Nowadays, piracy continues to remain a huge problem for the entire manga industry, but precisely in this last period, also due to the never-ending pandemic, the phenomenon has increased exponentially, recording shocking numbers. An organization called ABJ ( Authorized Books of Japan) was created to address the problem of manga piracy. According to Jiji Press, the group has put together a list of around 400 pirate sites and in the last year alone, the number of illegal portals publishing manga without permission has risen dramatically. In October 2021, the three main illegal sites accumulated 326 million monthly visits , 26 times more than in January 2020 in the pre-pandemic, when data traffic reached 12.5 million.
ABJ estimates that the financial damage caused by the top 10 sites on the "list" increased from 210 billion yen (1.6 billion euros) throughout 2020 to 780 billion (around 6 billion euros) for the period from January to October 2021. "Today the quality of the images of pirate manga is very high, almost on a par with that of e-books, and some works can be found on the web the same day they are officially published." Commented Ken Akamatsu, author of Love Hina and Negima. "If you lose the urge to create, manga that would appear in the future may end up unread. We hope people enjoy the legal version of manga. Staying away from piracy is also a way to protect artists' talent." News of a couple of months ago, the legal procedure moved by four Japanese publishers, including Shueisha, to file a criminal complaint against Manga Bank, one of the largest pirate manga sites in Japan, for copyright infringement. Sources Consult: Japan TimesKotaku