A Tokyo court has ruled that Cloudflare is legally responsible for enabling manga piracy after failing to act on infringement notices and continuing to cache content for major piracy sites. The decision orders Cloudflare to pay around $3.2 million in damages, setting a significant legal precedent in Japan for content delivery networks (CDNs).
According to TorrentFreak, the judgment highlights the potential liability for CDN providers who do not verify their customers or respond adequately to reports of large-scale copyright infringement. The publishers involved in the case, which have been battling Cloudflare for over three and a half years, stated that they had repeatedly warned the company about the massive scale of the infringement, involving over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits. Despite these warnings, Cloudflare continued to provide services to the piracy sites, even after receiving information disclosure orders from U.S. courts.
The ruling emphasizes that Cloudflare’s failure to take timely action and its neglect in stopping the distribution of pirated content constituted aiding and abetting copyright infringement. The court specifically noted that Cloudflare, without conducting any identity verification procedures, enabled a piracy site to operate under strong anonymity, which underpinned their decision to assign liability. The publishers argue that this judgment clarifies the conditions under which CDN providers may be held responsible for copyright infringement, particularly in cases where operators hide their identities and use overseas CDN services for large-scale distribution.
Cloudflare has announced plans to appeal the verdict, but the ruling serves as a clear warning to other CDN providers about the potential legal risks associated with hosting or facilitating pirated content. The decision is expected to influence future legal actions against similar companies and emphasize the need for greater responsibility from CDN services in protecting intellectual property rights.