Anime Streamers Team Up with Trump Allies to Combat Piracy Sites in the US

New reporting indicates that major entertainment industry companies and brands – specifically those related to the Anime genre – have gathered together to meet with a US Congressman to discuss new anti-piracy initiatives. Companies like Amazon, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery (via Consumer Technology Association) reportedly met with US Representative Darrell Issa at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where talks were said to focus on the subject of digital piracy from foreign sources, and whether blocking access to entire sites was an actionable measure.

According to Representative Issa, these discussions “really went well, because there was a level of consensus on most of the issues by virtually everybody. There are solutions around the world, and we need to find one that works for the United States.” The next step is Issa meeting with additional companies like Paramount, Google, YouTube, and Verizon for further research and consultation geared toward getting his anti-piracy bill, the “American Copyright Protection Act” to the table.

American legislators and entertainment companies have been struggling to address online piracy since torrent sites and other lanes of Internet piracy started appearing in the 2000s. The biggest challenges have been getting a clear-cut definition of what constitutes “piracy,” and then, if and when a site is liable for hosting pirated materials. Even if a pirating site is identified, the method of cutting off access to it can be extremely challenging, as hackers and pirates are well aware of the censorship limits that hamstring most companies trying to stop the spread of copyrighted content.

That all said, major companies have taken some surprising (if not evolving) stances on the issue: such as Google, Reddit, and Craigslist all blocking SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA ( the “PROTECT IP Act”) from becoming law back in 2011. The issue has typically been concerns that attempts to block piracy could quickly downslide into federal overreach and censorship; in fact, Issa was one the Reps who opposed SOPA at the time of its proposal, citing the fact that it would give the Department of Justice too much discretionary power over the Internet.

Now there are similar concerns about what Issa is proposing with the American Copyright Protection Act. Issa has been a controversial figure in politics for years now, stoking ire over issues like questioning the payment of disability claims to 9/11 first responders; helping to fund the recall of California governor Gray Davis (and election of “Governor” Arnold Schwarzenegger) in 2003; and, more recently, refusing to certify Pennsylvania’s electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election, and voting against impeaching Trump for “incitement of insurrection” during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. That kind of track record has anime fans wondering if there could be an ulterior motive for putting this kind of restrictive bill in place.

Issa’s American Copyright Protection Act follows on the heels of congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s bill, “The Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act”, which was recently tabled and seeks to establish a more concrete definition of what is “piracy.” In the summary of that bill, Lofgren writes, “A decade ago, I was at the center of the successful effort to prevent the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from becoming law. That was not because I support copyright infringement, but because I support the open internet. Now – after working for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries – we’ve arrived at a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free internet except for the infringers.”

Why Is Piracy So Bad For Anime?

Anime has been a genre with one of the most sophisticated piracy networks – to the point that it’s arguably its own sub-genre. Because piracy sites can base their servers in places with lax copyright laws, knocking down one server location often simply results in the relocation and redistribution of pirated material. The issue for anime gets even worse when it comes to the corresponding issue of leaks, where new anime content is put out on the Internet before it even premieres on its primary broadcast and/or streaming platforms. These are increasingly becoming make-or-break issues, as anime has entered an era of carefully-coordinated simulcast release strategies. Those new strategies are being put in place in large part to both better service anime’s global fanbase and cut down on the appeal for fans to run out and pirate material rather than wait for slower methods of rollout.

This new era of legislation aims to grant federal organizations the ability to censor entire IP addresses or DNS servers, so that entire piracy farms can be prohibited from being accessed from the US, no matter how those piracy sites try and shift online locations or rebrand their names and/or web addresses. Of course, the cynical view of Issa’s proposal questions how it (and Lofgren’s Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act) could potentially be weaponized to control which sites get tagged for “piracy,” or get censored altogether based on other negative criteria that could be leveled against them. In a climate where political motivations have been openly influencing news media decisions, it’s a reasonable concern to have.

If nothing else, this legislation and the level of top brands it’s attracting are a major sign: Anime has become such a valuable content block for virtually every company in entertainment/streaming that they are willing to go to great political lengths to protect its value. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if the often rebellious and counter-culture-minded anime fandom will take to having their back-alley paths to accessing content restricted by the major streaming/broadcast companies.

Reporting by The Ankler via CBR

2025-03-17 20:23

Why Is Piracy So Bad For Anime?

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