If you heard last week, various users who had Comcast as their ISP received notices of copyright infringment for torrenting unlicensed anime.
An administrator for the AnimeSuki website of anime BitTorrent links reported that users received a “Notice of Claim of Copyright Infringement” from their Internet service providers late last week for distribution of anime without an announced license from a North American company.
It confused many, but some thought it was related to a recent request by the Japanese government.
The Japanese government issued a formal statement of requests to the government of the United States on regulatory reform and market competition policy on October 18, and included a request for the United States to help stop the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of Japanese animation online.
However, the real sender of the notices (a company affiliated with Comcast, I think) has admitted this was a mistake. Those notices were supposed to go to only Singapore, where a lot of anime distribution is considered highly illegal.
The American company BayTSP has acknowledged that it accidentally processed warning notices for allegedly unauthorized anime downloaders in France, Japan, and the United States last week.
So is this a huge ‘oopsie’? Considering the huge gray area on the subject of anime legality on the Internet anyway, this isn’t a mistake people will just forget about in a week.
Source: ANN ANN (2) ANN (3)
