Sony Music Leisure Japan and Bandai Namco Music Dwell, a producer of anime and report label proprietor, try to uncover the identities of the individuals behind anime music piracy web site Hikari-no-Akari.
The 2 corporations filed requests for subpoenas with a US federal court docket on June 29, asking the court docket clerk to order community providers firm Cloudflare to “establish sure alleged infringers of copyrights” which are owned or represented by Sony and Bandai Namco.
The requests might be learn right here and right here.
Hooked up to the requests had been proposed subpoenas that establish two domains, hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. Each domains are related to Hikari-no-Akari, a piracy web site that makes a speciality of Japanese music, together with music made in style by anime TV reveals.
In response to piracy information web site Torrentfreak, which first reported on Sony and Bandai Namco’s authorized actions in opposition to Hikari-no-Akari, the piracy web site has been working for greater than a decade and has been receiving greater than one million visits per thirty days.
The subpoena requests, made within the US District Court docket for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division, embody letters despatched by Sony and Bandai Namco to Cloudflare on June 20, demanding that Cloudflare “instantly disable entry” to sure content material on the two web site addresses.
These letters might be learn in full right here and right here.
It’s unclear whether or not Cloudflare responded to the letters. Nevertheless, as of Thursday (July 4), each the hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co domains had been down for customers throughout the web.
In response to Torrentfreak, Cloudflare doesn’t disable entry to internet content material for which it gives providers. Quite, the corporate forwards the requests to the hosting corporations that host the URLs in query.
The letters listed particular tracks that had been allegedly made accessible for piracy on Hikari-no-Akari.
Sony Music’s checklist consists of Half Is Sufficient by Japanese singer Anonymouz, in addition to Preview Of Me by Tatsuya Kitani, a track popularized within the anime sequence Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, and Sayonara, Mata Itsuka! by Kenshi Yenozu, which was used because the theme track to the Japanese drama The Tiger and Her Wings.
Bandai Namco’s checklist options R-O-N’s PEACEKEEPER, featured within the anime That Time I Acquired Reincarnated as a Slime; Junxix’s Consider, featured in the identical anime sequence; and Blue Days by Shota Horie and Miho Karasawa, featured within the anime As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Talent to Rise within the World.
The requests for subpoenas are made below the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The regulation permits rights holders to file a request with the clerk of any US district court docket to situation a subpoena to a service supplier, requiring them handy over figuring out details about copyright infringers.
Sony and Bandai Namco’s efforts recommend the music trade could also be ramping up its anti-piracy efforts amid a current surge in digital music piracy.
In response to information firm Muso, there was a 13% YoY enhance in visits to music piracy websites in 2023, with greater than 17 billion visits through the yr, Wired reported earlier this yr.
After years of declines, attributed to the rise in reputation of authorized music streaming providers like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, Muso’s information reveals music piracy started to rise once more beginning in 2021.
In recent times, many music rights holders have centered their efforts on holding web service suppliers to account for piracy happening on their networks.
Within the US, they’ve filed lawsuits in opposition to such ISPs as Constitution Communications, Cox Communications, and Altice USA.
That’s largely due to the rise in reputation of the torrent file-sharing protocol, which permits decentralized sharing of information. Torrent information might be accessed via quite a few piracy-supporting websites, making it unattainable to cease illicit file-sharing by focusing on any explicit web site.
Nevertheless, Hikari-no-Akari gives direct entry to internet addresses the place particular information might be discovered, making it sensible to focus on the location straight.
In response to Torrentfreak, the piracy web site additionally operates a personal discussion board and a Discord channel that’s notoriously troublesome to hitch.Music Enterprise Worldwide
