{"id":54108,"date":"2025-11-19T16:58:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=54108"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:58:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T07:58:54","slug":"japanese-court-orders-cloudfare-to-pay-damages-to-manga-publishers-for-facilitating-illegal-piracy-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/japanese-court-orders-cloudfare-to-pay-damages-to-manga-publishers-for-facilitating-illegal-piracy-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese court orders\u00a0Cloudfare\u00a0to pay damages to manga publishers for \u201cfacilitating\u201d illegal piracy sites\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Tokyo District Court has handed down a ruling in a lawsuit where four major Japanese manga publishers sought roughly 500 million yen (about $3.2 million USD) in damages from Cloudflare, arguing that the US company illegally contributed to the distribution of manga piracy sites. On November 19, the court accepted the publishers\u2019 claims of copyright infringement and ordered Cloudflare to pay the full amount, as reported by Asahi Shimbun<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawsuit was filed\u00a0back in 2022 by\u00a0publishers\u00a0Shueisha, Kadokawa,\u00a0Kodansha\u00a0and\u00a0Shogakukan.\u00a0The four companies alleged that pirated\u00a0versions\u00a0of\u00a0hit\u00a0manga\u00a0like\u00a0Attack on Titan and One Piece had been\u00a0distributed\u00a0using\u00a0Cloudflare\u2019s services. They claimed that between April 2020 and December 2021,\u00a0roughly 70\u00a0million to 2 billion chapters per month were viewed\u00a0illegally, causing enormous losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Attack<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While Cloudflare obviously doesn\u2019t run piracy websites itself, the plaintiffs argued that it \u201cassisted\u201d illegal activity by facilitating the distribution of sites hosting pirated manga. \u201cIt provides the CDN (Content Delivery Network) service that copies (caches) data sent from the original site\u2019s server and delivers it from a server close to the user. This helped reduce data traffic and made it easier for users in Japan to access overseas piracy sites.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publishers argued that Cloudflare bore liability because it continued providing its services even after being notified that the sites in question were infringing copyrights. Cloudflare countered that it was just passively transmitting data, shifting responsibility to the actual sender (owners of the piracy websites). According to Japanese media, what Cloudfare did (copying copyrighted works for the purpose of improving transmission) is not generally considered illegal, but the exception is when the act unfairly harms the interests of the copyright holder. After more than three and a half years of legal proceedings, the Tokyo District Court seems to have ruled that Cloudfare\u2019s case falls under this exception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related: <\/strong>Japanese government urged to \u201cimmediately\u201d boost support for video game, anime and manga industries, crack down on piracy  <\/strong><\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Japan\u2019s war on manga piracy can only end with faster and more widespread distribution of official translations, MyAnimeList CEO suggests<\/strong><\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Japanese publishers behind popular manga like Attack on Titan and Naruto have won a favorable court ruling in a lawsuit with Cloudfare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":54111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,65],"tags":[73,17],"class_list":["post-54108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-nongaming-news","tag-anime","tag-japan-related-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nJapanese court orders\u00a0Cloudfare\u00a0to pay damages to manga publishers for \u201cfacilitating\u201d illegal piracy sites\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Japanese publishers behind popular manga like Attack on Titan and Naruto have won a favorable court ruling in a lawsuit with Cloudfare.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/japanese-court-orders-cloudfare-to-pay-damages-to-manga-publishers-for-facilitating-illegal-piracy-sites\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Japanese court orders\u00a0Cloudfare\u00a0to pay damages to manga publishers for \u201cfacilitating\u201d illegal piracy sites\u00a0 - 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