Crime doesn’t pay. Unless it’s manga piracy which pays very well until you get caught and put into prison, which is exactly what happened to one 29-year-old man in Japan this week.
The man in question is Romi Hoshino, and for years he ran the manga piracy website Manga-Mura and made millions of yen off of ad revenue. At the same time, however, it’s estimated that his illegal scans cost the manga industry in excess of 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion USD). It’s worth noting, though, that how that figure was reached is unknown.
Unfortunately for Hoshino, the good times are over as the Fukuoka District Court has found him guilty of copyright infringement and has sentenced him to three years in prison, on top of a ten million yen fine (about $91,000 USD). In addition, the judge ruling over the case, Hiroshi Kambara, has ordered that the 62 million yen (about $565,000 USD) that was being hidden in overseas accounts be confiscated by authorities.
If you think this is harsh, you’ll be surprised to know that the defense was actually seeking a prison term of four and a half years in addition to the ten million yen fine.
In a press conference held after the ruling, an official from Shueisha Inc. called the jail sentence “appropriate.” He elaborated by saying “If a work that authors have put their heart and soul into can be freely accessed by the public, this would harm the environment in creating interesting works.”
The defense tried their best to get Hoshino off the hook by saying that many of the scans he had uploaded to his site were already available on other websites and thus he didn’t actually commit a crime. They sought a suspended sentence but were unable to sway the judge.
Source: Kyodo News
