[Anime]Massive Adult Manga Piracy Site Resists 'Egregious' Takedown Attempt in New U.S. Court Filing

[Maheso]

One of the world's biggest adult manga piracy websites is now firing back at a lawsuit that seeks to shut it down, calling its justifications "egregious" in an ongoing legal battle.

As reported by Torrent Freak, Nhentai.net recently moved to have PCR Distributing's copyright infringement complaint dismissed in the latest phase of the ongoing lawsuit. On Jan. 6, Nhentai alleged numerous issues with the complaint, stating, rather pointedly, "There are numerous legal bases on which Plaintiff’s Complaint should be dismissed. It is difficult to determine which is the most egregious." PCR sued Nhentai for copyright infringement in 2024; it seeks the site's transfer over to PCR, financial damages and, in the event of no shutdown, a court order to block it in the U.S.

Nhentai argues that PCR has not presented proof that it holds the copyright to several works it listed in its lawsuit. It names some titles where JAST USA is said to be the copyright holder. As Torrent Freak reports, while PCR claims to operate under JAST USA, Nhentai argues that PCR has not sufficiently shown that the copyright to three JAST USA titles was assigned or exclusively licensed to it. Nhentai also argues that the ownership structures of PCR and JAST USA companies appear to be different, casting doubt on whether PCR has the right to bring this lawsuit. Founded by Peter Payne, JAST USA sells adult visual novels from Japan. Payne also founded J-List, which sells Japanese-language hentai doujinshi (self-published works), toys and other goods, and J18 Publishing, which publishes hentai doujinshi in English. According to Payne's X (formerly Twitter) post, PCR is JAST USA's U.S. distribution company, at least as of Feb. 2021.

Nhentai's other arguments rely on legal precedent that PCR should've brought forward its lawsuit within three years of discovering the alleged infringement, which it did not. As previously argued, Nhentai says it received "unsolicited permission in writing" from J18 to host the works on its site in 2020. This stemmed from J18 emailing Nhentai with an offer to keep the works on the site, adding, "We don't want to try to take down any of our galleries [on your site]-- we just want people to have a simple, safe, and easy way of getting to our site where they can buy physical copies of the comics they love." PCR vehemently disputes that J18's email amounted to permission. It offered to allow the titles to stay if Nhentai would allow J18 to run ads linking to where people could pay for them.