Piracy Portal ‘Hikari-no-Akari’ Shuts Down Following Legal Pressure

Hikari-no-Akari, a long-established pirate site that specialized in Japanese music, has closed its doors voluntarily. The drastic decision comes shortly after Sony Music Entertainment Japan obtained a subpoena, requiring Cloudflare to share the personal details of the operator. Despite the shutdown, the Recording Industry Association of Japan still plans to hold the site's operator accountable.

Founded in 2010, Hikari-no-Akari (HnA) positioned itself as the go-to site for fans of Japanese music.

With anime booming across the globe, HnA’s audience didn’t stop at the border. And with over a million visits per month, rightsholders started to take notice.

HnA Targeted in Subpoena

Hoping to stop the infringing activities, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) and IFPI repeatedly reached out to HnA’s operator, without result. Similar inquiries, sent to the cyberlocker where the pirated music was stored, didn’t help either.

Faced with the status quo, the music industry groups, though Sony Music Japan, went to a U.S. federal court. There, they obtained a DMCA subpoena, requiring Cloudflare to share all information they have on the customer associated with hikarinoakari.com.

Additionally, the subpoena targeted the associated cyberlocker; hnadownloads.co. The latter domain received the bulk of its traffic from HnA and, according to music industry insiders, is operated by the same people.

Through the subpoena, the music company hoped to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites, including their names, IP addresses, and payment details. Any information obtained could then be used for follow-up copyright enforcement actions.

HnA Shuts Down

Cloudflare typically requires some time to respond to subpoenas, and it hasn’t done so yet. However, the HnA operators decided not to wait for any follow-up action, and reportedly shut down the site of their own accord.

Indeed, at the time of writing, hikarinoakari.com is not resolving, and the hnadownloads.co domain is listed as suspended.

According to a press release from RIAJ, there is no agreement or settlement. In fact, the music group still doesn’t know who’s behind the site. If they find out more, they will take appropriate steps.

“[T]he operator voluntarily closed the website immediately after the disclosure order. Based on the information to be disclosed by ‘Cloudflare’ in the future, our association plans to continue to hold the operator accountable and take legal action against similar illegal sites,” RIAJ writes.

Sharing Culture?

RIAJ estimates that HnA had more than 15 million visitors in 2024, of which roughly 75% were from outside of Japan. According to data from SimilarWeb, the U.S. was the runner-up in terms of traffic, followed by Chile.

While HnA and its users might have been under the impression that they were sharing culture, the music group sees things differently. The unauthorized sharing practices resulted in lower revenues for rightsholders, which is counterproductive, RIAJ explains.

“Going forward, our association will continue to work on ongoing anti-illegal measures to eradicate pirate sites in order to contribute to the development of music culture,” the group adds.

No concrete follow-up action is mentioned but, as an extra warning to the public at large, RIAJ notes that knowingly downloading pirated music is a criminal offense in Japan, even if it’s for personal use.