The fight against piracy has just set a historic precedent in the courts. He Tokyo District Court it ruled this Wednesday in favor of the four large Japanese publishers: Kodansha, KADOKAWA, Shueisha and Shogakukan. The loser of this battle? The American internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, which has been declared responsible for facilitating the distribution of illegal manga on a large scale.
A million-dollar fine and a clear message
The ruling recognizes that the publishers suffered damages estimated at 3.6 billion yen (almost 24 million dollars). However, since the initial lawsuit only claimed a fraction of those damages, it was ordered to Cloudflare pay a total of 500 million yen (approximately 3.3 million dollars). The ruling states that the US company failed to implement stricter identity verification procedures, allowing pirate sites to operate under strong anonymity.
Accomplices due to inaction
The core of the problem is that Cloudflare it continued to provide its CDN (content delivery network) services to massive sites hosting more than 4,000 unauthorized titles, including titanic works such as OnePiece, Attack on Titan and Kingdom. These portals registered about 300 million monthly visits. Despite receiving multiple takedown notices and court orders, the company did not stop supporting the distribution of infringing content.
In a joint statement, the publishers welcomed the decision, emphasizing that while CDN services are useful, their misuse enables piracy on an industrial scale. They hope this ruling will serve to prevent future abuses and protect the rights of creators.
