One of the world's largest manga piracy operations just went dark. Japan's Content Overseas Distribution Association announced the arrest of an individual who admitted to running Bato.to and roughly 60 related sites that pulled in 350 million visits last May alone. The operation was raking in over $57,000 monthly through advertising before Chinese and Japanese authorities coordinated the takedown.
Japan just took down one of the internet's most prolific manga piracy empires. The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), Japan's anti-piracy coalition backed by major publishers, confirmed that Chinese authorities arrested an individual on November 19th who has admitted to operating Bato.to and approximately 60 related piracy sites. The network included high-traffic domains like xbato.com and mangapark.io, collectively forming one of the largest scanalation distribution operations on the web.
The scale of the operation is staggering. CODA reports the 60 shuttered sites recorded a combined 350 million visits in May 2025 alone. At its peak, Bato.to was generating more than 400,000 yuan - roughly $57,000 - in monthly advertising revenue by serving pirated content to millions of readers worldwide. That kind of traffic put it in the same league as legitimate manga platforms, except every page view represented copyright infringement.
Bato.to launched back in 2014 and quickly became synonymous with "scanalation" - the practice of scanning physical manga and manhwa volumes, translating the dialogue into English or other languages, editing in the new text, and then distributing the finished product through online communities. What started as fan-driven projects to access content unavailable in Western markets evolved into a massive underground industry. Bato.to wasn't just hosting this content, it was industrializing the distribution.
The takedown represents a significant win for Japanese publishers who have been fighting an uphill battle against piracy for years. Unlike music or video streaming, manga piracy has proven particularly stubborn because of the relatively low bandwidth requirements for image files and the ease of copying printed material. Sites like Bato.to could mirror entire publisher catalogs with minimal infrastructure costs while monetizing through ads.
