---
id: "58874010-e4e3-43e7-add6-f5215d7d9a7b"
kind: "link"
title: "Publishers urge stricter registrant checks after pirate manga site registered under a false name"
language: "en"
section: "legal"
date: "2026-10-20T05:20:21Z"
updated: "2026-10-20T05:20:21Z"
canonical: "https://tldlog.com/l/publishers-urge-stricter-registrant-checks-pirate-manga-site/"
origin: "master"
translations:
  es: "https://tldlog.com/es/l/editores-piden-controles-mas-estrictos-titulares-registrarse/"
  de: "https://tldlog.com/de/l/verlage-fordern-strengere-pruefung-domaininhabern-piraterie/"
  fr: "https://tldlog.com/fr/l/editeurs-reclament-controles-plus-stricts-titulaires-apres/"
  it: "https://tldlog.com/it/l/editori-chiedono-controlli-piu-severi-assegnatari-dopo/"
  pt-BR: "https://tldlog.com/pt/l/editores-pedem-checagens-mais-rigorosas-titulares-apos-site/"
  ru: "https://tldlog.com/ru/l/izdateli-trebuyut-bolee-strogoy-proverki-registrantov-posle/"
  zh-Hans: "https://tldlog.com/zh/l/chuban-shang-huyu-jiaqiang-zhuce-ren-hecha/"
source:
  name: "theregister.com"
  url: "https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/10/20/david-beckham-was-briefly-the-worlds-second-worst-manga-pirate/5304044"
  language: "en"
  date: "2026-10-20T04:21:20Z"
---

# Publishers urge stricter registrant checks after pirate manga site registered under a false name

## in plain words

A website that pirated Japanese comics was registered under a famous footballer’s name. A group of comic publishers says domain buyers should be checked more carefully. ICANN, the group that manages internet names, is working on a rule to deal with this kind of abuse.

A website registered by someone using the name “David Beckham” was, in February 2025, the second most visited source of pirated Japanese manga in the world, according to the source. The name belonged to a fake registrant, not the footballer. Tatsuo Ninoseki, an attorney with the Shin Hirakawa-Cho Law Office who represents the Japan Publishers manga Anti-Piracy Conference (JPMAC), raised the case during a session on DNS abuse at ICANN’s annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia.

Ninoseki said unauthorized English translations of manga are posted on websites that carry advertising. He said such sites can attract hundreds of millions of users and cost publishers $17 billion in revenue each year. JPMAC has chosen to target commercial-scale pirates rather than individual copyright abusers, sending them legal letters and using other legal means against sites like the one registered under the Beckham name.

Ninoseki said pirate operators keep sets of domain names and move between them. He said they have registered names in 158 top-level domains and often switch between them. Because the pirate domains share common naming elements, users can predict where a site will reappear even after Google has stopped indexing it. Some operators redirect traffic from unused domains to live sites and spread visitors across several sites at once to keep each one’s traffic low.

Ninoseki said 82.4 percent of domain hops happen within 15 days of the previous move, which he suggested shows that operators anticipate enforcement actions and takedown requests. “Many domain hops do not appear to be a reaction to legal countermeasures,” the attorney said. He said more thorough verification of registrants would help, especially checks on the physical addresses they provide, which he believes would screen out more pirates.

ICANN defines DNS abuse as using domain names to facilitate malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam. It is working on a policy called PDP1 to address DNS abuse. One element would require registries to consider all domains held by a customer if one of them is found to conduct DNS abuse. Under that approach, once a registrant is linked to one piracy site, the other domains registered by the same person could also be checked.

Source: [theregister.com](https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/10/20/david-beckham-was-briefly-the-worlds-second-worst-manga-pirate/5304044)