The pirated manga site Mangamura was one of the specific website that the Japanese government named as they requested Internet Service Providers in Japan to block these certain sites. As of Tuesday, the website is no longer accessible.
According to the Asahi Shimbun, the site was not voluntarily shut down by its site administrators and not due to the site-blocking from an ISP. The newspaper also stated that the separate server which contains the site’s image data cannot be accessed as well. Only site administrators have access to this.
An episode devoted to Mangamura will be aired on Wednesday 10:00pm Japanese Standard Time at NHK’s new program Close-Up Gendai Plus. This upcoming episode will discuss on Mangmamura’s administrators which is based from different countries and how they were able to earn money from this pirate website through advertising. Manga creator Ken Akamatsu will also appear in this episode.
It was reported in the Japanese newspaper The Mainichi Shimbun on Friday that the Japanese Government is slowly going full swing when it comes to dealing with manga piracy. They have requested all Internet service providers in Japan to block sites that have illegally uploaded manga and related digital and scanned printed copyright content.
In a report by Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), it is revealed that around September 2017 to February, the worth of damage to copyright holders in Japan costs is around 400 billion yen ($3.73 billion USD)
The government of Japan now plans to make a new legislation in 2019 to expand site-blocking law, which is only applicable to child pornography at the moment. A bill may also be passed for restricting “leech sites”. As of now, they are currently target the following websites: AniTube!, Mangamura, and MioMio.
Since 2012, digital comic sales began to drop when these related websites began to rise in number.
Although they are persistent in pushing all this to end the continuing piracy, this might be considered as unconstitutional due to violating privacy of communication and functioning as censorship.
Article 21 of Japan’s Constitution says the following: “Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated.”
Source: Asahi Shimbun and Biglobe News