A couple of days ago, the internet exploded at the news that Shueisha was apparently going after artists for violating copyright on Twitter. On Sunday, one of the artists hit by the copyright strikes tweeted out that he doesn’t think that the manga publishing giant behind Weekly Shonen Jump was actually responsible for the takedowns.
THE FULL TRUTH ON THE SHUEISHA COPYRIGHT HOAX
Spread for awareness. Read the document here-> https://t.co/GX8wcQMZxn pic.twitter.com/9k1vyyodTw
— Artur – Library of Ohala (@newworldartur) January 10, 2021
The tweet by Artur – Library of Ohala (@newworldartur) links to a document on Imgur titled The Full Truth on the Shueisha Copyright Hoax. The document describes all the gathered information in detail. He states that it shows that an individual, not Shueisha, was responsible for the recent incident.
Among other things, the document says:
- He doesn’t think Japan’s new copyright law is to blame for the incident.
- He doesn’t think it was a bot automatically targeting official art, pirated content, or panels, because cosplay and fanart were both included.
- He believes that the takedowns were specifically targeted at certain people. Also, it was done manually by an individual.
- The Shueisha address information was wrong, he says. For example, the phone number listed actually belongs to Kadokawa.
‘People have rightfully pointed out that any company would be out of their minds to attack some of these choices, such as fanart or cosplay,’ Artur states in the document. ‘It’s no surprise that many people have been shocked and confused by these events because they really do not make any rational sense.’
A Certain Individual Was Behind the Claims
According to Artur, the copyright takedown was done by ‘a certain individual who has been harassing other creators.’
In particular, Artur states that he thinks a content creator named Jessix ‘might have been the target that has led to this entire situation.’ He tells about fraudulent claims and harassment by one individual against Jessix.
‘Tracing it back, this individual has a long history of harassing several content creators. I was able to trace several cases deriving from this same individual having harassed other content creators through the abuse of the copyright system,’ Artur adds.
He also describes Twitter’s copyright system as ‘fragile’ and ‘incredibly easy to abuse.’
‘This has resulted not only in the harassment, spread of fear, and threatening of many users’ livelihoods and safety, but also in a defamation of the company they pretended to represent and hurting their public image,’ Artur adds.
Reaction
For what it’s worth, I couldn’t find any reaction from Shueisha itself about the controversy, either positive or negative. It’s entirely possible that they haven’t paid attention to the online uproar. Or perhaps they consider silence to be the best option.
Some people commenting on his Twitter post questioned some of the details of Artur’s statement. However, this is not the first time that fake copyright claims have been a problem on YouTube, on Twitter, and on other formats as well.