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Tokyo police said Monday they busted a child pornography ring alleged to have made more than a million dollars running a "factory" producing obscene DVDs.
Officers arrested Jun Amaya and six other men suspected of selling "a DVD depicting sexual scenes of children", a police spokesman said.
They were arrested in a Tokyo building on Nov 26 but police are continuing investigations amid suspicions of further wrongdoing, the official said.
Jiji Press news agency said the men had run "a manufacturing factory" of child porn DVDs on a floor of the building equipped with 26 computers and 19 DVD copying machines.
They racked up profits of 110 million yen selling some 300,000 DVDs through their websites since July last year, Jiji said.
They made the DVDs with images lifted from the Internet and copied them from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with Amaya giving a monthly salary of 250,000 yen to each of the six other men, Jiji said.
Police have confiscated three truck loads of machines, DVDs and other items, the private Asahi television network said.
Japan is considered a major provider of child pornography and the United States and other developed countries have accused it of laxness in dealing with the problem.
© Wire reports
24 Comments
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moonbeams
Great. Now take it off of amazon.jp and stop putting high school gravure on the cover of the comics.
TheguyNextdoor
yeah, that is a problem.
timorborder
And this "big" bust will not be leveraged to the max as an example of Japan doing something. Good work boys, lets hope your next bust happens tomorrow or the day after instead of 50 years from now.
meanmutha
guidelines... no laws here really. just guidelines.
BBLeo
Great! More grid and hunger for wealth. Cops should continue to look for such 'non worthy humans and scumbags.' Keep looking perhaps you will hit another jackpot. Lock up the accused in cave with blank DVD player for few years.
ninjaboy
This is Japan - home to 88 percent of the world's child pornography. FACT
billclinton
really, after that post, there is nothing to say.
billclinton
please provide evidence of the fact. I am sure you were waiting for this post in order to display your irrefutable source of evidence. Go Ahead, we are waiting.
likeitis
Well, I suppose if you are counting the 300,000 DVDs as one count each, and the servers they lifted the images from as one count each, it could appear that way.
And its a handy trick if you are in the mood for a bit of scapegoating.
billclinton
These are not facts. These are "anti Japanese sentiments" from white superior thinking gaijins. Get a life escapists. You will find worse in your own country if you dare to look.
medievaltimes
Really? I've looked pretty closely. It's pretty easy to see. Lots of Japanese men have a thing for young girls.
medievaltimes
Can someone confirm for me? Is it true it is against the law to have child porn only if there is intent to sell? Meaning posession of child porn is not a crime in Japan?
Orangeporange
Midievaltimes, yes you are correct. I just read on the US embassy website that possession of child porn is not illegal in Japan. They are trying to change that.
franz75
"They are trying to change that.". when you think that tax hike on whatever takes a few weeks, how come this doesn't change...
usaexpat
So they weren't actually producing the kiddie porn per se but distributing porn they lifted from elsewhere. These guys may be disgusting but the real issue is that they were in business because there's a market. The question is how to kill the market for this sick stuff.
usaexpat
ninjaboy: where are you getting that statistic? I was led to believe that the bulk of child porn comes from Russia and former eastern block countries.
BlackFlag
make possession illegal
usaexpat
BlackFlag I agree that's a step in the right direction but there will still be a market.
ptolemy
Will they now remove the child porn from the book stores and conbinis? When will they arrest the adult salarydrones and oyagi for reading the kiddie porn manga on trains?
681472
how about concentrating on battling the crimes or exploitation where there actually are any victims first?
(victims other than the authors dignity then)
681472
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1906159,00.html
surprise...
archiebald
Yep, read the last paragraph of that report.
50% from the U.S. 25% from Russia
So how is 88% coming from Japan?
bcbrownboy
Interesting stats: "Amaya giving a monthly salary of 250,000 yen to each of the six other men" - but did he pay taxes/retirement, etc. It seems that money is more important than the disgusting behavior.
medievaltimes
Ninja's stats are a bit old...per wikipedia.
A study done by the Socioeconomic Research Department at the Nomura Institute of Research showed that in 97 percent of book stores and convenience stores surveyed in 1996 sold “pornographic portrayals of children in either photographic or cartoon form”[7]. Moreover, as of 1998, Japan was the source of 80 percent of the commercial child pornography available on the Internet[8]. Actually, it was not until 1999 that Japan joined the international community in banning child pornography, not out of moral concern, but more so because of the bad publicity the country was receiving[6].