Cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Interpol
Operators are also arrested and judicial proceedings are carried out
ėŽė§ íë Naver Webtoon
Through international cooperation, Naver Webtoon shut down three global English illegal webtoon distribution sites with 130 million visits per year and even arrested the operator.
Naver Webtoon announced on the 13th that it has closed three illegal webtoon and cartoon distribution sites based in North Africa in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Interpol, and local law enforcement agencies in North Africa.
The three sites closed this time have been operated by the same operator, who is based in North Africa and has illegally distributed Korean webtoons to Western users such as the United States and Europe. It is understood that more than 300 popular Naver webtoons were scanned and translated without permission.
Based on the data analysis platform Similar Web aggregation, the total number of annual visits to the three sites exceeds 130 million, and the number of visits in the last three months has reached more than 20 million.
These sites have served as the primary source of directly scanning and translating files, rather than simply relaying copies distributed elsewhere. An official from Naver Webtoon explained, “As the illegal copies they posted were spread to a number of secondary pirate sites, this measure is significant in that it has cut off the upstream supply chain of the illegal distribution ecosystem beyond blocking individual sites.”
Naver Webtoon has been monitoring the operating structure of the sites through anti-piracy, an organization dedicated to responding to illegal distribution. Since then, the existing site has been integrated and rebranded into a new site, and it has detected circumstantial evidence that it tried to avoid crackdowns, and provided operational clues, evidence of infringement, and damage data to related agencies.
Currently, all three sites are not accessible, and the operator has been arrested by local law enforcement agencies and judicial proceedings are underway.
Naver Webtoon previously closed three illegal Vietnamese webtoons sites in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Ministry of Public Security in Vietnam in May. At that time, the total annual visits to the closed sites were more than 1.1 billion.
“As illegal webtoon sites are serious problems that infringe on the legitimate profits of creators and hinder the growth of the global webtoon ecosystem, we will continue to strengthen cooperation with investigative agencies and related agencies to protect creators’ rights and work values,” said Kim Kyu-nam, Chief Crisis Management Officer (CRO) of Webtoon Entertainment and Naver Webtoon.