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The Tokyo District Court has ruled that Cloudflare must pay 500 million yen (about USD $3.2 million) in damages to four major Japanese manga publishers for helping enable access to illegal manga piracy sites. The decision, reported by Asahi Shimbun, was issued on November 19.
The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Shueisha, Kadokawa, Kodansha, and Shogakukan. The publishers argued that pirated chapters of popular series such as Attack on Titan and One Piece were widely accessed through sites using Cloudflare’s services. They claimed that from April 2020 to December 2021, an estimated 70 million to 2 billion pirated chapters were viewed each month, causing major financial losses.
According to the publishers, Cloudflare assisted the distribution of these piracy sites by providing its Content Delivery Network (CDN) service. The CDN works by copying, or caching, data from a site’s original server and delivering it from a server closer to users. The court found that this made it easier for people in Japan to access overseas piracy websites and reduced traffic costs for those running the sites.
The publishers said Cloudflare continued offering its services even after being informed that the targeted sites were infringing their copyrights. Cloudflare argued it was only passively transmitting data and that responsibility should fall on the operators of the piracy sites themselves.
Japanese media noted that copying copyrighted material to improve data transmission is usually not considered illegal. However, an exception applies when the act causes unfair harm to the copyright holder. After more than three years of proceedings, the court determined that Cloudflare’s actions met this exception and held the company liable.
