On Nov. 13, the Japanese newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, reported that the Kyoto Prefectural Police’s Anti-Cybercrime Department arrested four men on the suspicion of infringing on the Japanese Copyright Act.

These individuals were affiliated with the illegal distribution of Japanese manga, including One Piece, on the English scanlation website “Mangapanda.”

The fourth individual, an employee for a distribution company, would extract magazines from the printing company en route to another distribution company who then ship the manga to bookstores. The suspect would hand those stolen copies over to his acquaintances to illicitly distribute them in English on their website. According to an updated Yomiuri Shimbun article, the 69 year old Japanese suspect and the three additional suspects, all of whom are from China, were arrested earlier today and have been taken into custody and said that “I only delivered them manga.”

The website, much like most scanlation groups, would go on to release chapters from these illegally obtained magazines, which would include the newest chapter of One Piece along with many other series. The site would release these chapters up to four days prior to the official, intended sale date in Japan and other countries around the world with access to the digital, English Weekly Shonen Jump service from VIZ Media.

While this event obviously will not resolve the illegal publication of manga online days before their official release, and while this isn’t the first time these sorts of arrests have happened, the Yomiuri does mention that this is “the first time a manga piracy site aimed at foreign readers has been exposed.”

If you live in a part of the world where you have access to either the official English Weekly Shonen Jump or Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump or Jump+, this is a good opportunity to ensure you have access to the latest One Piece chapter. It you haven’t yet, be sure to check out this editorial written by One Piece Podcast‘s Zach and Jammer talk about “How Scanlations Ruin Your ‘One Piece’ Experience.” It costs an individual in Japan around $2 every week to read their copy of Weekly Shonen Jump digitally or in print. For those in the anglosphere, the English Weekly Shonen Jump is available for at most $25.99 a year, or about $0.50 a week with the annual subscription. This scanlation group alone may cost companies and their employees up to an estimated 6.5 billion yen (approximately US$53,000,000), Japanese television network MBS reports.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, Yahoo News, MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting Systems)