Shueisha’s Bot Goes Haywire as it Copyright Strikes Twitter Users

A huge storm has blown over Twitter in the past 24 hours. Many users woke up to see their accounts blocked, taken down or struck by copyright laws by Shueisha.

The ridiculous part of all this is that Shueisha is targeting pictures, gifs, and even DPs that have manga/anime content that belongs to the company.

Shueisha is a Japanese company that publishes manga-based magazines and has tonnes of manga under them. Weekly Shonen Jump, Jump SQ, Ultra Jump, V Jump are all magazines that belong to it.

The company also owns Viz Media, the licensor and publisher of manga for North America.

With a company this huge, you can estimate how many series are actually owned by it. From Dragon Ball to One Piece and tonnes in between, it is a mega-manga owner.

So what happens when a company this huge thoughtlessly strikes content on a global platform? A chaotic outbreak.

Not only official manga/anime pictures are being taken down but also fan arts of the series.

This is completely wrong because the rights of fan arts belong to specific artists. People have shared that their account has been locked just because of a simple gif.

Many estimate that this new move is due to the new copyright enforcement law that was passed in Japan recently. The act came into force to prevent people from accessing manga/anime from pirating websites.

However, what is currently taking place seems like a blind strike. The most probable reason behind it might be a bot that Shueisha is using to find the tweets.

The sheer randomness of the blocked accounts and the short amount of time within which this all took place, all direct to the usage of a bot.

The bot is not seeing friend or foe, which is visible as an artist of Shueisha was struck. Fenyo has provided official art for Dragon Ball Dokkan Battle and Dragon Ball Legends games under Shueisha. Yet his account was blocked.

This has forced many Twitter users to go private to save their accounts. The only thing that this copyright strike is earning Shueisha is a bad name.

Source: Twitter

Sometimes we include links to online retail stores and/or online campaigns. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.