The Cyber Investigation Division of the Kyoto Prefectural Police Headquarters and the Yamashina Police Station conducted a simultaneous and intensive crackdown on five “leech sites”.
A total of five sites were subject to the crackdown this time, including “Eiga no Muryo Doga de Yumegokochi,” which was one of the largest video leech sites with servers located in Japan. Four males between the ages of 40 and 59 (one operating two sites) were each arrested by May 8, 2023. A “leech site” is a site that directs the public to illegally uploaded infringing content. The men operated leech sites for a variety of content, including Western and Japanese films, theatrical animation, and TV dramas.
Since the copyright law was revised in 2020 to regulate leech sites, CODA is aware of the following cases, including this one.
| Day of arrest | Law enforcement authority | Main contents | Announcement | Subject of arrest (Age at time of arrest) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This arrest by Kyoto Prefectural Police | |||||
| 1 | May 8, 2023 | Kyoto Prefectural Police | Movie | CODA/JVA | Male (age 59) ,Kyoto |
| 2 | – | Kyoto Prefectural Police | TV drama | Male (age 52), Osaka | |
| 3 | – | Kyoto Prefectural Police | |||
| 4 | – | Kyoto Prefectural Police | movie | Male (age 42), Saga | |
| 5 | – | Kyoto Prefectural Police | Anime | Male (age 40), Tokyo | |
| Cases of arrests that CODA is aware of since the leech site regulations were put in place. | |||||
| 1 | Nov. 19, 2020 | Kyoto Prefectural Police | adult video | IPPA | Male (age 47) ,Osaka Male (age 44) ,Kyoto |
| 2 | Jan. 24, 2022 | Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department | adult anime | Male (age 37) ,Ibaraki | |
| 3 | Feb. 1, 2022 | Gunma Prefectural Police | movie | CODA | Male (age 50), Osaka |
| 4 | Feb. 3, 2022 | Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department | comic | SHOGAKUKAN Inc. | Male (age 34), Saitama |
| 5 | July 7, 2022 | Gunma Prefectural Police | movie | CODA | Male (age 51), Yamagata |
| 6 | Sep. 29, 2022 | Hokkaido Prefectural Police | Anime | CODA | Male (age 57), Tokyo |
| 7 | Nov. 15, 2022 Nov. 29, 2022 | Miyagi Prefectural Police | adult video | IPPA | Male (age 50), Tokyo Company operated by ↑ |
The two leech sites exposed in this case were linking to the B9GOOD video, which was shut down in March of this year after CODA filed criminal charges in China.
Of the criminally uncovered sites, “Eiga no Muryo Doga de Yumegokochi,” which attracted the largest traffic, had an average of 2 million hits per month from March 2021 to February 2023, according to a Similarweb survey. As far as CODA is aware, “Eiga no Muryo Doga de Yumegokochi” was launched under a different domain around 2011, and after multiple site freezes, the site has been operating under its current domain since around 2015.
As of January 2022, at least 20,000 foreign, Japanese, and theatrical animation videos were presented in large numbers.
The operator of the site is believed to have been profiting from the large number of advertisements, mainly of an adult nature, that were placed on the site.
The operator of the “Eiga no Muryo Doga de Yumegokochi” website, who was arrested on May 8, had uploaded video data including “Kamen Rider Revise” (copyrighted by TOEI COMPANY, LTD. and six other companies) and “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” (copyrighted by TOHO CO., LTD. and four other companies) to an overseas server and provided links to these video data on the “Free Movie Videos” website to induce users to watch them.
Some leech sites explain that they are links and not illegal uploads themselves, and that they are not responsible for requests to remove content by stating that they should contact the source of the illegal uploads. However, it is often difficult for users to access illegal content without content that essentially “directs” them to illegal content, and we believe that leech sites that generate advertising revenue by collecting these links are as malicious as pirate sites.
CODA will continue to work for the proper protection of copyrights and the promotion of sound authorized distribution.
(translated by automatic translation system)