A judge in Tokyo has sentenced the owner of the pirate manga website Mangamura to pay compensation of 1.7 billion yen (about 10 million euros) to three of the largest Japanese publishing houses: Shogakukan, Shueisha, and Kadokawa.
The judgment represents the highest compensation ever awarded in Japan in a piracy damages case and marks a significant point in the fight that Japanese publishers have been waging for years against sites that illegally publish copyrighted manga.
Mangamura was a pirate site active between February 2016 and April 2018, closed after Kodansha and other Japanese publishers filed criminal complaints for copyright infringement in 2017. It is estimated that at its peak of popularity, Mangamura was visited by approximately 100 million users per month, becoming one of the most popular websites in Japan.
Already in 2021, the owner of Mangamura, who had meanwhile been extradited to Japan from the Philippines, where he resided and had been placed under custody, was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay fines for copyright infringement amounting to approximately 700,000 euros.
Artículo originalmente publicado en Fumettologica y aquí presentado en una versión editada.
Hola, soy Lucas Portillo, redactor profesional especializado en el vibrante mundo del anime, cómics, mangas y cine. Dedicado a compartir las últimas noticias, reseñas y análisis exclusivos. Mi devoción por el anime, los cómics, los mangas y el cine trasciende lo profesional; es una pasión que define quién soy.
