The most important manga piracy web site on this planet, BATO.TO, and “approximately 60 related sites” have been shut down, following a joint operation between the Shanghai Public Safety Bureau of China and Japan’s Ministry of Financial system, Commerce and Trade.
As noticed by NHK, this information comes via a report from the Japanese Content material Abroad Distribution Organisation, also referred to as CODA, indicating that the house of a person “alleged to have operated the world’s largest manga piracy site” had been searched. Though the suspect in query, who was arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement, was detained on November 19, 2025, CODA’s report states that the BATO group of websites “continued limited operation” till January 19, at which level they confirmed that “all 60” of BATO.TO websites had shut down.
The assertion notes that the 60 websites mixed pulled in an estimated 350 million visits in Might 2025 alone, and alleges that the “resulting economic impact” supposedly “amounts to approximately 770 billion yen.” That’s simply shy of 5 billion USD.
This absurdly giant loss matches up with a recently published report from Japan’s Ministry of Financial system, Commerce and Trade, which estimated that Japanese anime, manga, and online game piracy resulted in 5.7 trillion yen (roughly 37 billion USD) of harm in 2025. CODA states that their investigation “was initiated following requests from Japanese publishers,” together with a number of outstanding online game publishers corresponding to Sq. Enix and Kadokawa Company, the latter of whom entered right into a “strategic capital and business alliance” with Sony in December 2024.
CODA additionally states that China Literature Restricted, a subsidiary of Tencent Holdings, cooperated with the investigation “as part of its international collaboration efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of anti-piracy measures.”
Funnily sufficient, the official BATO.TO mod workforce famous on the r/Batoto subreddit {that a} new clone of the positioning popped up on January 20, a day after “the closure of all 60 sites had been confirmed” by CODA. The unique BATO.TO mod workforce notes of their put up that they “have not been in contact with the original developers, have not been notified that the new site is legitimate, and cannot confirm any claims circulating online.”
