Cloudflare has been ordered by a Tokyo District Court to pay 500 million yen, about 3.2 million US dollars, after judges ruled the company liable for aiding copyright infringement.
The decision, as reported by TorrentFreak, brought by a coalition of Japan’s largest manga publishers, challenges the long-held understanding that network infrastructure providers are not responsible for what passes through their systems.
It also signals a growing international push to make companies like Cloudflare police online content, an approach that could redefine how the open internet operates.
The publishers, Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and Shogakukan, argued that Cloudflare’s global network, which caches and accelerates websites, helped pirate manga sites distribute illegal copies of their work. They said Cloudflare’s failure to verify customer identities allowed those sites to hide “under circumstances where strong anonymity was secured,” a factor the court said contributed to its finding of liability.
Cloudflare said it will appeal, calling the ruling a threat to fairness and due process and warning that it could have broad implications for the future of internet infrastructure. The company argues that its conduct complies with global norms and that it has no direct control over the content its clients publish or distribute.
The legal fight between Cloudflare and Japan’s major publishers began in 2018. The publishers asked the Tokyo District Court to intervene, claiming Cloudflare’s technology enabled piracy sites to thrive. They wanted the company to sever ties with the offending domains.
In 2019, a partial settlement was reached. The deal, later disclosed, required Cloudflare to stop replicating content from sites only after Japanese courts officially declared them illegal.
That agreement quieted the conflict for a time, but it did not resolve the larger question of whether a network service should be required to decide which content is lawful.
By early 2022, the same publishers returned to court, alleging that Cloudflare had failed to take “necessary measures” against known infringing sites.
They filed a new claim targeting four specific works and sought around four million dollars in damages. They also asked for an order that would compel Cloudflare to terminate service for illegal sites.
Hellbound and Down 