China’s Pirate Site Crackdown is Real & Assisted By Anime Anti-Piracy Group

An interesting and patient strategy deployed by Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA, continues to bear fruit in China. After playing a key role in the recent landmark sentences handed down to the operators of a major anime piracy site, CODA is now reporting the arrests of a further 13 people. After its Beijing office filed criminal charges on behalf of Japanese rightsholders, services offering tens of thousands of anime titles were shut down.

Decades of experience supports the theory that intellectual property infringement is often viewed by China as a problem to be solved by those complaining of violations on home territory.

That the loudest voices continue to import mountains of Chinese-manufactured goods, including items that in some cases violate copyright and trademark laws, serves to illustrate why differences on IP enforcement are likely to continue.

Other conundrums, including IP rights owned by U.S. companies being strategically infringed by Chinese citizens, in ways that avoid liability in China itself, has led to limited enforcement opportunities and in some cases, rampant piracy.

Early March we reported on the work of Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA. After formulating an impressive strategy and demonstrating significant patience, the company now benefits from having its own office in Beijing.

From there, big things are playing out, including collaboration with Chinese authorities which led to three people behind pirate anime site B9Good being convicted earlier this year.

CODA Files Criminal Complaints Against Pirate Services

New information published by CODA on Wednesday reveals success in two other cases relating to pirate streaming. The services offered mainstream movies and TV shows owned by companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, among others.

Since a library of more than 30,000 anime episodes were also available for viewing, CODA’s Beijing office was prompted to file criminal copyright complaints with the Public Security Bureau of Jiangsu Province.

11 Arrests, Servers and Other Hardware Seized

In the first case, CODA reports that the Public Security Bureau of Taizhou City sent 54 investigators and other personnel to the Chongqing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, Hebei, and Anhui provinces to conduct simultaneous searches of multiple suspects in various locations.

“The searches revealed that a subscription-style website called Shenlan had been established and operated, which copied a large amount of Japanese content, mainly anime, without permission from the rights holders, and uploaded it to a personal media server, which is a legal service, to enable streaming playback from various devices,” the anti-piracy group reports.

“As a result of the investigation, a total of 10 people, including the main culprit A (36 years old), a man living in Chongqing, who operated Shenlan and sold account information for accessing ‘Shenlan’ from the website and app on his own website, were arrested on suspicion of copyright law violations.

“In addition, nine laptops, two desktops, two servers, 11 mobile phones, and multiple storage devices were seized during the search, and the administrative accounts and passwords were obtained, and all data on the servers was preserved as evidence,” CODA reports.

Another suspect was arrested in Hubei Province on January 24th, making a total of 11 arrests in connection with the now shuttered service.

Intelligence Obtained, Police Target Second Pirate Operation

On June 5, 2024, the Public Security Bureau of Yangzhou City sent a total of eleven investigators and cybersecurity experts to the home and workplace of two other men. Information about the suspected brothers was obtained via another suspect’s testimony following the raids in January.

During the searches investigators identified a subscription piracy service called COCO operating in similar fashion to the Shenlan service previously taken down. Even greater volumes of pirated content were accessible via COCO, however; around 100,000 TV episodes were available for streaming which included 20,000 episodes of Japanese content, mostly anime.

“COCO was opened by male B in May 2021, and male B was mainly responsible for its operation and maintenance. He operated the site from December 2023 until his arrest in June 2024, recruiting his older brother, male C, as a member of the operation,” CODA reports.

“During the search, PCs, server equipment, etc. were seized, and the administrative account and password of COCO were obtained, and all data on the server was preserved as evidence.”

China Prosecutes More Pirates Than Outsiders May Think

Research on the CODA cases led to an unexpected discovery. In contrast to reports implying a lax approach to infringement, Chinese authorities seem remarkably busy when it comes to prosecuting operators of pirate sites.

An article published on a government website late February, titled: “I just wanted to release pirated movies to earn some advertising fees, but I didn’t expect to be convicted and sentenced…” tells the story of a person identified as ‘Ke’ who chose piracy as an easy way to make money.

The report notes that since Ke majored in computer science, he figured that running a piracy service would be a low-cost, high-return business model that would generate some much-needed cash. Details aren’t specific but Ke reportedly began by “buying a website and the services it contained” which may suggest some kind of streaming template and content derived from a third-party source.

Whatever it was, Ke reportedly became more adventurous, soon deploying web crawlers to identify movies and TV shows available elsewhere on the web before storing them on his own server. He ended up running his own pirate streaming site and a ‘cinema app’ which attracted attention from advertisers in early 2022.

In May that same year, authorities received a complaint from rightsholders. At this point, Ke had a library of more than 50,000 movies and TV shows and after an investigation, he was sentenced in April 2023 to three years in prison, suspended, and fined 400,000 yuan, around US$55,000

More Prosecutions Recently Than the United States?

A February 2024 report in local media is just one of many detailing the prosecution of pirate site operators in China. This particular case was supervised by five government departments, including the Copyright Bureau and Intellectual Property Office.

A man identified as ‘Deng’ was the operator of a website where “video enthusiasts” could view movies, TV shows, and documentaries. Authorities say the plan was to attract people prepared to pay for ultra-high definition content to be delivered to their homes. When police raided Deng’s home, they found more than 317,000 pirated films and TV series, 17 computers, and 200 large capacity hard drives.

Investigators later revealed that between December 2019 and February 2023, Deng had purchased over 30,000 master discs from multiple suppliers in China, and used those as a basis for a wholesale piracy business supplying other groups around the country. At trial, the court sentenced Deng to three years and two months in prison, fined him 150,000 yuan (~US$20,600), and confiscated his illegal gains.

As recently as this April, authorities were reporting another crackdown against sites illegally offering Spring Festival films, plus an additional 200,000 movies and TV shows obtained from various platforms.

Seven suspects were arrested and 20 websites were reportedly shut down. Following a recent trial, a court sentenced three men to prison for copyright infringement, with terms ranging from ten months to four years, plus fines. Two other men received suspended prison sentences.

While China’s priorities differ from those of the United States, there appears to be consensus on the need to clamp down on movie and TV show piracy. Whose movies and TV shows should receive priority protection remains an argument for another day.

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