The Japan Times Online has a followup on the article posted below about three people who were arrested in Tokyo on copyright violations charges. According to police, the three admitted scanning manga and posting it online without getting proper copyright permission.
Manga publishers are apparently worried about bootleggers encroaching on their turf, and with good reason:
“We estimate the total online publishing market will come to around 9 billion yen for the year to March, and comics will account for some 5 billion yen of it,” said Tetsuro Daiki, an official of the intellectual property management section at Shogakukan Publishing Inc.
According to the article, manga publishers and artists joined with the Association of Copyright for Computer Software and police to make the arrests.
“We don’t know yet whether the case is the tip of the iceberg, but there are strong possibilities that similar cases will emerge,” Hiroshi Katsurayama, a legal official at the Association of Copyright for Computer Software, told a news conference.
But they shouldn’t come as a surprise: The article states that “manga industry officials” (I’m picturing a group of salarymen with a bad attitude) had warned the website operators repeatedly that they were breaking the law.
