The Tokyo District Court ruled Thursday that the former operator of a now-defunct website allowing users free access to pirated manga must pay a total of around 1.7 billion yen ($11 million) in damages to three major Japanese publishers.
The compensation over the website Manga-Mura is the largest ever levied in similar lawsuits, according to the plaintiffs -- Shogakukan Inc., Kadokawa Corp. and Shueisha Inc.
The court recognized that the publishing rights and exclusive usage rights of the publishers were infringed.
Site users were able to save the images they viewed on their own devices, and "it was essentially the same as purchasing electronically distributed manga works," Presiding Judge Masaki Sugiura said in handing down the ruling.
The court calculated the amount of damages based on the average number of views per volume of a manga work and the sale price of the work.
Atsushi Ito, a Shueisha executive, told a press conference, "Following the trial of Manga-Mura, (other) pirate manga sites for Japanese people that have operators in Japan have almost disappeared."
Ito indicated the company will consider filing similar lawsuits abroad.
The former Manga-Mura operator, Romi Hoshino, 32, told reporters he is "unconvinced" by the ruling, and that he has "no regrets regarding Manga-Mura."
Hoshino was convicted in 2021 of copyright infringement for running the website and served his prison term. But in September last year, he demanded a retrial.
The website was established in February 2016 at the latest, and before its closure in April 2018 it was accessed some 537 million times, according to the ruling and other sources.
The three publishers had sought damages totaling about 1.9 billion yen, with Shogakukan claiming losses of about 1 billion yen and Kadokawa and Shueisha around 400 million yen, respectively.
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