By SHINKAI KAWABE/ Staff Writer
November 10, 2022 at 17:33 JST
The cover of a pirated version of Shonen Jump’s issue No. 51 from 1984 (Shinkai Kawabe)
KANAZAWA--Ishikawa prefectural police here Nov. 9 announced the arrest of a man for selling a pirated version of a comic magazine that carries the first story of the hugely popular manga “Dragon Ball” in breach of the Copyright Law.
Police said the suspect, a 50-year-old company director who lives in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, took issue with the allegation, telling police he sold the magazine in the belief it was genuine.
The item in question is a pirated version of the weekly Shonen Jump’s No. 51 issue dating from 1984.
Police contend he was fully aware it was a duplicate of a genuine copy made without the copyright holder’s consent.
The first stories of hugely popular manga fetch high prices based on their rarity value.
The pirated Shonen Jump version put up for auction fetched a winning bid in early April of around 180,000 yen ($1,230) by a man in his 30s who lives in Ishikawa Prefecture.
As the man already owned a genuine copy of the same issue, he alerted the police after he realized he had been conned. He said the quality of the paper was very different from the genuine article, noting that the pages were stuck together with glue.
Shueisha Inc., Shonen Jump’s publisher, is urging fans to be careful about piracy on the magazine’s website saying, “Genuine magazines are bound with staples.”
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