Crunchyroll, a video-streaming website known for offering anime titles without authorization, secured a capital investment of US$4.05 million.

Venture capital firm Venrock reportedly invested the capital in San-Francisco-based Crunchyroll, Inc., with Venrock General Partner David Siminoff joining Crunchyroll's board of directors. Several websites that report on federal regulatory filings covered the investment in brief.

Funimation has been carefully monitoring the activities of crunchyroll.com for some time. Since 2006 Funimation has provided several letters notifying the site's operators of copyright infringement issues in connection with content that has been made available through this site. To date, crunchyroll.com has complied with FUNimation's demands to remove the applicable content.

Bandai Entertainment Inc. announced today that it echoes Funimation's concerns over copyright infringement by sites that illegally stream anime.

Bandai Entertainment Inc. also informed the website crunchyroll.com to remove content that infringed on its copyrights and furthermore has been working with licensors in Japan, educating them about the pervasive illegal downloading and streaming of anime that has negatively impacted the market. Bandai Entertainment absolutely agrees with Funimation's assertion that this is an epidemic that will undermine the future of the anime business in Japan and the United States.

The main administrator of Crunchyroll, a video-streaming website with many unauthorized anime videos, has said in an online post that the Gonzo/GDH anime production company contacted the site. According to Crunchyroll, the two companies have been "trading ideas about what we can do together so everyone will benefit." In his post, the adminstrator added a cover image of a dialogue recording script for episode #1 ("The Giant Tower of Druaga") of The Tower of Druaga: the Aegis of Uruk fantasy anime series. Gonzo will premiere this game-based anime in Japan on April 4. On the recording script is a signature of Taichi Hashimoto, a producer on Rosario + Vampire, Speed Grapher, and other Gonzo works.