Well, the medium “anime” is getting bigger and bigger every day. This sudden boom was possible all thanks to the pirate apps and services

And in recent years the growth has skyrocketed in the West apart from its home country of Japan. However, Funimation senpai has taken notice of it.

Earlier this week, reports of a new anti-piracy campaign spear-headed by Funimation, right after its acquisition of Crunchyroll a AT&T for the modest sum of 1.17 billion dollars, started pouring in.

They sent a wave of DMCA/cease-and-desist notices with the help of the services of the trademark protection company Corsearch, threatening them with law enforcement referrals for non-compliance.

While some apps have openly admitted that they received a notice from CoSearch to shut down, it is not yet clear as to how many illegal streaming platforms got the DMCA notice,

The apps that have been served a notice include Taiyaki, Anime Glare, Shiro, Project Kamyroll and Yukino.

Three of these apps have already shut down while others are taking evasive action to avoid the same fate.

Taiyaki

Taiyaki is one of the first that got notice from CorSearch to either shut down or face further charges as the image below shows.

The platform operator confirmed that, in response to the notification, the project is now in archive. “This application is now closed. Unfortunately it was hit for a DMCA by the monarchy company known as Funimation“, they wrote.

AnimeGlare

In an announcement to its users this week, the anime app AnimeGlare announced that Funimation also targeted them and forced them to close. Here is what they wrote on their platform:

“Y’all must be wondering why AnimeGlare is not working and why you are not being able to communicate with us, well I don’t know how to tell you this bad news but AnimeGlare recently got a ‘Cease & Desist’ letter from ‘Funimation Global Group, LLC’, meaning we are being forced to shut down all operations immediately,” operator ‘BlackKnit’ revealed.“

“It was a wonderful journey and I really enjoyed working on AnimeGlare and talking to y’all lovely people, but all good things must come to an end and sadly it’s our time to say Goodbye. As of September 06, 2021, AnimeGlare will no longer be functional, and our website will no longer be distributing any app files. AnimeGlare has officially been shutdown.”

Shiro

Another anime app “Shiro” also reported that they received DMCA takedown from Funimation Global Group via CoSearch.

The notice included that failure to comply with this notification will result in law enforcement under Sweden referrals against them.

“I just received a DMCA takedown notice from funimation and I’ll therefore cease all development on the Shiro app, but the site will likely stay,” the Shiro developer informs his users.

At the time of writing, however, the project’s Github page is down (archive copy here), and the developer also has some advice for others yet to receive contact from Funimation and its agents.

“All other developer should probably private their shit asap as this company [Corsearch] is hired specifically for DMCA notices,” he adds.

Project Kamyroll and Yukino

In response to the withdrawals of the other projects, the developer of Project Kamyroll announced that development would cease in the immediate future.

“Due to many requests as well as the funimation chase that is happening right now, I have been forced to make Project Kamyroll (the Application) private.

Currently this is not really a problem as I don’t have time to develop the app, so there won’t be any changes for a very long time,” he explained.

“This weekend, I will publish download links for the current version on a server other than github in order to always offer the app to others.

I therefore encourage you to talk about the application since it is no longer visible on my github.”

A similar position can be found in Yukino, who also made a home in Github with its application for Android, Windows, MacOS and Linux.

That project has been scrapped with the developer admitting that in the current climate, getting into legal trouble is something to be avoided.

A few months ago Japan struck down Manga-Mura, a huge manga piracy website and last year Kissanime and Kissmanga was taken down permanently.

Now if people are wondering “Will this be the end of free anime apps and sites?”. The short answer is no, but if these DMCA takedowns continue, it will make life difficult for these pirate apps and websites.

Since studios were unable or unwilling to distribute their works through official services, piracy platforms of all kinds tried to meet the demand and, as a result, gained a significant foothold in the market.

However, with a wide range of companies such as Crunchyroll / Funimation, Amazon Prime Video and even Netflix who now invest significant sums in anime, the need to combat anime piracy became a necessity that they are taking action immediately.

Source: Torrent Freak