Overview
- Tokyo District Court ruled that Cloudflare assisted copyright infringement by caching pirate-site manga and delivering it to users in Japan.
- The court accepted that data were replicated to Cloudflare servers in Tokyo and Osaka, which made access in Japan easier and broader.
- Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and KADOKAWA filed suit in 2022 after repeatedly asking since April 2020 for Cloudflare to stop serving the sites.
- Judges found negligence in failing to end service within a month of infringement notices and set damages at about ¥500 million based on access estimates.
- Cloudflare maintained it only passively transmitted data and said it will appeal, as observers see the ruling as a potential deterrent to large-scale piracy.