The owner of the pirate website Mangamura was ordered by the Tokyo District Court to pay 1.7 billion yen (about $11 million) to Shogakukan, Shueisha and Kadokawa. The court's decision is the largest award ever awarded in a lawsuit for damages caused by pirated copies.
Mangamura is a pirate website owned and operated by Romi Hoshino, aka Zakay Romi. It was launched in February 2016 and shut down in April 2018 after Kodansha and other publishers filed a criminal complaint with the police department in the summer of 2017 about the site's operations.
The reported compensation figure is based on a court ruling deciding on damages to the companies for copyright infringement of 441 volumes and 17 comics. The pirated titles mentioned include One Piece, Kingdom, YAWARA!, Dorohedoro, Overlord, Sgt. Frog, Grandson of the Wise, Rise of the Shield Hero, Trinity Seven, Hinamatsuri, Erased, Mushoku Tensei, Golden Rough, Kanojo wa Uso o Ai Shisugiteru, Karakuri Circus, Kengan Ashura and Tasogare Ryuseigun.
After the website was shut down in 2018, Hoshino was arrested by the Philippine Immigration Bureau in 2019, as he resided in the Philippines at the time. He was then extradited to Japan later that year, where the Fukuoka District Court handled the original case against him. In June 2021, the said court issued a guilty verdict against Hoshino on the grounds of copyright infringement. In this case, he was sentenced to three years in prison, a fine of 10 million Yen (about 91,100 USD at the time), and an additional fine of 62 million Yen (about 565,000 USD at the time).
For this year's new ruling, the court noted that the Mangamura site operated fraudulently by manually uploading scanned manga images to the site's servers; and make scans uploaded by third parties available for viewing on the website. Furthermore, the ruling also said that through this activity, the website generated online advertising revenue based on website hosting.
Source: Nikkei
Featured Image: Policeman in a cocoon. © Miko Yasu, Kodansha/Hakozume Production Committee