Press "Enter" to skip to content

Pair nabbed in sale of dubbing system for illegal porn DVDs

Koichi Hisano
Koichi Hisano

TOKYO (TR) Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Monday announced the arrest of two men who sold a system that facilitates the dubbing and sale of illegal pornographic DVDs, reports the Asahi Shimbun (Feb. 1).

Yoichi Hisano, the 52-year-old head of a software company in Yokohama, and Takashi Kono, a 43-year-old Internet entrepreneur, jointly developed Cobra System, which can dub a 120-minute DVD in large quantities in a few minutes and manage sales via the Internet.

The computer system connects to an overseas server containing content from a number of illegal DVD titles. Customers navigating to a specific sales site can then purchase the titles which are then copied onto DVDs for shipment.

Police have found 21 sites using Cobra System, which was sold by the suspects for three million yen. After each system was sold, the suspects also received 30 percent of each sale as a commission. Since 2014, sales accrued by the pair totaled 72 million yen.

In November of last year, a customer of the suspects was found to be in possession of 21 illegal DVDs in Yokohama. By law, films available and made in Japan are required to have genitalia properly censored.

Police subsequently charged Hisano and Kono with possession of obscene digital media for the purpose of distribution for profit. Both suspects have denied the charges, according to the Sankei Shimbun (Feb. 1).