U.S.-based hosting firm Cloudflare has been ordered by the Tokyo District Court to pay $3.2 million to Japanese manga publishers for hosting servers for manga piracy sites.
Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa sued Cloudflare for copyright infringement in 2022, claiming the company hosted a server for “two massive manga piracy sites that distribute over 4,000 manga titles without permission and rack up 300 million views a month.”
The lawsuit came after these four publishers previously requested Cloudflare to stop hosting servers for piracy sites and came to a settlement in 2019. But according to the suit, Cloudflare violated the agreement by continuing to host its servers.
In a joint statement following the court ruling on Wednesday, which orders Cloudflare to pay ¥500 million, the publishers called it “significant.”
The amount is certainly nothing to sneeze at. Publishers lose millions to manga pirates every year. Per Japan Today, losses average approximately $55 billion globally, with the majority impact hitting Japanese publishers. The Tokyo District Court’s ruling in the Cloudflare case not only falls in publishers’ favor, but sends a message to companies that may be turning the other cheek to piracy.
Japanese media reports that Cloudflare plans to appeal the decision.
Source: The Japan Times
