Manga Piracy Report Calls the United States the Top Culprit

Manga piracy has been an issue for decades now, but as the medium has grown so too have its distributors. There is no denying that manga is a billion dollar business, but some profits are bypassed even today by pirates. Now, a new report by MUSO is breaking down the current state of manga piracy, and it seems the United States ranks number one in the offense.

Recently, MUSO released a paper detailed piracy by industry in the past year. It was there the analytics company learned the U.S. is the top contributor to manga piracy. It accounts for 13% of the global traffic for pirated manga. And sadly, the report only gets worse for manga.

After all, MUSO learned manga is the most-pirated medium pirated in the world. About 69% of all pirated published content in the world is manga, so that is a clear yikes. Manga is also the second most-pirated content period on the Internet. The medium overcame film in 2023, but pirated TV still leads overall.

Clearly, manga piracy is not going away, and it has gotten worse if anything. Between 2022 and 2023, manga piracy managed to become more substantial globally than film piracy. You can see why publishers in Japan are being more proactive in targeting pirates, and those legal cases are going global.

In the past decades, a wave of global indictments have gone live from Japan’s top manga publishers. From Kodansha to Shueisha, brands are looking to protect their IPs from pirates. Not long ago, manga made headlines when two foreigners in Japan were arrested on suspicion of leaking Shonen Jump content early. From online leakers to organized pirates, the manga industry wants to shut the whole gig down, but that is no doubt easier said than done.

With this new data in mind, you can expect publishers to be as vigilant as ever when it comes to piracy. Luckily, there are more and more ways to read manga legally. Not only do publishers like Viz Media and Yen Press oversee English translations of top manga, but many series are available digitally. Manga Plus, K Manga, and the Shonen Jump app all make manga releases available to U.S. readers in step with Japan.

What do you think about this latest piracy breakdown? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!