Unfortunately, piracy has been a huge problem lately in the anime, manga, and webtoon industries.and big companies are cracking down on these illegal activities like never before. Although this troubling issue is widespread, anti-piracy associations are taking a stand and shutting down as many of these illegal websites as possible.
CODEwhich stands for Content Overseas Distribution Association, is the latest group to put an end to a popular piracy platform. Rine.cloud, which was one of the most visited piracy sites in Brazil, closed forever as a result of copyright infringement, marking another huge victory for those fighting anime piracy.
CODA has just closed rine.cloud, a major Brazilian piracy website
rine.cloud received 2.74 million monthly views, making it one of the most popular piracy sites in Brazil
2.74 million viewers visited rine.cloud on average every month, proving the prevalence of pirated content in Brazil. Rine.cloud is not the only piracy site that CODA has taken action against, because in its statement, they announced that they had stopped 15 other piracy sites in addition to rine.cloud. This seriously hurt the number of illegal anime sites available in Brazil, because the sites targeted were some of the most frequented in South America. Most of these sites avoided being caught by using geo-blocking measures to hide from Japanese IP addresses, making it difficult for CODA to track down the culprits.
Using “knock and talk” measures, CODA initiated legal action on behalf of three major companies in the industry: Toei Animation Co., Ltd., Toho Co., Ltd. and Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. These industry giants are responsible for animating hit series like My Hero Academia, Dragon Ball, and Sailor Moon, to name a few, explaining why they were so eager to fight for the removal of this beloved content from illegal websites. Now, instead of watching anime, visitors to rine.cloud are met with a page that redirects them to the CODA copyright notice, informing viewers of the site's closure and the reason behind it.
Other groups and companies have also joined the battle against piracy
Major animation studios such as Viz Media and Toei Animation have become involved in defeating piracy
CODA has made its stance on anime piracy clear through these shutdowns. In the statement published on their website, they state that the practice is "extremely malicious and should never be tolerated infringing on content that creators spent time, effort and money to create, and unfairly deriving advertising revenue from it." CODA is not the only anti-piracy group involved in this battle. MCST, Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, I just took similar action against OKTOONa major webtoon piracy site. Additionally, Japan announced new AI software that it will soon implement, specifically designed to detect piracy.
While the use of AI itself is considered controversial, the Japan Cultural Affairs Agency's willingness to spend 30 million yen on this software shows how serious they are about eliminating the piracy problem that is wreaking havoc on so many industries. in Japan and beyond. . Finally, Companies like VIZ Media have reached out directly to Google to remove billions of pirated URLs. These large companies have spared no expense or time in combating piracy, and although new illegal websites appear every day, anti-piracy organizations are increasingly determined to take them down.
Source: CODE, Anime News Network