A popular hentai piracy site claims that the publisher has given permission to post the nudes

The early stages of a hentai piracy lawsuit became interesting this month when court documents revealed that the aggrieved publisher sent emails admitting that piracy could not be stopped. In a series of messages from the publisher to the pirate site, the publisher also attempted to purchase banner ads on the site and provided a list of specific pages on which they wanted the ads to appear.

TorrentFreak he was following a strange story nHentai and PCR distribution. nHentai is a popular website that provides free hentai scans from major publishers. In June, they were visited by 80 million people. PCR Distributing is a company that has published a lot of the dirty laundry that ends up on nHentai.

Over the summer, PCR began legal proceedings against nHentai. It started as a DMCA and turned into a full-blown lawsuit. IN filed court documents On October 14, PCR asked the court to hear the case earlier. The people running nHentai are still anonymous and listed as “John Doe”. PCR wants Cloudflare and other services to reveal their identities.

nHentai’s lawyers opposed PCR, claiming in their own documents that PCR was demanding too much from them and did not want to reveal any user data. Surprisingly, the documents also revealed several emails purportedly between PCR employees and nHentai in which, according to nHentai, the publisher tacitly gave the site tacit permission to publish its content.

A 2020 email purportedly from a PCR employee to nHentai contained a telling argument about the limitations of copyright claims in the digital world. “I want to emphasize that this is not a takedown or DCMA request,” the email said. “I’ve spent enough time sailing the high seas to know that they are pointless and no one listens to them anyway.”

“We know that people don’t always have the money to buy official publications or simply don’t want to pay for them,” the email continued. “We know that the only reason the anime and manga market exists in the West is because of piracy, so we have no interest in fighting any sites dedicated to these topics.”

The employee then offered a deal. They wanted to place banner ads on nHentai that would allow users to easily and free of charge purchase the material they were viewing if they wanted. “The banners are not intended to be intrusive, they are not moving, they are not intended to embarrass you or make you feel bad,” the email said. “They are here so that fans who want to own physical, uncensored, English-language versions of the doujinshi they love so much can purchase them.”

The court document shared several more emails between nHentai and various PCR employees. In one of them, the publisher provided a spreadsheet containing a list of pages on which he wanted to place his advertising banners. In another PCR, she repeated her claim that she did not want nHentai to remove any of her images, and then asked how much it would cost to purchase advertising space on the site.

“We will be announcing a sale here soon,” the email read. “So I was wondering about short-term advertising space in general areas of the site and how much it would cost. It will probably last for about a month.”

PCR withdrew from nHentai in court documents submitted on October 21. It has been made clear that the current legal battle concerns early detection, not the entire case. “In support of his ‘permission’ claim, defendant cites an unauthenticated email that may have been entirely fabricated,” PCR lawyers said in court documents. “Even if true, this does not constitute a license or consent to use plaintiff’s copyrighted content.” He was also found to have sent DMCA notices after 2020, which nHentai ignored.

The court has yet to rule on the early discovery motion, and you can bet that this legal battle over pirated hentai will continue for some time.