Cloudflare loses court battle and must pay $3.2M to Japanese publishers over manga piracy sites

There was a major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage in October that caused widespread disruptions across the internet, and just two days ago a similar issue affected Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Once again, major platforms like ChatGPT and X experienced interruptions, though everything was restored the same day. But that’s not the only challenge Cloudflare has faced recently. The company has been ordered to pay over $3.2 million to several major Japanese publishers for providing services to manga piracy sites.

Tokyo court rules against Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a U.S.-based company that helps keep websites and online platforms running smoothly and safely. One of its main jobs is running a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which stores copies of a site’s data on servers all around the world so people can load content faster from a nearby server instead of the main one.

A Tokyo court has ordered Cloudflare to pay 500 million yen (around US$3.2 million) to several major Japanese publishers over manga piracy sites. The court found that Cloudflare helped enable copyright violations by providing its CDN services to operators for pirate manga websites.

The case was brought by four big publishers (Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa) after piracy sites started posting popular series like One Piece and Attack on Titan without permission. The Tokyo District Court said using a CDN made it easier for these sites to distribute large amounts of data quickly, and that Cloudflare didn’t properly check who was running the sites when signing them up.

Even after the publishers alerted Cloudflare to the copyright violations, the company continued providing its services – something the court said should have been stopped. In the end, the court sided with three of the publishers and ordered Cloudflare to pay over 500 million yen. Lawyers say this is the first time a company has been ordered to pay damages just for offering CDN services to piracy sites.

According to NHK World Japan, Cloudflare responded by saying that CDN providers can’t control or remove content they don’t host themselves. The company also warned that the ruling could set a troubling global precedent and affect the security and efficiency of the internet. Cloudflare plans to appeal, arguing that protecting liability limits is essential for keeping the internet open and safe.

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• lawsuits and litigation