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Title: Tokyo Court Finds Cloudflare Liable For Manga Piracy in Long-Running
Lawsuit

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/19/22472...

A Tokyo court ruled that Cloudflare is liable for aiding manga piracy after
failing to act on infringement notices and continuing to cache and serve
content for major piracy sites, awarding about $3.2 million in damages.
TorrentFreak says the decision sets a significant precedent in Japan,
suggesting CDN providers can face direct liability when they don't verify
customers or respond adequately to large-scale copyright abuse. From the
report: After a wait of more than three and a half years, the Tokyo District
Court rendered its decision this morning. In a statement provided to
TorrentFreak by the publishers, they declare "Victory Against Cloudflare"
after the Court determined that Cloudflare is indeed liable for the pirate
sites' activities. In a statement provided to TorrentFreak, the publishers
explain that they alerted Cloudflare to the massive scale of the
infringement, involving over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits, but
their requests to stop distribution were ignored. "We requested that the
company take measures such as stopping the distribution of pirated content
from servers under its management. However, Cloudflare continued to provide
services to the manga piracy sites even after receiving notices from the
plaintiffs," the group says. The publishers add that Cloudflare continued to
provide services even after receiving information disclosure orders from U.S.
courts, leaving them with "no choice but to file this lawsuit." "The judgment
recognized that Cloudflare's failure to take timely and appropriate action
despite receiving infringement notices from the plaintiffs, and its negligent
continuation of pirated content distribution, constituted aiding and abetting
copyright infringement, and that Cloudflare bears liability for damages to
the plaintiffs," they write. "The judgment, in that regard, attached
importance to the fact that Cloudflare, without conducting any identity
verification procedures, had enabled a massive manga piracy site to operate
"under circumstances where strong anonymity was secured,' as a basis for
recognizing the company's liability." The publishers believe that the
judgment clarifies the conditions under which a company such as Cloudflare
incurs liability for copyright infringement. Failure to carry out identity
verification appears at the top of the publishers' list, followed by a lack
of timely and appropriate action in response to infringement notices sent by
rightsholders. "We believe this is an important decision given the current
situation where piracy site operators often hide their identities and
repeatedly conduct large-scale distribution using CDN services from overseas.
We hope that this judgment will be a step toward ensuring proper use of CDN
services. We will continue our efforts to protect the rights of works,
creators, and related parties, while aiming for further expansion of
legitimate content," the publishers conclude. Cloudflare plans to appeal the
verdict.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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