Crunchyroll DMCA’d us (through Google).
According to Crunchyroll, simply linking to a torrent site constitutes copyright infringement.
On the night of Friday, May 2nd, just as I was about to get up and go to bed, an email from Google Search Console arrived in my inbox:
To the owner of https://www.angryjerk.net/,
Google has been notified that your site allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others, and violates applicable copyright laws in your region.
It is Google’s policy to remove copyrighted content when the copyright holder or their authorized representative alleges that a use is infringing. Therefore we are in the process of removing the reported content from Google Search results for users globally.
The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found on the website of Lumen, a third-party aggregator of legal complaint notices, at https://lumendatabase.org/
notices/51277639. Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on the above page.
Say what?
Suspecting that it was our old friend Federico Caputo and his Copytrack cohorts up to their old tricks again, I put off going to bed and investigated the complaint further.
As it turns out, it wasn’t Federico or Copytrack, but rather the anime streaming service Crunchyroll:
Copyrighted Japanese anime owned by Crunchyroll LLC. Sites are backlinking illegal Crunchyroll torrent sites. This is contributory infringement. Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(ii) the official website for ‘Crunchyroll Licensed Anime’ includes a commulative episode list at the below url:
www.crunchyroll.com
What the fuck Crunchyroll, I thought we were cool. I’ve been using you since at least 2020 for most of my anime needs. You were cheap, had almost everything, and gave me some great recommendations on new series to watch. Yet here you are, sticking a dagger in my back in the form of claiming copyright infringement and attacking my Google presence.
When I first saw that the claim came from Crunchyroll, I assumed it had something to do with the title cards I use for the AJnet Anime Club. But was a multi-billion dollar company really concerned with me using images from anime, especially when they were being used for review purposes?
I looked closer and saw what their beef was:
Sites are backlinking illegal Crunchyroll torrent sites. This is contributory infringement.
The article in question that they cited was my “AJ’s Anime and Manga List, Volume 1“. I didn’t link to any torrents of any of the series mentioned in the article, the closest I came was posting a YouTube clip from Gate. I read the article several times, thinking maybe I did link something and just forgot, but found nothing.
Then I realized what their issue was.
At the end of the article, I had included a link to Nyaa Torrents, a popular site for torrenting anime and manga. I hadn’t directly linked to any particular torrents, but according to Crunchyroll merely linking to Nyaa was enough to constitute “contributory infringement”. This, in turn, was enough for them to send Google a DMCA and have them de-list the article from their search engine.
The first thing I did was cancel my Crunchyroll subscription, making sure to let them know why:
My next immediate instinct was to let loose the dogs of war and challenge Crunchyroll by including even more links to Nyaa and daring them to try and sue me. Fighting a case like this might take time and money, but thankfully I have a bit of both. There’s no way in hell simply linking to a torrent site could constitute copyright infringement, right? Surely any reasonable judge would take one look at Crunchyroll’s claim then laugh them right out of the courtroom while making them cover all my legal costs.
Then I remembered that Jamir, our legal advisor, has a tendency to get annoyed at me when I fire off half-cocked about legal issues without consulting him first. What do you want from me, I ran this site alone for 15 or 16 years. No other writers, no legal advisors, none of that. Just me, my impulsivity, and a keyboard. Doing things “by the book” is still kind of new to me. I decided it was a good idea to wait until Monday and ask Jamir what I should do.
When I sat down with Jamir on Monday, and after he got over the initial surprise that I decided to talk to him first for a change, he laid things out for me.
Jamir explained that my assumption that simply linking to Nyaa didn’t constitute copyright infringement wasn’t necessarily wrong, but it didn’t really matter because there wasn’t much case law backing it up. This whole concept was still considered uncharted waters legal-wise, and the case could go either way. While technically it’s not copyright infringement to simply link to infringing material hosted elsewhere, some judges have interpreted copyright laws to include backlinking to copyrighted material as infringement. A lot of judges are old and don’t really understand technology, especially how linking works, so the fight would essentially be our lawyers trying to explain linking to the judge better than Crunchyroll’s lawyers. Jamir assumed that Crunchyroll’s lawyers probably have more experience in this area than our lawyers. That’s not to say our lawyers are idiots or anything, but this is probably something that Crunchyroll’s legal team deals with every day. Not impossible to win, but not the slam-dunk I assumed it would be.
He also explained that it was unlikely Crunchyroll would actually bother to waste time suing me over a single link, though my admissions of piracy certainly wouldn’t work in my favor.
Jamir put it very simply for me.
“It ain’t worth it, man. Just get rid of the link.”
I thought about it, and he was right. Was it really worth provoking a risky legal battle over a link to a torrent site that most people already know how to find on their own? Did removing the link detract from the article in any way? No, and no. It wasn’t as if I had been told to remove something because it was critical of Crunchyroll, in which case Jamir be damned, I’d fight tooth and nail. It was a dick move by Crunchyroll for sure, and definitely a gross perversion of copyright law, but removing a direct link to Nyaa Torrents didn’t have any impact on the article at all.
My other concern was that Crunchyroll was already in the process of dragging us to court over this. Jamir assured me that they probably weren’t. The whole process of sending Google a DMCA to de-list the article was most likely automated on their end, and unless I had done something to draw further attention to myself and willingly give them my information, they probably wouldn’t see the point in going and subpoenaing my host to turn over my information, especially if I removed the link. Still though, our host supposedly has a policy that they’ll give us 10 days advance notice before they comply with any legal requests for personal information, so Jamir told me to keep an eye out just in case.
Crunchyroll, just because you’ve got the monopoly on streaming anime in America doesn’t mean people are going to tolerate copyright trolling. Most anime fans are tech-savvy enough to know where to find their anime for free, and if you keep pressing buttons like this you’re going to end up shooting yourselves in the foot. Take a look at the movie industry and see how well the fight against piracy is going for them. This is a battle you can’t possibly win, and you’re better off spending time and money improving your service instead of sending out bullshit DMCA notices. When your approach consists of attacking people for merely linking to a torrent site, it’s time to rethink that approach.
Here’s some Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, now slather that dick up and eat it, Crunchyroll:
