Japan Arrests A Nyaa "First Seeder" Going After The Source, Not The Site

Japanese police have arrested the alleged "first uploader" of a pirated NHK drama on Nyaa, the torrent index that has sat near the top of the anime piracy ecosystem for the better part of a decade. On 28 July 2026, the Cyber Investigation pision of the Kyoto Prefectural Police, working with Fushimi Police Station, detained a man resident in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, on suspicion of violating Japan’s Copyright Act.^1,2,4 

The allegation is that he posted the torrent file for the NHK drama Midnight Taxi to Nyaa and seeded the data to an unspecified number of users over a peer-to-peer network. CODA states that he is also suspected of sharing numerous other television dramas, primarily NHK works; neither CODA nor police have put a figure on that.^1,2

How the case was built

The interesting part is not the arrest but the attribution. Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) opened an investigation into Nyaa in 2021 under its Cross-Border Enforcement Project (CBEP), a programme it has run with the support of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry since FY2021.^1,2 During that investigation CODA obtained identifying information on the suspect using an analysis tool built by the Japan Hacker Association, a CBEP cooperating organisation. Kyoto Prefectural Police then ran their own investigation to confirm the identification, and CODA coordinated the affected Japanese rights holders to bring the complaint.^1,2,3

CODA has been circling Nyaa for years. In 2019 it worked with Google to remove the site’s homepage from search results. When the operator of B9GOOD was prosecuted in 2023, he named Nyaa as a source of his pirated content.^1,2 According to CODA, Nyaa averaged roughly 30 million monthly visits between July 2025 and June 2026, with about half of that traffic originating inside Japan.^1,3

A caveat worth stating plainly: this is not a site takedown. Nyaa remains online. CODA has identified and had arrested one uploader, and it has not disclosed the method by which its analysis tool produced the identification. Commentators in the anime community have pushed back on the "crackdown on Nyaa" framing used in much of the general coverage, noting that what has actually happened is narrower than the headlines suggest.^5,6

Why it matters for rights holders

Torrent enforcement has lagged behind action against streaming sites and IPTV services for a structural reason. There is no central server to seize, no host to serve, and no single domain whose blocking meaningfully interrupts supply. The seeder is the one genuine chokepoint: at the moment of first distribution, only that person holds the complete file. Remove them, and the swarm never forms.^1,2

That makes this case the Japanese counterpart to a shift already visible elsewhere in the region. In June, Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and KCOPA announced an expansion of international cooperation explicitly aimed at the inpiduals, infrastructure and organised networks behind distribution rather than at domains.⁸ Vietnam’s C03 charged seven people in the HiAnime case in July, adding money laundering counts alongside copyright infringement.⁷ Three jurisdictions, one direction of travel.

For rights holders with Japanese-origin content, the practical point is that CBEP now has a demonstrated attribution capability and a working pipeline into prefectural police. Rights holders outside that programme should be asking how to feed evidence into it. For everyone else, the case is a useful data point in an argument that has been hard to win with regulators: that upstream enforcement against a small number of source uploaders can be more efficient than an indefinite blocking campaign against an ever-refreshing set of mirrors.

CODA also repeated a warning that bears passing on to consumer-facing teams. Most BitTorrent clients upload automatically while downloading, so users who think of themselves as downloaders are, as a matter of law, distributing.^1,3

Footnotes

1. "First Uploader (Seeder) Using One of the World’s Largest Torrent Sites, ‘Nyaa,’ Arrested," Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), press release, 29 July 2026. https://coda-cj.jp/en/news/920/

2. Steven Hawley, "Japan: Inpidual arrested for uploading TV dramas to torrent site, acting as ‘first seeder’," Piracy Monitor, 29 July 2026. https://piracymonitor.org/japan-inpidual-arrested-for-uploading-tv-dramas-to-torrent-site-acting-as-first-seeder/

3. James Busby, "Japan arrests alleged uploader behind one of the largest anime torrent sites Nyaa," Dexerto, 30 July 2026. https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/japan-arrests-alleged-uploader-behind-one-of-the-largest-anime-torrent-sites-nyaa-3392800/

4. "The World’s Biggest Anime Torrent Site Faces a Landmark New Crackdown," CBR, 30 July 2026. https://www.cbr.com/nyaa-torrent-uploader-arrest-coda-crackdown/

5. "‘Landmark case’: Japan arrests alleged ‘first uploader’ behind one of the world’s largest anime torrent sites, Nyaa," Attack of the Fanboy, July 2026. https://attackofthefanboy.com/true-crime/landmark-case-japan-arrests-alleged-first-uploader-behind-one-of-the-worlds-largest-anime-torrent-sites-nyaa/

6. Manga Mogura RE, post on X, 29 July 2026. https://x.com/MangaMoguraRE/status/2082766865453953066

7. Steven Hawley, "Vietnam: ACE celebrates arrest of seven in HiAnime case, a long-standing anti-piracy target," Piracy Monitor, 10 July 2026. https://piracymonitor.org/vietnam-seven-arrested/

8. Oliver Walsh, "South Korea Expands International Anti-Piracy Strategy With Southeast Asia In Focus," Rouse, 16 July 2026. https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/1818000/south-korea-expands-international-anti-piracy-strategy-with-southeast-asia-in-focus