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Funimation Subpoenas Cloud Hosting Platform Over Copyright Infringement of One Piece Anime

FUNimation Entertainment obtained and filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena to cloud hosting platform Digital Ocean, Inc. on May 1 requesting contact information for an alleged copyright infringer at an IP address served by Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean has until June 5 to respond to the subpoena.

Funimation's subpoena, filed with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleged that an IP address owned by Digital Ocean "is being used for the unauthorized copying and distribution (downloading, uploading, file serving/swapping, streaming, stream embedding, torrent seeding, torrent tracking, torrent linking, other linking, link aggregating or any similar activities) of digital files embodying" the One Piece anime, which Funimation holds the rights to in North America. The subpoena claimed that the content at the IP address violated Funimation's intellectual property rights, including its rights under the Copyright Act.

Funimation also requested that Digital Ocean "expeditiously causes all such infringing materials to be removed or blocked or freezes the account at issue until the account holder removes all infringing materials or disables access thereto."

The TorrentFreak website reported on Thursday that, according to "a source close to the issue," the IP address in the subpoena is linked to the KissAnime website. ANN couldn't independently verify this claim, and Funimation and Funimation's lawyer didn't respond to ANN's request for comment by press time.

Funimation previously filed a copyright infringement complaint against 1,337 "John Does" for using BitTorrent to share a One Piece episode in 2011.

[Via TorrentFreak]