Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Every week, we get together to talk about the latest happenings, bust some myths, discuss new concepts, and a lot more from the world of digital emerging technologies. From cloud computing to DevOps, containers to ChatGPT, and Project management to IT service management, we cover a little bit of everything week after week, to inspire our listeners to learn something new, sharpen their skills, and move ahead in their careers.
Japanese Manga and Anime have a huge following around the world. One of the longest-running anime – One Piece has over 1122 episodes, 5 OVAs, 14 TV specials, and 15 movies, and it is still ongoing, so there is more coming. The oldest manga – Choju Jinbutsu Giga is said to have been created sometime between the 12th and 13th centuries, while the oldest surviving anime – Namakura Gatana was released in 1917. So, for centuries now, manga and anime have had a crazy fan following globally. In recent times, however, there is one problem that is plaguing the Japanese manga and anime industry, and that is piracy.
Piracy is not a new issue. It has been around for as long as art has been around. The fight between original and copies is as old as time itself, in a way. When art like Japanese Manga and Anime get pirated, the creative minds, artists, and teams behind creating them do not get their due. While piracy does make manga and anime accessible to the world, especially when a lot of anime may not be available on organized platforms or may not be affordable to access. But, it is also important to understand that piracy costs the manga and anime industry billions of dollars of lost revenue every year. So, the people who create these magical worlds for their fans, do not get their due from the popularity.
According to a Japan Times report, there are at least 1000 websites that illegally offer free downloads of Japanese content, including its most popular graphic mangas. Japan has been trying to fight piracy for a very long time, but most of those attempts have been futile. For every site or content taken down, many more come up. Recent reports released by Google have shared that companies like Toei Animation and Viz Media have requested Google to delist millions of URLs from the search results. Manually reporting every such piracy site is practically impossible and extremely inefficient.
Companies and individuals that hold the copyright for anime and manga spend significantly large sums to manually detect the pirated content that gets posted online. But humans cannot keep up with the speed and magnitude at which pirated content gets posted.
But now, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs plans to spend approximately 300 million Yen, equivalent to about USD 2 million for developing an AI-powered piracy detection system to help combat piracy. The AI system is being designed to automatically detect websites that post pirated content while also facilitating the entire removal process for copyright holders, curbing piracy and nipping it in the bud. This is especially interesting because lately, we all have encountered reports of how artificial intelligence is and potentially could harm the creative arts space, there have been strikes in Hollywood against AI being used as a replacement for the writers, and AI could replace the animation artists, writers, and other artists in the manga and anime space.
It gets even more interesting when you come to know that the AI algorithm for fighting piracy would be trained using the official copyrighted content provided directly by publishers and copyright holders as well as with analyses of the layout & advertisements of piracy websites. Why so, you ask? Well, that is because most piracy websites use the same templates for layouts and advertisements. If you have ever encountered any of these sites that publish pirated anime content, you might have felt that they look and feel exactly like another piracy website! So, if you know, you know.
This is a crucial time for the manga and anime industry. Its popularity has been the highest ever. Across many territories of the world, anime is now becoming mainstream. It’s the Comic Con season here in India, so walk into any Comic Con and you will know exactly what we mean. You will find stall after stall crowded with loyal fans lining up to buy anime merch – katanas, kimonos, jewelry, capes, wall hangings, posters, stationery, 3D models, socks, T-shirts, and so much more. You will also find so many cosplay artists dressed up as their favorite anime and manga characters. And, this is just India. A similar story is unfolding across a multitude of countries globally.
Now, before we go all crazy about how impressive it is that Japan has signed up to take AI as a partner in this fight against piracy and how it is trusting AI with copyrighted content to detect content that violates that copyright, we must tell you that the finances for this initiative have been allocated in the yearly supplementary budget proposal. This means that it will take some time until the plans to begin the development of the piracy detection tool are approved and kick-off.
The inspiration for this initiative comes from nearby South Korea. In 2023, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it would build an AI tool to combat piracy. There is a popular pirate streaming site called Noonoo TV which has been a huge pain for the South Korean entertainment industry. The government agencies worked actively with Korean broadcasters and internet service providers to keep blocking Noonoo TV once a week, then twice a week, then once every day. However, Noonoo TV kept coming back using different domain names. Eventually, the site administrator got fed up with having to pay outrageous costs of bandwidth and shut the site down in April 2023. But the battle did not end there. Fans of the piracy site created a brand new version of the site with no association with the original one and resurrected the piracy battle.
Around the world, a large part of piracy detection operations are carried out manually. For something that grows exponentially and has been compared to a hydra quite literally, manual work in piracy detection comes with one very big limitation – manpower cannot keep up with the speed at which piracy grows.
There is one thing that all of us must realize. To create any show, movie, comic book, or any art, a lot of people put in countless hours of sweat and effort. Additionally, creative pursuits are not everybody’s cup of tea, they need skills and talent that are rare to come by, and are valuable. Say you are a software developer, would you be ok if someone just stole your code and made it freely available for the world, without giving you any credit or compensation for it? No, right? Or you went on a trip to a very beautiful place and you took some fantastic photographs of the place, but someone steals those pictures and posts them on their Instagram or website, without giving you any credit for the pictures or compensating you for the pictures, it wouldn’t be ok, right?
In the same way, the teams creating anime, manga, TV shows, movies, or any art should be compensated for their hard work and efforts. Piracy prevents that and it is unfair to everyone who worked very hard to produce that art. Piracy is a huge problem and is dangerous for the society. The world needs to work together to prevent piracy.
Say no to piracy in all forms and by all means. Report any sites that you find pirating content. Piracy is illegal and pirating content is a criminally punishable offence.
Some food for thought for all of us, eh?
Well, we will leave you on that thought as this brings us to the end of this week’s episode of the Cognixia podcast. We will be back again next week with another interesting new episode for all of you.
Until then, happy learning.
