Japan’s Tokyo District Court has ruled that Cloudflare is liable for aiding manga piracy, awarding approximately $3.2 million in damages. The decision has established a significant precedent in Japan, suggesting that content delivery network (CDN) providers can face direct liability when they neglect to verify customers or respond adequately to infringement notices. The publishers involved in the case emphasized the massive scale of the infringement, which impacted over 4,000 manga works and received 300 million monthly visits. Despite repeated warnings from the publishers about the extent of the piracy, Cloudflare continued to provide services to the infringing sites, leading to the court’s ruling.
According to TorrentFreak, the publishers declared ‘Victory Against Cloudflare’ after the court determined that Cloudflare is indeed liable for the pirate sites’ activities. In a statement provided to TorrentFreak, the publishers explained that they had alerted Cloudflare to the large-scale infringement, which involved over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits, but their requests to stop distribution were ignored. ‘We requested that the company take measures such as stopping the distribution of pirated content from servers under its management. However, Cloudflare continued to provide services to the manga piracy sites even after receiving notices from the plaintiffs,’ the group said.
The publishers added that Cloudflare continued to provide services even after receiving information disclosure orders from U.S. courts, leaving them with ‘no choice but to file this lawsuit.’ The judgment recognized that Cloudflare’s failure to take timely and appropriate action despite receiving infringement notices from the plaintiffs, and its negligent continuation of pirated content distribution, constituted aiding and abetting copyright infringement, and that Cloudflare bears liability for damages to the plaintiffs.
‘The judgment, in that regard, attached importance to the fact that Cloudflare, without conducting any identity verification procedures, had enabled a massive manga piracy site to operate under circumstances where strong anonymity was secured, as a basis for recognizing the company’s liability.’ The publishers believe that the judgment clarifies the conditions under which a company such as Cloudflare incurs liability for copyright infringement. Failure to carry out identity verification appears at the top of the publishers’ list, followed by a lack of timely and appropriate action in response to infringement notices sent by rightsholders. ‘We believe this is an important decision given the current situation where piracy site operators often hide their identities and repeatedly conduct large-scale distribution using CDN services from overseas. We hope that this judgment will be a step toward ensuring proper use of CDN services. We will continue our efforts to protect the rights of works, creators, and related parties, while aiming for further expansion of legitimate content,’ the publishers conclude. Cloudflare plans to appeal the verdict.
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