-out sites with the most traffic, including truyenqqvn.com, mangakoma01.net, mangaraw.onl, rawkuma.com , and others with over a million visits per month, can be seen in the images below.

Out in front in terms of traffic is truyenqqvn.com, a site that appears to cater exclusively to Vietnamese speakers. That reflects in its traffic data, with almost 98% of its 43.1m visits coming from Vietnam. Such is the popularity of the platform, locally it’s currently the 14th most popular website in the entire country.

The site no longer operates from the domain in the subpoena listed above, however. Like many similar sites with Vietnamese connections, this domain switch isn’t the first and is unlikely to be the last.

In common with all domains listed in the subpoena, Cloudflare is required to comply with Shueisha’s comprehensive request for information, the details of which are as follows:

• Name(s), last known address(es), last known telephone and/or cell phone number(s)
• Any and all email address(es); account number(s)
• Billing information (including, but not limited to, names, telephone number(s), and mailing and billing address(es) of each of all of the payment methods (including, but not limited to, credit cards, bank accounts, and any online payments system), hosting provider(s), server(s)
• Any other contact information and any and all logs of IP address(es), relating to each individual or business entity that operates or owns each of the Infringing URLs, and each individual or business entity that has hosted content, uploaded content, and/or has contracted with others to upload or host content using the Infringing URLs, from any and all sources, including without limitation billing or administrative records with timestamps from the time of the registration of each Infringing URL until the date of this subpoena.
• All access log information (IP addresses, corresponding port numbers,corresponding dates and times, access type, and corresponding destination IP addresses) relating to each of the Infringing URLs listed below.

All documents for Shueisha’s DMCA subpoena application can be found here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The joint press release issued Monday by the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was unusual right from the start.

Published early on Monday, even the timing was a break from the norm, but the content was even more surprising. Following criminal referrals by the Premier League and ACE, an operator of BestBuyIPTV – a platform that has appeared on the USTR’s Notorious Markets report for the past five years – had been convicted at the People’s Court of Hanoi.

For a country where criminal referrals have traditionally disappeared into the ether, that could be a very big deal.

Sentencing Details Are Somewhat Puzzling

The press release clearly identifies Le Hai Nam as “the operator” of BestBuyIPTV. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay the equivalent of $4,000. Whether that was a straightforward fine or something else isn’t clear, but more than $24,000 in illegal profits were identified, confiscated, and then seized by the state, while $12,000 in restitution was paid according to the indictment.

Having learned more about the case and its challenges since Monday, the conviction seems to represent a minor miracle in itself. In isolation, however, there’s an irreconcilable gap between the scale of the infringing and the punishment handed down.

For reasons that aren’t addressed, the court suspended the entire sentence, i.e no prison time at all. Assuming the restitution was split 50/50, that’s $6,000 each for the Premier League and ACE, while $24,000 – the bulk of funds – simply evaporated into the public purse. It’s a baffling situation, but clearly the conviction is the main prize here; it could be priceless.

Legal Process Took Four Years

Information made available to TorrentFreak suggests that the Premier League filed a complaint with authorities in June or July 2020, requesting an investigation and criminal prosecution of not one, but two Vietnamese nationals, one of which was Le Hai Nam.

The other, whose name we’ll refrain from revealing here, was considered the operator of BestBuyIPTV while Nam appears to have controlled the restreaming side of the business. Communications with customers show involvement in both reselling and direct sales, however.

Estimates of how much BestBuyIPTV was making overall were not made available to us, but a third party estimate provides some basis to throw some figures into the air to compare with the $14,000 paid in restitution.

In common with similar services who use subscriber numbers as part of their marketing, BestBuyIPTV’s homepage boasted 900,000 subscribers, between 10,000 and 12,000 resellers, and around 2,000 restreaming affiliates. If we assume these figures are highly inflated and then broadly avoid counting revenues twice, a conservative estimate would run to a seven-figure sum, and quite possibly eight.

The other remarkable aspect to this case can be viewed from two different directions. Either there was a complete lack of awareness on the security front, or maybe none of those involved actually cared. Given the technical skills on display concerning the service itself, the former seems to be out of the question. That leaves the latter, and probably one of the easier identifications for the Premier League in recent years.

Of course, that’s just a small part of the puzzle; gathering evidence to support convictions is painstaking work and more may be needed to bring this particular battle to an end.

Official Admits Manga Piracy Problem

As regularly reported over the past few years, Vietnam is home to some of the world’s largest pirate sites. In the United States, with site-blocking legislation back on the political agenda, the spotlight is on FMovies , one of the world’s leading movie and TV show streaming sites.

For some time, however, copyright holders in Japan have been reporting several other Vietnam-based or Vietnam-operated platforms responsible for staggering levels of piracy. They specialize in Japanese comics, known as manga, and local cartoons, better known as anime.

After recently renewing an anti-piracy partnership with Hollywood, publishers and anti-piracy group CODA are independently working flat out to solve what at times has looked like an unsolvable problem. However, unusual comments published in local media may suggest some light on the horizon.

Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

Pham Hoang Hai is the director of the Radio, Television and Electronic Information Testing Center, which operates within the Department of Broadcasting and Electronic Information under the Ministry of Information and Communications.

In comments published recently in local media, Hai said that around 100 websites are known to offer football matches illegally in Vietnam, together responsible for around 1.5 billion views in the 2022/2023 season. He also commented on sites dealing in other content, around 200 generating around 120 million views. And then something else, which as far as we know is the first public comment that acknowledges the scale of manga piracy traceable to Vietnam.

“Recently, we discovered a number of websites with servers located abroad that violate comic book copyrights,” Hai said .

“There have been a number of Japanese organizations working with the Ministry of Information and Communications, reporting comic book violations. Wars in cyberspace have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to copyright owners.”

In isolation, that may not sound like a particularly important comment and with no context, a suspended sentence and measly restitution could easily be dismissed on the same grounds. Only time will tell whether these seeds will grow into something more substantial but in Vietnam, where signs of progress are extremely rare, any achievement in the right direction holds significant value.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.