TorrentFreak's Journal
 
[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View]

Wednesday, September 25th, 2019

    Time Event
    7:47a
    Alleged Mangamura Admin Arrested By Japan During Deportation Flight

    Over the years, many piracy-related sites and services have been accused of facilitating massive copyright infringement but on sheer scale, few come close to now-shuttered manga site Mangamura.

    According to Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA, Mangamura caused around $2.91 billion in damages to the local manga industry. And that was from a standing start in 2016.

    While the site closed in 2018, apparently voluntarily, authorities worked to bring its alleged operator to justice. In July 2019 there was a breakthrough when the Bureau of Immigration in the Philippines announced they’d arrested the Japanese-German-Israeli “fugitive” Romi Hoshino.

    The 28-year-old, also known online as Zakay/Sakay, was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport as he attempted to board a plane to Hong Kong. The arrest was coordinated with Japanese authorities who were seeking his deportation to face charges connected with the operation of Mangamura.

    After reportedly being held in custody at a detention facility in Taguig City, Hoshino boarded a deportation flight to Japan yesterday. Once onboard, he was arrested by Japanese police and flown to Narita Airport, near Tokyo.

    A Mainichi report states that Hoshino was arrested in Japan under suspicion of copyright violations.

    A video shot at the airport shows the suspect wearing a blue t-shirt displaying the text ‘Manila Mura’ with his personal web address – https://romihoshino.com – printed underneath. That site currently displays a ‘maintenance mode’ message.

    Hoshino was interviewed by Japanese police last year, before he flew to the Philippines in May 2018. According to unnamed sources, he denied being involved in the Mangamura site. He further denied fleeing from Japan, instead citing business and other reasons for his departure.

    In addition to action against Hoshino, the noose appears to be tightening on other players allegedly involved in Mangamura.

    Earlier this month, 26-year-old Kota Fujisaki pleaded guilty at Fukuoka District Court to uploading copyrighted images to the site, contrary to copyright law. On the same day, a 24-year-old woman, Shiho Ito, pleaded not guilty to the same charges.

    The prosecution claimed that images from the 866th episode of manga series ‘One Piece’ were uploaded to Mangamura from Fujisaki’s home in May 2017, where Ito also lived at the time. It’s further claimed that the pair conspired with Hoshino, with Ito receiving payment for the uploads.

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    7:17p
    .To Registry Must Identify Owner of Fmovies and Other ‘Pirate’ Domains

    Millennium Films is continuing its quest to identify and shut down pirate sites and services.

    In recent weeks the company managed to take the widely popular app CotoMovies offline and the popular torrent site MKVCage also disappeared following legal pressure.

    To identify the operators of these sites and apps the movie outfit, alongside several of its daughter companies, uses a relatively simple weapon. Through their attorney, they request DMCA subpoenas, ordering hosts, domain registries, and other intermediaries to share personal information of their targets.

    While foreign companies may not always be responsive to such requests, US-based corporations usually are.

    The most recent effort from Millennium Films is particularly interesting in this regard. The company requested a subpoena to compel the .To registry to hand over information connected to the domains of streaming sites FMovies.to, Yesmovies.to and Cmovieshd.to, as well as torrent site iBit.to.

    According to information submitted to the court, the sites are linked to pirated copies of the film “London Has Fallen.”

    While .To is the top-level domain of the island kingdom of Tonga, the Tonic registry operates through Tonic Domains Corp., which clearly has a U.S. presence with a California address. As such, it will generally fall under the jurisdiction of US courts.

    As is usually the case with DMCA subpoenas, this request was swiftly approved by a court clerk without oversight from a judge. As such, the registry is required to hand over emails, phone numbers, payment details, and other information it has on the domain owners.

    Interestingly, the subpoena request contains several errors. It repeatedly refers to Cloudflare, for example. This is likely because it was copied from a previous submission. In addition, it addresses “Tonics Domain” corp, instead of “Tonic Domains,” but the court clerk approved it nonetheless.

    Responding to our inquiry, the Tonic registry said that it will, and has always complied with valid US subpoenas. This means that it will respond to this request as well, unless it sees the misspelled name as problematic.

    The question remains what Millennium Films can do with the information. While some pirate sites and services are responsive to legal pressure, not all are.

    FMovies, for example, which is the largest site targeted in this instance, didn’t flinch when it was sued by ABS-CBN three years ago. The site operators simply didn’t respond to the complaint, resulting in a default judgment of $210,000 in damages.

    The same judgment, issued by a federal court in Florida, also came with an injunction allowing ABS-CBN to take over the FMovies.to domain name, but that never happened.

    A copy of the subpoena issued by the US District Court for the District of Hawaii is available here (pdf).

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    << Previous Day 2019/09/25
    [Calendar]
    Next Day >>

TorrentFreak   About LJ.Rossia.org