'One Piece' Scanners Arrested In Japan For Online Uploads

09/10/2017 12:32 am EDT

If you've were getting any One Piece spoilers from Netabare, then you shouldn't expect to get anymore. Last week, Japan made five arrests of manga scanners who illegally uploaded series like One Piece and Tokyo Ghoul to the site.

Japanese sites like NHK and Asahi have been reporting on the One Piece arrests since they were made on Wednesday. The Kumamoto Prefectural Police incarcerated five people who are accused of posting scanned manga pages to their website before the chapters were published officially. The arrests mark the first case of a 'manga netabare' crackdown in Japan.

The suspects names are being withheld right now, but details about the perpetrators have been released. A 30-year-old man was nabbed with a 23-year-old freelance writer and 31-year-old web designer.

According to police, the website got its leaks from a so-called 'hayauri' store. The members would collect magazines like Weekly Shonen Jump before its official release and scan the pages for online users. Police note the group did posts between July 2016 and July 2017.

Investigations suggest the site taken down with these arrests is one of the biggest netabare pages out there. The site is said to have gotten more views than sites for publishers like Shueisha. Thanks to the site's affiliate adds, the scanners are said to have earned between $670,000 to 2.8 million in USD.

So far, two of the perpetrators have fessed up to their crimes. Ryoji Hottai admitted he scanned manga leaks to pay his "living expenses."

Shueisha has since made an official statement about the arrests. You can read the publisher's release below:

"We are furious at the fact that the manga works created by the copyright holders with all of their energies were posted in a very impertinent way and that the suspects even made a profit from it. We hope that this arrest becomes a strong warning to the endless pirate acts and illegal uses of our publications."

[HT] Crunchyroll

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