NAVER WEBTOON, the parent company of the popular U.S. WEBTOON platform, says it has zero tolerance for copyright infringement as it seeks damages worth a billion won in a new piracy-centric lawsuit.
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Via an online press release, NAVER WEBTOON in Korea announced its filing of a 1 billion won ($714k) lawsuit against operators of "illegal websites" as part of a demonstration of its "Strong zero-tolerance principle." Defendant 1 operated multiple piracy sites from December 2020 to July 2023 and was arrested in September of that year. They were sentenced in May 2024. WEBTOON believes that Defendants 2 and 3, charged with operating different sites, are the same person. This is based on the fact that both were arrested at the same time. WEBTOON filed for damages of 500 million won against Defendant 1 and 500 million won against Defendants 2 and 3.
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WEBTOON's Pre-Piracy Countermeasures Are Able to Identify Leakers
Despite the identities of those operators currently being undisclosed, WEBTOON preemptively filed for damages. It plans to request the relevant agencies to send documents identifying the defendants and "increase the amount of the claim as the facts of the illegal acts become clear." WEBTOON's press release praises its zero-tolerance policy, calling itself the only "domestic webtoon/web novel platform operator that simultaneously conducts pre- and post-piracy countermeasures."
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WEBTOON carries out pre-piracy countermeasures through its bespoke Toon Radar technology. This embeds invisible information into webtoons to identify the first leaker. It carries out post-piracy measures by sending warnings to illegal sites, issuing DMCA takedown requests and issuing subpoenas to illegal site server intermediaries, such as content delivery networks (CDNs) and hosting companies. It filed a subpoena request against Cloudflare for 170 alleged piracy sites worth a combined 100 million monthly page visits in August. Other companies are taking similar invisible watermarking approaches to catch leakers. Toho and Aniplex similarly embedded watermarks in Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer episodes, identifying users on X (formerly Twitter) that shared them before the intended release times.
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WEBTOON Is the First in Its Industry to Execute a U.S. Court Subpoena
WEBTOON ended the press release by touting its position as the first in the webtoon industry to have a subpoena executed through U.S. courts. It says one subpoena procedure was completed this year, and three more are in progress. Vice President Kyunam Kim concluded, "NAVER WEBTOON will do its best to protect creators by strictly responding to illegal content distribution based on the principle of zero tolerance."
Source: NAVER WEBTOON
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