A Tokyo District Court has ruled that Cloudflare is liable for aiding manga piracy, awarding about $3.2 million in damages. The decision follows a lengthy legal battle, with the publishers claiming victory after Cloudflare failed to act on infringement notices.
The publishers highlighted that they alerted Cloudflare to the massive scale of infringement, involving over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits, but their requests to stop distribution were ignored. According to the statement provided to TorrentFreak, the publishers emphasized that Cloudflare’s failure to take timely and appropriate action, despite receiving infringement notices, constituted aiding and abetting copyright infringement. This negligence led the court to assign liability to Cloudflare for damages to the plaintiffs.
The court also noted the importance of Cloudflare’s lack of identity verification for its users, which allowed pirates to operate with strong anonymity, thereby enabling large-scale distribution of pirated content. The publishers believe this ruling clarifies the conditions under which a company such as Cloudflare incurs liability for copyright infringement. They argue that this decision is crucial in the current context, where pirate site operators often hide their identities and utilize CDN services from overseas.
In response to the ruling, Cloudflare plans to appeal the verdict. The publishers conclude their statement by expressing hope that the judgment will serve as a step toward ensuring the proper use of CDN services and protecting the rights of creators and related parties. They also aim for the expansion of legitimate content distribution.