A 29-year-old man was sentenced to three years in prison after operating an illegal manga website that featured pirated copies of hit titles such as One Piece and Kingdom. Romi Hoshino was found guilty of violating the copyright infringement law on Wednesday for running the popular pirate website Manga-Mura. The illegal website which was taken down in 2018 is believed to have caused the manga industry losses of over 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion).
According to the indictment (via Anime News Network), Hoshino's website Manga-Mura allowed its users illegal access to several popular manga titles, including 516 episodes of the Kingdom manga and 866 episodes of One Piece which were all made available for free in May 2017. On top of that, Hoshino was also accused of asking companies that purchased ads on the website to transfer 62.57 million yen ($570,000) in advertising revenues between December 2016 and November 2017 to an overseas account in an attempt to conceal the earnings from Japanese authorities.
Calling for the suspension of the sentence, Hoshino's defense team stated during the trial that the parties involved didn't commit a crime because some of the existing manga files uploaded on the Manga-Mura website were already viewable on other websites. Hoshino's unidentified accomplices have already been convicted. Hopefully, this serves as a huge lesson to the folks who support illegal websites such as Manga-Mura. Piracy is a crime and it shouldn't be tolerated.
One Piece Chapter 1015 will be available on June 7th.
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