The copyright infringement claim was made by the IP Arrow company on behalf of MX International, accusing the download tool of violating its intellectual property. In the complaint filed directly with Github for hosting the program, the following was stated:
“The sources listed below infringe the property rights of our consumers, allowing the illegal download of all their content through applications from the sources listed. The applications allow users to download any content from our clients. Using these displayed fonts you can download series like Naruto, One Piece, Black Clover, and any other anime that our customers offer. "
The "Crunchyroll Downloader" tool was launched at the end of the year 2019 and since then it has been updated multiple times until it reached version 1.2.2. It was created by Tim Schneeberger (also known by his username ThePBone), a German student who focuses on creating desktop and mobile apps. In this regard, Schneeberger commented:
"I wanted to create an application capable of" simulating "being an official client in the best possible way, with the aim of providing a secure way to download content directly from Crunchyroll at high speed, instead of depending on other sites or torrents for piracy.
My application was able to search the entire database without copying or pasting any URLs. In fact, I started this project first with reverse engineering, but it was the perfect opportunity to create something more useful, so I decided to focus on this application. ”
According to its documentation, this application could download episodes in MP4 format and on M3U HLS streaming lists, unblock region-blocked content through a proxy, and filter episodes by series and seasons. It is important to note that this application offered users the possibility to download episodes from Crunchyroll without the need to create an account on the platform, including 1080p quality downloads, an option reserved for premium users.
Predictably, the complaint requested that the repository that includes the application code "Crunchyroll Dowloader" be removed. However, they went further in this complaint filed with the developer, as expressed in the following excerpt:
"... disable access to the individual object of the claim described above, and close each and every one of the accounts he has ..."
With the submission of this claim, Github removed the project page and eight other developments that were variations of the "Crunchyroll Downloader" application. Finally, the company declined to comment on this event, however a quick Google search reveals that the tool is still available in countless other places, so IP Arrow still has a lot of work to do if it really wants to. down to "Crunchyroll Downloader".
