Pirate Bay Founder’s ‘’Njalla’’ Slammed for Protecting Pirate Sites

Last updated: July 5, 2023 Reading time: 4 minutes
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The Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde in 2017, declared the launch of a completely new privacy-oriented start-up. The Njalla domain name service proposes site owners improved and better levels of privacy, but not everyone is happy and satisfied with the product. In a proposal to the Japanese Government, a powerful anti-piracy group criticizes that the Service helps protect pirate site operators from the action.

After several years of directing people to share larger volumes of content on P2P file-sharing apps and services, Japan is now finally targeting pirating sites.

In simple words, the copyright holder would like to witness the foreign pirate sites blocked by the local internet service providers, in much the exact way as they are in heaps of countries anywhere. But, the process is challenging to move forward, as intrusion with communications is often viewed by several as an attack on users browsing privacy.

Currently, the Japanese Government is endeavoring to review piracy measures for the internet and has also demanded input from the copyright holders and other interested parties. This resulted in a submission from CODA (Content Overseas Distribution Association), an anti-piracy alliance presenting major video, publication, and software organizations.

The CODA writes in a submission that ‘’Infringement of rights occurs across national boundaries due to the development of the internet, and the identification of infringers is challenging. The response to this is tough, and we believe that there are limits under the existing laws of Japan, and new initiatives are necessary.’’

Observing that criminal complaints and other measures against variously targeted pirates have turned out ineffective, CODA says it is being delayed by online services, which help to keep the operatives anonymous.

The so-called ‘’bulletproof’’ holders, which neglect the copyright law, are emphasized first. These holders have rules and guidelines in place to protect and secure their users, often paying no attention to takedown notices filed under the DMCA while covering the identities of site operators. The Bulletproof holders were labeled as an emerging threat by the RIAA.

The CODA also objects to domain privacy services, enabling domain registrants to cover their identities from peeping eyes. The Njalla service, launched last year by the Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is singled out of disapproval.

The CODA further adds, ‘’Service such as offshore hosting/bulletproof hosting that ignores the DMCA and domain registry services selling complete anonymity are rampant. It is now clear that the pirate site ‘Mangamura’ was also using Njalla.’’

Mangamura was a vast pirate manga site that got closed last April. The main reason for the site shutdown was the accession over half a billion times. This accession led the Tokyo- based Kodansha, Japan’s largest publisher, to report a criminal complaint against the site. According to an estimation by CODA, Mangamura produced losses to an amount of US$2.9 billion.

The use of Njalla by the Mangamura triggered problems for copyright holders or investigators. Njalla also helps to retain the registration details of private domain names by registering domains in its name (holding company 1337 Services LLC), not the users meaning that the holder of Mangamura should be challenging to trace.

An agreement enables the users to use Njalla-registered domains, but they would like it until it won’t hurt someone’s health or safety and they are capable of taking back the domains or transferring them at any time. Moreover, they are protected from third parties learning who is actually behind their domains.

The Torrent Freak inquired Njalla whether they ever received any complaints regarding Mangamura’s registration, but the Service was about to respond at the time of publication. Although, one has to read the sample f company’s interactions with content company attorneys to look at how it sometimes answers.

The CODA lingers to force its case to announce a blocking mechanism in Japan. However, this won’t solve the anonymity problem impersonated by the bulletproof holders and also services like Njalla, but with pirating sites reduced unreachable would undoubtedly help.

As per a report published by Mainichi, a board of government professionals has been incapable of gathering an interim report on measures against pirate sites due to differences over the aptness of blocking the site.

Whereas the copyright holders believe that the practice should be enforced as soon as possible, there are thoughtful concerns that blocking sites might violate the country’s constitution.

Ryoji Mori, one of the lawyers on the panel, said, ‘’There are strong misgivings among many of the panel members who specialize in law that blocking is unconstitutional, and it’s unacceptable.

On October 17th, nine-panel members resisted blocking by issuing a statement that insisted that legislation ‘’ should be deferred and cooperation sought with the private sector to advance measures other than blocking.’’

Those measures are supposed to comprise restricting advertising on pirate sites to reach revenues and more cooperation between content producers and telecoms companies. Various internet service providers in Japan at present block many pirate sites willingly.

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Rebecca James is an IT consultant with forward thinking approach toward developing IT infrastructures of SMEs. She writes to engage with individuals and raise awareness of digital security, privacy, and better IT infrastructure.

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