'One Piece' Scanner Arrested For Illegal Manga Uploads

It looks like another One Piece scanner has been taken down. A new report from Asahi confirmed a self-employed man from Japan has been arrested for illegally uploading manga chapters before their official release.

According to reports, Yo Uehara from Okinawa was arrested by prefectural police in September for illegally uploading chapters of One Piece online (via Crunchyroll). Kumamoto’s district court sentenced the offender to 18 months in jail with a three-year suspension. Uehara was also fined nearly $4,500 dollars.

The judge overseeing the case released a statement about the growing piracy issue plaguing Japan’s manga industry. Judge Suzuki said, “Making large profits from the habitual act is vicious. Because the manga was seen by many unspecified people, the degree of infringement of copyright was serious.”

Uehara is just one of five suspected scanners arrested in Japan for illegally uploading chapters online. The accused are suspected of having uploaded chapters of One Piece and Tokyo Ghoul:re to spoiler sites. Uehara is said to be the leader of one criminal group, and his arrest is the first one that has been attached to a high-profile spoilers site.

According to the police investigations into Uehara, the scanner received early copies of Weekly Shonen Jump and Weekly Young Jump at ‘hayauri’ stores. He would then upload the scanned pages onto his spoiler site and earned at least $653,000 through affiliate ads.

Manga and anime fans already know how prolific piracy in Japan has become. Officials have had trouble curbing the issue thanks to ever-advancing tech, but international companies are doing what they can to make manga more accessible to foreign fans. Services like Viz Media offer SimulPub subscriptions to various manga titles, and anime streaming sites like Crunchyroll do the same for in-demand anime series.