Kakao Entertainment shuts down major piracy site

Screens of Reaper Scans website, left, and the notice it posted on the day of its shutdown / Courtesy of Kakao Entertainment

Kakao Entertainment has shut down Reaper Scans, one of the biggest English-language webtoon and web novel piracy sites, the company said Wednesday.

The company’s P.CoK, a team dedicated to countering piracy, has successfully led the site to halt operation last Friday, using its special technology to identify the proprietary operator.

Reaper Scans is one of the biggest sites that illegally distributed Korean webtoons and web novels for six years, garnering an average of 10 million user visits per month. Its Discord channel had approximately 95,000 subscribers.

It has been known to operate with its own professional groups for high-quality, unauthorized translations, resulting in a large number of frequent users and secondary distribution of its illegally translated content.

The piracy site regularly updated content and generated revenue through opening sponsorship channels and running advertisements. At one point, it even charged users to view its content.

Through investigations and database comparisons since 2022, P.CoK recently succeeded in identifying three operators in the United States, India and Croatia. Using this information, it sent emails warning the operators of legal action, using their real names, leading the operators to finally agree to shut the site down permanently.

In a notice posted on its website Friday, Reaper Scans’ operators announced the site would permanently close down after receiving a cease and desist order from Kakao Entertainment.

“Our final, heartfelt request is for you to continue supporting the creators you love by reading official translations on platforms like Tapas, Webtoon, Wuxiaworld, Manta, Toomics, Lezhin and Wattpad,” the notice said. “If there is a series you adore that isn't yet available in English, we encourage you to reach out directly to publishers.”

Kakao Page's website / Screen captured from Kakao Page

Kakao Entertainment has developed technology to identify site operators because measures like sending warning letters or blocking the domain merely result in temporary closures before they reopen under a new domain.

"P.CoK's activities have great significance as they not only protect Kakao Entertainment works but all Korean content on illegal sites, enhancing the value of K-content," Lee Ho-jun, P.CoK’s chief legal officer, said in a release. "We will continue to advance our independent investigation methods and apply them to protect creators' rights."

Earlier this year, P.CoK shut down the largest webtoon piracy site in Southeast Asia, Mangaku, after identifying its operators. The site had illegally distributed hundreds of Korean webtoons since 2008.

The team has also successfully stopped the unauthorized distribution of Kakao Entertainment’s works from the most-visited piracy site N, which has approximately 100 million monthly visitors.

As the industry's first anti-piracy team, P.CoK is publishing a biannual white paper on anti-piracy responses to help improve the industry's ability to address illegal content distribution.