Manga piracy has increased and got worse during the pandemic

From sourdough bread baking to exercising, people have kept themselves busy in a variety of ways during the pandemic. Manga piracy seems like it too one of them.

An organization called ABJ (Authorized Books of Japan) was formed to raise awareness about manga piracy. According to Jiji press, the group compiled a list of around 400 piracy sites, and over the past year their web traffic has skyrocketed. In January 2020, traffic from the top three sites was 12.5 million, but by October 2021 that number had grown to 326 million.

Since these are piracy sites, their financial damage has also increased significantly. ABJ estimates the financial damage caused by these websites from $ 210 billion ($ 1.8 billion) in 2020 as a whole to $ 780 billion ($ 6.7 billion) in January through October 2021 has risen.

“The image quality of pirated copies seen recently is very high and almost on par with e-books, and unauthorized works of some manga comics can be found online on the exact days their official versions are in go on sale “, manga artist Ken Akamatsu (Dear Hina

The demand for pirated manga is there, which is why sites continue to offer illegal content despite legal risks.

As Kotaku previously reported, there was a worldwide manhunt in 2019 for the manager of the manga piracy site Manga-Mura. The manager was arrested. found guilty, convicted and punished. However, a new site called Manga Bank was created to fill the void. In November 2021, Kotaku reported that four major manga publishers, including Shueisha of One piece and Naruto Fame, accuse Manga Bank of copyright infringement. The site had been closed a month earlier.

“There is no silver bullet and all we can do is keep doing everything we can to stop it,” said Atsushi Ito, who leads Shueisha’s anti-piracy tactics and also works for ABJ Asahi.com this summer. “If you give up, it’s game over.”

“Things are even worse than they were when Manga Mura was in its prime,” he added. “It could have been the result of a ‘stay at home’ lifestyle during the coronavirus pandemic.”