Manga piracy site registered as David Beckham ranked second worldwide in February 2025
A manga piracy site registered under the name “David Beckham” was reportedly the world’s second most visited source of pirated Japanese manga in February 2025. The case was raised at an ICANN meeting as publishers called for stronger checks on domain registrants, arguing that anonymity and rapid domain changes make commercial piracy harder to tackle.
Tatsuo Ninoseki, representing Japan’s manga anti-piracy group JPMAC, said pirate sites often use advertising and can draw hundreds of millions of users, costing publishers an estimated $17 billion a year. Operators register domains across 158 top-level domains and 82.4 per cent of domain changes happen within 15 days; ICANN is developing a policy that could prompt registries to review a customer’s other domains when one is linked to abuse.
- A manga piracy site used the name “David Beckham”.
- Publishers want stronger checks on domain registrants.
- Pirates change domains quickly across many extensions.
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Manga is a Japanese form of comics, published in print and online. Publishers and authors hold rights to their work, while pirate sites make it available without permission, often earning money from advertising.
ICANN coordinates parts of the internet’s domain-name system, including the rules used by organisations that register web addresses. Publishers say false registration details and frequent moves to new web addresses can make it harder to identify and disrupt pirate sites.
The debate is about how far domain registries should go in checking customers and responding when a domain is linked to abuse. Any change could affect both efforts to limit piracy and the privacy of people who register domains.
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Originally published by The Register as “‘David Beckham’ was briefly the world’s second-worst manga pirate”.