WEBTOON fires a shot across the bow of digital pirates

The digital comic publisher's court filing seeks to protect its reputation and bottom-line revenue.
August 23, 2024

LA’s WEBTOON Entertainment is taking aim at piracy sites by filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena asking the domain registration company Cloudflare to reveal the details of roughly 170 alleged copyright infringers. 

The publisher of digital comics and manga filed the request in a Texas federal court earlier this week in order to identify the pirates. Its past efforts to fight piracy have had some success, with the most recent coming last year when it targeted hundreds of sites in a subpoena request. That led to the shutdown of 150 websites, according to WEBTOON.  

As of the fiscal quarter that ended June 30, the digital comic publisher had around 170 million active monthly users, most of which (121.1 million) are from outside Korea and Japan. Many of these are on WEBTOON’s digital publishing platform Wattpad, which has 87.9 million users.  

WEBTOON went public in June, and the company reported earnings of US$320.9 million in an SEC filing earlier this month (for the three-month period ending on June 30), compared to similar revenue of US$320.6 million the previous year. 

Fighting pirates is one way WEBTOON plans to boost revenue. The company has been taking action to prevent unauthorized third parties from copying and distributing its content and merchandise—both of which hurt its financial performance and reputation, according to the company. “If a significant number of our users turn to counterfeit products for reasons such as lower prices, our revenue and growth could be adversely affected,” the company said in its SEC filing. 

Launched by South Korean techco Naver in 2004, WEBTOON owns more than one million titles. Dozens of its properties have been adapted for the screen, with most being YA-skewing K-dramas. In the latest example, The Jim Henson Company is currently developing an adaptation of WEBTOON’s Lore of Olympus

Pictured is Miriam Bonastre Tur’s fantasy series Hooky, which is a breakout tween title.  

About The Author
News editor for Kidscreen. Ryan covers tech, talent and general kids entertainment news, with a passion for kids rap content and video games. Have a story that's of interest to Kidscreen readers? Contact Ryan at rtuchow@brunico.com

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