https://www.cbr.com/world-biggest-adult-manga-pirate-site-america-sued/
World's Biggest Free Adult Manga 'Piracy' Site Sued by U.S. Company for
Copyright Infringement
By
Chike Nwaenie
Published 1 day ago
The world's biggest free mature manga site, considered by many to deal in
pirated work, has been sued for copyright infringement by a U.S. distribution
company, with the site worth a massive 79.4 million monthly visits.
Via Torrent Freak, the adult manga website nHentai's legal troubles have
worsened following a lawsuit for copyright infringement by PCR Distributing.
PCR has been involved in the distribution of adult games since 1998;
according to its recent filing, it "owns, creates, acquires, translates, and
distributes premium hentai art and publications from Asia to the U.S. market"
and "specializes in localizing and publishing Japanese visual novels and
dating-sim games for the English market." It previously filed for a subpoena
to reveal the identities of those running nHentai, which the site disputes
due to its belief that it acts as a mere "conduit" for potentially illegal
content, rather than actively being engaged in storing illegal material.
Given that there's a precedent for DMCA subpoenas being denied for this
reason, it had effectively stalled PCR until Aug. 30, when the company sued.
PCR filed a complaint for four charges: "Copyright Infringement," "Vicarious
Copyright Infringement," "Contributory Copyright Infringement" and
"Inducement of Copyright Infringement." It now seeks a jury trial to bring
nHentai to justice, claiming that it cannot be considered a mere conduit
since it doesn't allow users to submit content. If PCR's suit is successful,
nHentai will be forced to pay compensation. Additionally, PCR demands that
the site's domain hosting service, CloudFlare, turn over the site to them, or
for third parties such as Google and other search engines, ISPs and all other
services to block it in the U.S. This would mark a major blow to one of the
world's biggest sites, with 79.4 million monthly visits. Similarweb adds that
users access on average 41.62 pages on the site per visit and spend around 11
minutes browsing. nHentai had previously sought a private settlement with
PCR, which was outright rejected.
2024 Has Been a Major Year in Battling Anime, Manga & Webtoon Piracy
The copyright infringement lawsuit and subpoena filing comprise part of a
tumultuous year in the fight to curb piracy. In late August, WEBTOON filed a
subpoena request to expose the identities of operators of over 170 piracy
sites. These sites have a combined 100 million monthly page visits, signaling
just how widespread these illegal sites are. Most pirated manga originate
from Japan and Korea, whose countries collaborated on an international
operation to shut down over 16 piracy sites in Brazil over the past year,
worth another 100 million monthly visits.
While efforts to combat international piracy have been at the forefront,
Japan saw massive success at home earlier this year, securing financial
penalties from Mangamura