Sometimes, people just don’t play fair.
The Japanese police on Wednesday arrested three individuals for uploading chapters of One Piece online before their scheduled publication date. According to police reports, these individuals have been doing this since July last year getting their early copies of Weekly Shonen Jump from stores that sell them earlier and upload them in their website. It has been reported that both Nagaya and Uehara earned around 75 million yen through the website ad revenue from publishing the scans.
The names of the arrested are the following: Shizuka Nagaya, a 23-year-old female writer, Yo Uehara a 30-year-old self-employed man, and Ryoji Hottai a 31-year-old web designer.
In addition, police stated that Hottai has also been uploading the chapters in his own website which earned him 305 million yen in a span of three years. Uehara has admitted to the crime while Nagaya denies some of the accusations as she claimed that she was no longer involved with them since last year. Hottai fully accepted the charges against him and said that he created the website and upload the manga scans for him to earn money for his everyday expenses.
Manga publisher of the Weekly Shonen Jump Shueisha expressed regarding the actions related to pirating some of their manga series that it “expresses indignation that a work that the creator worked hard and poured his heart into would be distributed in such a way to illegally earn profits”.
The company will continue to coordinate with authorities in relation to actions against piracy.
Source: NHK News Web