Specialized in manga, manhwas, manhuas, comics and comics, Japscan offered nearly 13,000 unlicensed titles with more than 690,000 unique visitors per month in France.
Book piracy is a particularly worrying phenomenon in the manga sector, with 83% of readers visiting pirate sites, according to the 2025 Mangas.io study. This phenomenon directly impacts publisher sales in a declining market. In 2024, sales in the Mangas publishing sector decreased by 9.3% in volume.
Vincent Montagne, president of the Syndicat national de l’édition, stated “the Syndicat national de l’édition is actively fighting against piracy as demonstrated by two court victories blocking Z-Library. This new success further shows our desire to defend copyright whenever it is threatened. “
Benoit Pollet, president of the manga group of the Syndicat national de l’édition, added: “All the publishers of the manga group are united in this unprecedented legal action to fight against piracy and contribute collectively to all initiatives that will make the 7 million manga readers aware of these illegal practices”.
After bringing several cases against Z-Library, the Syndicat national de l’édition continues to strengthen its strategy against counterfeit sites, regardless of their size, the complexity of their organisation or their desire to maintain, or even expand, their audience at the expense of the development of legal platforms.
The Syndicat national de l’édition requests that professional organizations can use ARCOM, the French Telecoms regulator, to extend site-blocks to all relevant domain names. This is already provided for in Article L.331-27 of the Intellectual Property Code but a review of this article is urgently needed to remove its current limits.
The SNE notes that French publishing is investing heavily to allow broad public access to digital books through many legal retail services. Book piracy affects the remuneration of creators: authors and publishers. It is a threat to the entire book ecosystem, especially booksellers, and harms cultural diversity.