Japanese Publishers are Suing Cloudflare Over Pirated Manga

One Piece

A joint suit has been filed in Tokyo by multiple manga publishers against the company Cloudflare for providing its services to websites hosting pirated content.

According to Yasukazu Akada from the Asahi Shimbun news, Kodansha, Sheuisha, Kadokawa, and others are filing a suit seeking damages in the realm of 400 million Japanese Yen (JPY); which is roughly 3.4 million USD.

Worth noting is that the suit appears to largely take issue with pirated manga that’s directly scanned and published for a Japanese-speaking audience as well as Japanese site owners which host their content in Japan, but have their location obfuscated by Cloudflare’s protection services.

However despite not mentioning fan translations directly, the suit could affect the ability of “scanslators” to get their hands on the “Raws” (unedited Japanese manga for use in fan translations).

Cloudflare responded to the reporter from Asahi saying: “We are not directly involved in copyright infringement. We are not the root of the problem.” (Translation: Google)


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