A Years-Long Investigation Just Unmasked a Major Torrent Pirate, the How Remains Unclear

A years-long investigation just unmasked a major torrent pirate, the how remains unclear

Police arrested Masakazu Ono, 56, of Sagamihara in Kanagawa Prefecture. He is accused of acting as an initial seeder, meaning he was allegedly the first person to make complete files available for others to download. One of the files tied to the case was reportedly Midnight Taxi, a 2026 drama...Read Entire Article

Japanese authorities use new tool to identify initial torrent uploaders — anti-piracy group says it identified seeder on popular anime torrenting website without torrent swarm monitoring

Recently, the Kyoto Prefectural Police caught one of the initial-seeders of the well-known Japanese torrent website Nyaa. Masakazu Ono, 56, from Sagamihara in the Kamigawa Prefecture, was arrested after a multi-year investigation. While this news is straightforward by itself, the interesting bit is that CODA, the Japanese anti-piracy entity that performed the initial cyber-investigation, identified Ono allegedly without joining or monitoring Bit…