Japan court orders Cloudflare to pay $3.2 mn over manga piracy

Tokyo's district court on Wednesday ordered Cloudflare to pay £3.2 million to major Japanese publishers after the US firm was accused of hosting servers for manga piracy sites.

Piracy is a long-running problem for Japan's internationally renowned manga industry, with publishers saying they lose millions in revenue as a result.

Four major publishing firms – Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa – accused Cloudflare of copyright infringement for its role in hosting sites that distribute pirated copies of manga titles.

The companies filed a suit in Tokyo in 2022.

"The court ruling orders (Cloudflare) to pay a total of 500 million yen," they said in a joint statement, calling the decision "significant".

Cloudflare provided 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 publishers said.

Piracy sites, where copies of graphic novels are distributed for free, have long tormented publishers of manga epics such as One Piece and Attack on Titan, with losses estimated at millions of pounds in Japan alone.

The four publishers have requested Cloudflare to stop providing its services for a piracy site before, and they reached a settlement in 2019.

But the US firm continued to provide servers for piracy sites, they said.

Cloudflare plans to appeal, according to Japanese media.