Cloudflare has been found liable for aiding the distribution of pirated manga after the Tokyo District Court ruled in favor of four major Japanese publishers: Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, and KADOKAWA.
The verdict, delivered on Nov 19, ordered the U.S. based content delivery network (CDN) company to pay about 500 million yen (USD 3.3 million) in damages.
The ruling concludes a lawsuit filed by the publishing giants on Feb 1, 2022, accusing Cloudflare of continuing to support two large-scale manga piracy sites that posted over 4000 titles despite receiving multiple infringement notices.
These sites reportedly drew more than 300 million visits per month at their peak.
According to the judgment, Cloudflare’s failure to act in a timely and appropriate manner constituted assistance in copyright infringement. The court emphasized that Cloudflare allowed a massive piracy site to operate “under conditions of strong anonymity,” which ultimately led to the recognition of the company’s liability.
The court recognized around 3.6 billion yen (approximately USD 24 million) in total damages suffered by the four publishers. However, because the companies sought compensation only for the portion of their losses directly linked to Cloudflare’s conduct, the court ordered the company to pay roughly 500 million yen (about USD 3.3 million) in damages.
In a joint statement, the publishers said the ruling clearly established Cloudflare’s responsibility for failing to verify user identities and for not responding properly to infringement notices.
They outlined how the piracy sites used Cloudflare’s CDN services to conceal their identities while rapidly distributing unauthorized manga content, calling the court’s decision an important judgment under current conditions.
“Our companies believe that CDN services themselves are valuable tools that distribute legitimate content efficiently and reliably across the Internet. However, due to their nature, once such services are misused by piracy sites, illegal pirated content can be distributed at high speed and on a massive scale. Using CDN services, site operators—often relying on overseas “bulletproof hosting” designed to hide their identities—can run enormous piracy sites with tens or hundreds of millions of monthly visits while keeping distribution costs low,” the publishers said.
They noted that while some CDN companies perform customer identity checks or remove illegal content upon receiving notices, Cloudflare had not sufficiently implemented such preventive or corrective measures.
The publishers also stated that they hope the ruling will serve as a step toward preventing the misuse of CDN services. They reaffirmed their commitment to protecting creators’ rights while expanding legitimate content offerings.
Source: Kodansha, Comic Natalie
