• by Ray Schultz , 3 hours ago

Four Japanese publishers have won a judgment of $3.2 million against Cloudflare, which had been accused of hosting servers that enabled manga piracy sites, The Japan Times reports. 

The publishers include Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa.

The firms had charged that Cloudflare provided servers for sites that delivered pirate copies of manga titles, the Times continues. 

However, Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said that Cloudflare was not the main culprit, the Japan Times continues. 

Rather, the piracy sites uploaded illegal content onto Cloudflare’s servers, the publishes alleged, according tothe Japan Times.

The 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 Times continues.

The case has been dragging on since 2022. The Tokyo District Court issued its ruling last week.