Webtoon Targets 170+ Pirate Domains Through DMCA Subpoena

August 21, 2024

15 4 minutes read

Launched two decades ago, Webtoon Entertainment has established itself as one of the prime hosting platforms for short digital comics.

Partly owned by the South Korean company Naver, Webtoon rode the popular ‘webtoon’ wave all the way to the Nasdaq exchange, where it got a listing this summer.

With millions of creators on board, and roughly 170 million active monthly users, the webtoon company is seen as a growth story. While that may be the case, Webtoon’s first quarterly earnings report on August 8 wasn’t well received.

Webtoon’s Rough Start at Nasdaq

Instead of significant growth, revenues were more or less flat compared to a year ago. This was a disappointment to many investors and the stock price fell by more than 40%, ‘evaporating’ a billion dollars in market cap.

For the company’s management, it would’ve been easy to point at piracy as a contributing factor. However, piracy wasn’t mentioned once in the official earnings report. It did get a brief mention during the conference call; Webtoon CFO David Lee mentioned that piracy is a concern for all user generated content services.

Webtoon has a positive outlook on its future and attributed the ‘disappointing’ results to currency headwinds. When currency exchange rates are kept stable, the company noted that year-over-year growth was 11%, topping expectations.

Eye on Pirates

While Webtoon doesn’t use piracy as a scapegoat, the company certainly considers it as a serious challenge going forward. This was made apparent in a SEC filing published a few days ago.

“As the copying and distribution of content over the internet proliferates, the risk of piracy, gray market sales, illegal downloading, file-sharing or other infringement, misappropriation and other violation of our intellectual property is likely to continue to increase,” Webtoon Entertainment states.

“We take various measures to prevent and monitor unauthorized use of our content, including developing proprietary technology to detect piracy and other technological measures,” the SEC filing adds.

These mandatory statements don’t address any novel concerns. Piracy has always been a challenge for the company, which sends out millions of DMCA takedown notices every month in an effort to contain the problem.

Not all sites and services are receptive to these takedown requests, however. Webtoon occasionally has to step up its efforts and address ‘pirate’ threats more directly, through cease-and-desist letters accompanied by legal threats, for example.

Webtoon Subpoenas Cloudflare to ‘Expose’ Pirates

Most ‘pirate’ sites don’t share their full names and contact details online, so getting to these people can be a challenge. Luckily for Webtoon, DMCA subpoenas may be useful to gather additional information.

A few days ago, Webtoon filed a DMCA subpoena request at a Texas federal court, compelling CDN service Cloudflare to expose the personal details of customers connected to allegedly-infringing domain names.

The legal paperwork lists close to 200 targets. After merging several subdomains, we end up with roughly 170 unique domain names, including those related to popular sites such as Bato.to, Mangareader.to, and Mangas.in, which all have millions of monthly visits.

A declaration submitted by an attorney at Webtoon anti-piracy partner Remove Your Media, clarifies that the information requested will only be used to protect the publisher’s rights.

“The purpose of the accompanying subpoena is to obtain the identity of the alleged copyright infringer(s) in control of the internet domain(s)/website(s) listed in the subpoena. The information obtained will be used only for the purpose of protecting the rights granted to my client,” the declaration reads.

After reviewing the application, a court clerk signed the subpoena and Cloudflare now has until October 1st to respond. Judging from previous cases, the US-based Internet infrastructure company won’t contest the request for user details.

Effective, but Not Perfect

To what degree the information Cloudflare has on file will help Webtoon’s enforcement efforts has yet to be seen. Operators of pirate sites are known to use false identities and some are aware that their personal data can be discovered though DMCA subpoenas.

According to Webtoon’s previous experience, these legal efforts can certainly pay off. Last year, the company targeted 360 pirate domain names through a similar subpoena, which resulted in the shutdown of several sites.

Webtoon’s own reports suggested that 150 ‘sites’ went offline after they were targeted though the Cloudflare subpoena.

“After three months of hard work by Naver Webtoon, about 150 overseas illegal sites stopped operating. This is the result of Naver Webtoon’s action to issue a ‘Subpoena’ through a U.S. court, the first in the webtoon industry,” the company wrote in November.

Those shutdowns included many prominent pirate sites including Aquamanga.com, which had more than 60 million monthly visits at its peak.

Time will tell if the most recent subpoena produces similar results but as long as it leads to the shutdown of sizable pirate sites, Webtoon will likely continue these anti-piracy efforts moving forward.

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A copy of the subpoena application, as well as some key exhibits is available here (pdf). A copy of the signed DMCA subpoena can be found here (pdf). A full list of all included domains, minus some duplicates, is included below.

1manga.co
1manhwa.com
1stkissmanga.io
1stkissmanga.me
astrascans.org
asurahunter.com
asuratoon.com
bacakomik.my.id
bacakomik.net
bacamanga.id
bato.to
burningtoon.com
chapmanga.net
clover-manga.com
cn.webmota.com
coffeemanga.io
comic24hnn.com
cosmicscans.id
doombreaker.com
doombreaker.org
dsectcomics.org
earlym.org
emperor-scan.com
emperorscan.net
enryumanga.com
eztoon101.com
fecomicc.xyz
flamecomics.me
freecomiconline.me
freemanga.me
fcmanga.net
god-manga.com
haremscann.es
harimanga.com
hippo-manga.com
hivetoon.com
hwago.org
immortalupdates.com
infinitelevelup.com
jimanga.com
joji-manga.com
kaiscans.org
kanmanhuala.cc
kingofmanga.com
klikmanga.id
komik20.com
komikcast.cafe
komikcast.cz
komikdaily.my.id
komikid.com
komikindo.co
komikindo.moe
komiku.com
komikuwu.com
kumomanga.com
kunmanga.com
kunmanga.to
lectormiau.com
leerolymp.com
likemanga.io
lscomic.com
lami-manga.com
luminous-scans.com
luxmanga.net
mafia-manga.com
manga-lucky.com
manga-za.com
manga18.me
manga18fx.com
mangabtt.com
mangaclash.com
mangadass.com
mangadex.tv
mangadop.net
mangaeffect.com
mangaesp.co
mangaextreme.com
mangafire.to
mangafox.fun
mangagalaxy.me
mangahasu.se
mangaindo.org
mangakatana.com
mangakakalot.tv
mangakakalot.net
mangakakalot.nl
mangakomi.io
mangaku.io
mangamelo.tv
mangamew.com
manganelo.tv
mangapanda.in
mangapill.com
mangaread.org
mangareader.cc
mangareader.to
mangarolls.com
mangascan.cc
mangatale.co
mangatown.com
mangatv.net
mangatx.to
mangauwu.com
manhuafast.top
manhuazone.com
manhwa-thailand.com
manhwa18.cc
manhwabtt.com
manhwaclan.com
manhwafull.net
manhwanew.com
manhwatop.to
manhwatube.com
mcreader.net
mercenary-manga.com
miku-manga.com
manytoon.me
murim-manga.com
murimrpgsimulation.com
murimscan.run
nanomachinemanga.com
nanomachinenow.com
natsu.id
niadd.com
night-scans.com
ninemanga.com
nitroscans.online
oktoon.com
omniscient-readersviewpoint.com
paragonscans.com
ped-manga.com
popsmanga.com
quest-supremacy.com
questismmanga.com
ranker-manga.com
raw.senmanga.com
rawrmanga.com
read-lookism.com
readcomicmanga.com
readrealityquest.com
regressorofthefallenfamily.com
retsu.co
romantikmanga.com
rose-manga.com
shibamanga.com
solo-max.com
spy-manga.com
teamxnovel.com
templescan.net
tenshi.id
thebreakermanhwa.com
thegodofhighschool.online
thetowerofgod.com
thunderscans.com
toomtam-manga.com
toongod.cc
toonily.me
towerofgodmanhwa.com
tukangkomik.com
tusmangas.org
visortmo.ws
webtoonhatti.net
webtoonscan.com
weimanga.com
weakherochapters.com
windbreakermanga.com
xenon-manga.com
xn--72ca0fwcc.net
xn--vv4b11c.com
yaoiscan.com
zahard.xyz