Tokyo Court Finds Cloudflare Liable For Manga Piracy in Long-Running Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com) 23
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.
"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.
did they have an court order to stop distribution (Score:1)
did they have an court order to stop distribution how much verifying was done that X site was hosting copyright abuse and not fair use?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Clouldflare flaunts copyright law, and when you send a DMCA they just turn around and go "we are protected by the DMCA, pbbt."
c. Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users
1.a
(i)does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;
(ii)in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or
(iii)upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts exped
Re: did they have an court order to stop distribut (Score:3)
That's not what flaunts means, you wanted flouts.
Re:did they have an court order to stop distributi (Score:4, Informative)
Except we aren't talking about the USA DMCA law here. We are talking about Japan's copyright laws which are much stricter.
If cloudflare leaves japan (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
>Will japan sue for the all the ddos they get hit with?
Cloudflare doesn't have a monopoly on protecting against DDOS attacks.
Large companies never do that (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about the profit they can make in the country it's about making sure that there is never a viable competitor that could enter into any of your other markets.
Ultimately there really isn't a lot these companies do that's special. The most we survived because they're the ones who when the market was developing survived via survivorship bi
Re: (Score:3)
The so called 'viable competitor' would have to abide by this law as well.
It's just not viable for this level of company to be liable for what travels over it's networks. It's the site streaming the work and the comsumer that is to blame. The carrier is neutral.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That would be a rather extreme reaction. Would be much easier and more profitable to simply respond to requests to discontinue service to sites offering pirate manga.
The real issue here is that it was a request from a private company, not a court. The law in Japan is such that if you are made aware of something like this, there is an onus on you to look into it and decide what to do, and face the consequences if you disagree with the request. It's similar to many countries. A copyright arbitration court wou
A reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Another reminder: Everyone is playing, and the game is ongoing. This isn't very newsworthy. An appeal is underway and nothing is final.
can’t wait for them to exit! (Score:3, Interesting)
this isn’t cloudflare’s job. they are just the middle man. okay, let’s see how a country reacts without them. i’m game.
I don't like it. (Score:2, Troll)
There may be an out for CF (Score:1)
Pfff (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cloudflare should just stop serving japan! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cloudflare should just stop serving japan! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cloudflare should just stop it's traffic to Japan and close it's Japan branch.
Or they could appeal and possibly win allowing them to continue serving a region with 123million customers without issue.
The "they could just leave" crowd are usually insanely short sighted as to why someone decided to go there in the first place.