Major anime producer Toho has requested that the U.S. District Court for Northern California issue a subpoena to X (formerly Twitter) to provide any identifying information on three anime accounts, accused of having “stolen visuals from Toho’s unreleased videos and posted them before they are officially released. (PDF)” The videos relate to the My Hero Academia: Vigilantes and The Apothecary Diaries anime. You can check out the accounts and the anime they’re accused of infringing upon below:
- The Apothecary Diaries:
- @shinobusdonutz
- @animespostt_
- My Hero Academia: Vigilantes:
- @app1ecake
Excluding @animespostt, the accounts were either self-deactivated or deleted. An attorney representing Toho first sent a copyright takedown request to X on April 3 regarding alleged infringement of The Apothecary Diaries. This was followed by another notice on April 22 for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.
Toho has filed multiple subpoena requests like this in the past, and alongside Aniplex, has disclosed some of the ways it identifies alleged anime leakers. This includes providing episodes with false credits to TV stations and streaming services, which were never intended for release. Then, closer to release time, they’ll send the proper version. As the first versions were never intended for release, posting them online could constitute infringement.
Furthermore, they’ve previously inserted near-invisible watermarks in the streaming versions of anime episodes and monitor the Internet to see if they appear online before the streaming release time.
Toho’s latest subpoena aims to identify the following information (PDF):
Last October, Toho, in collaboration with KADOKAWA and CODA, filed a criminal complaint against the operators of a Japanese website that had posted extensive summaries and images of the Overlord III anime, as well as numerous other TV series and movies. An unrelated group of spoiler website operators was arrested last month.
The Apothecary Diaries and My Hero Academia: Vigilantes are both ongoing anime produced under Toho’s Toho Animation label. Crunchyroll streams both in North America.
Source: Toho subpoena request (PDF), Letter in support of Toho’s subpoena request (PDF), DMCA takedown request to X for The Apothecary Diaries (PDF), DMCA takedown request to X for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes (PDF)
Featured image ©Hideyuki Furuhashi, Betten Court, Kohei Horikoshi/Shueisha, Vigilante Production Committee © Natsu Hyuga/Imagica Infos Co./The Apothecary Diaries” Production Committee
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