Kocowa Seeks Domain Takeovers to Permanently Shut Down Dramacool Pirates

Dramacool and several associated sites suddenly shut down last November, with the operators mentioning copyright pressure as a prime reason.

The move disappointed millions of Asian drama and anime pirates but the nature of Dramacool’s legal troubles was initially unknown.

A few months later, legal paperwork eventually revealed that a U.S. court order, obtained by Wavve Americas (wA), the owner of legal streaming platform Kocowa, was the likely culprit. That lawsuit also aims to bring Dramacool’s operators to justice.

Dramacool Remnants Remain

Kocowa identified domain operators in Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and New Jersey, but none of their targets appeared in court to formally answer the complaint.

Meanwhile, some Dramacool domains remain operational. While these may include copycat sites unrelated to the original operation, the ongoing copyright infringement is a serious problem for Kocowa.

Last week, parent company wA explained these ongoing challenges in a motion for default judgment filed at a federal court in Arizona,

“[I]n some cases, Defendants have even moved and/or expanded their infringement operations to new domains. For example, wA discovered that Defendant Mirani further operates dramacool.sr, and offers infringing content via this domain name,” the company explained.

“Similarly, Defendant Bakht further operates dramacooltv.cz and dramacooli.cz and offers infringing content via these domain names, with access to dramacool.com.vc and Fdramacooli.cz, as of the filing of this Motion, being redirected to dramacooltv.cz.”

The motion

Kocowa Wants All Dramacool Domains

Since none of the defendants appeared in court, Kocowa requested a default judgment. That could open the door to millions of dollars in statutory damages, but the company isn’t interested in money.

Instead, wA seeks a default judgment and permanent injunction, to restrain the defendants from engaging in any infringing conduct going forward while taking ownership of all infringing domains.

These include the domains associated with the original Dramacool operation, as well as copycats and other new domains that have since been launched.

The legal paperwork mentions dramanice.la, runasian.net, watchasia.to, asianc.sh, asianwiki.co, dramacool.bg, dramacool.com.tr, dramacool.com.so, dramacool.com.vc, dramacool9.co, dramacool.tr, dramacool.co.ba, dramacool.ba, dramacool.sr, dramacooltv.cz, and dramacooli.cz.

Targeting Future Domains

Taking ownership of these domain names only solves part of the problem, as the defendants could simply register new ones. Therefore, the proposed order also prohibits them from registering or owning any domains that support future infringing activity.

Since the defendants may not comply, wA wants the order to apply to “all those persons or entities who receive actual notice of the order”. This means that U.S.-based domain registrars like Namecheap and GoDaddy would be legally required to enforce the order.

Any domain

The court has yet to grant the default judgment and permanent injunction. If it does, wA will effectively take over the existing Dramacool domains, provided that the current domain name registrars cooperate, and will have the authority to take over any new domains that pop up in the future.

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A copy of Wavve Americas’ motion for a default judgment and a permanent injunction is available here (pdf). A copy of the proposed order can be found here (pdf)