While anime and manga have always been popular with niche communities, in the past decade, both mediums have exploded, and it’s difficult to avoid the influence that series like Demon Slayer, Naruto, Dragon Ball, and so many more have had around the globe.
As the industry has grown and legal distribution has become more widespread, production companies have finally decided to take a step in cracking down on one of their biggest roadblocks: piracy.
Every entertainment industry has dealt with piracy in its own unique ways, but for anime and manga, it can be complicated. There are tons of websites that host unofficial “scanlations” – scans of manga that are translated without holding rights to localizing the original series – of manga, or unofficial distribution of anime series.
There have been talks for several months now that both industries would begin taking measures against this, with Kumamoto Prefectural Police arresting two individuals in February 2024 on charges of various Copyright crimes for distributing leaks illegal scans from Weekly Shonen Jump.
More recently, more than ten popular unofficial anime streaming sites have been wiped from the web, proving how hard industry officials are working to get anime fans to support the official release and distribution of their favorite series.
Which Anime Streaming Sites Were Shut Down?
In the recent anime piracy crackdown, the following piracy sites were shut down:
- filmoflix
- papadustream
- animesuge
- vidsrc2
- 2flix
- theflixtor
- mov2day
- fboxz
- cinezone
- aniwave (9 Anime)
- zoroxtv
While it may be frustrating to some to see these sites shut down, there’s no better time to support the official releases of anime and manga, with publishers and global distributers ramping up the releases of of physical and digital media, and most anime being released with a simulcasting schedule that allows Western fans to watch anime the same day as Japanese audiences.
Published: Aug 28, 2024 11:20 am