A few days ago, thousands of Twitter users got hit with copyright strikes which seemed to be from Shueisha. However, the company released a statement today stating it was really a scam by an individual who falsely represented Shueisha and sent the copyright strikes. The full statement is also available on the MANGA Plus website, and it reads:
It has come to our attention, Shueisha has been falsely misrepresented by an individual sending copyright and removal requests on Twitter and other social media platforms. Shueisha is currently consulting with the various platforms to investigate what measures can be taken to address this issue.
Several days ago, the possibility of it being a hoax first came up. It stated that it could have been an individual trying to bring one streamer down. Twitter user @newworldartur shared all the evidence he collected with the help of streamer @jessix_tv.
The info they gathered seemed credible. The mails sent to users had no Japanese in them, the contact information was actually from Kadokawa and not Shueisha (huge difference, different companies). The reason for that is that the user wasn’t really even from Japan, but just googled the contact information. They have compiled all the information they have in an imgur post. You should read the full version there or original tweet below:
The tl;dr image might be faster if you just want to get the gist of it, so here:
The glaring issue is that Twitter’s copyright system is too easy to abuse. Anyone can file a claim pretending to be someone else, and the information isn’t verified before taking content down. It sounds unbelievable, but it may have all been by a user trying to harass a streamer. In the process, they ended up dragging the entire community down, not to mention Shueisha’s name taking a huge hit. The company verified that they didn’t initialize the strikes, so hopefully everyone counters the claims.
It sounds dangerous if anyone can issue copyright strikes for content they don’t even own, and this scam using Shueisha proved it. Maybe something positive comes out of it in the end and they improve the system?
Source: MANGA Plus Website, Twitter user @newworldartur and streamer @jessix_tv
Also, image from thumbnail owned by SHUEISHA Inc.
