25/01/2011:

FUNimation files lawsuit against 1,337 illegal uploaders of One Piece

The past week has seen anime piracy and unauthorised downloads put well and truly in the spotlight, with the Fractale Production Committee insisting that FUNimation Entertainment work to remove any such illegal downloads of Fractale from the Internet before they would allow streaming of the series in North America to continue - something which has now resumed following an announcement yesterday.

In light of that, it's not surprising that this morning we saw a flurry of interest regarding a lawsuit filed by FUNimation Entertainment just yesterday, citing 1,337 "John Does" under an accusation of copyright infringement.

Having taken a look at the details of this lawsuit filed in a Texas court yesterday, UK Anime can reveal that the suit doesn't actually pertain directly to Fractale at all, but rather episode 481 of One Piece.  The large number of defendants in question are all accused of using the BitTorrent protocol to possess and share an illegally obtained and distributed copy of a file alleged to be the episode in question between January 9th and 12th 2011.  A number of BitTorrent websites are explicitly named as "witnesses" in the infringement, including one hugely popular anime-focused BitTorrent site.

Of course, none of the defendants given in the lawsuit are listed by name, but rather by an IP address, with all of these IPs belonging to major US Internet Service Providers - doubtless the next stage in this suit will be to attempt to tie those IP addresses to actual names and physical addresses.  FUNimation are bringing this suit with a view to winning damages of $150,000 as well as costs from the defendants listed, together with an injunction against any other similar activity in the future.

This course of action is likely to be controversial amongst anime fans just as similar actions have been with music, Hollywood film and video game copyright holders who have taken similar actions in the past, while also marking a rare occasion where a western anime distributor has taken direct legal action against anime viewers rather than simply the enablers of the illegal content, be they web sites, fansubs (the direct target of the lawsuit discussed here is a High Definition fansubbed release of the episode in question) or the groups responsible for so-called "speed-subbing" of releases.

Do you have a view on FUNimation's actions?  Are they doing the right thing in targeting illegal downloaders and seeders rather than those who initially made the infringing content available?  Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.