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Manila Bulletin devider Technews devider Cloudflare ordered to pay $3.2 million in damages for pirating manga

Cloudflare ordered to pay $3.2 million in damages for pirating manga

Published Nov 20, 2025 10:03 am
It has not been a good week for Cloudflare.
The American internet infrastructure company is in hot water once again (right after a major outage broke down a fifth of the internet last November 18) after a Tokyo district court’s decision that the company was responsible for allowing access to websites which distribute manga (Japanese comic books) illegally. On Wednesday (November 19) the court ordered Cloudflare to pay 500 million yen ($3.2 million) in damages to Japanese publishers.
The amount of the damages corresponds to losses which the publishers incurred due to access to pirated material between April 2020 to December 2021. According to the plaintiffs, between 70 million and 2 billion chapters were illegally accessed per month on websites and platforms using Cloudflare’s services.
Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama
Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama
This is Japan’s first judicial decision which has held a company liable for facilitating the transfer of cached digital content.
Four of Japan’s biggest publishers- Shogakukan (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure), Kodansha (Attack on Titan), Shueisha (Demon Slayer) and Kadokawa (Delicious in Dungeon) filed a joint lawsuit in 2022 against Cloudflare. The publishers argued that the company helped spread pirated manga by providing services which allowed illegal manga websites to operate.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki
Based on the ruling, Cloudflare had a contract with one of the largest illegal manga sites (the website has remained anonymous) and provided content delivery network service, which allowed for the duplicating of data from piracy site servers and distributing this to users. This was made possible with Cloudflare’s CDN technology which copies cached data from the original server and makes it available to other servers.
Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said: “(Cloudflare) failed in its duty to stop providing the service,” noting that the company did not suspend its service even after being notified by the publishers of the copyright infringement.
The defense countered that Cloudflare simply transmits data passively, passing responsibility on the operators of the illegal manga websites.
Cloudlare has said that it plans to appeal the ruling.
The case is expected to set a precedent on how disputes involving internet platforms and content piracy will be handled in the future.
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