On February 1, 2022, Shueisha Inc., along with KADOKAWA, KODANSHA and SHOGAKUKAN, filed a lawsuit against Cloudflare Inc. (headquarters: San Francisco, California, USA) in Tokyo District Court, asking for an order against the public transmission and reproduction of pirated content and damages. The amount of compensation claimed is based on one infringed work by each publisher, totaling $4 million for the four works as part of the claim.
Plaintiffs 4 publishers and their legal counsel have repeatedly contacted CloudFlare about 9 pirated websites with the following suggestions:
– Stop public transmissions through CloudFlare’s servers;
– Stop caching of CloudFlare servers in Japan; and
– Cancellation of contracts with web operators with illegal piracy.
Although CloudFlare responded that it had taken the necessary measures on the nine sites mentioned, it declined to give specific replies on the measures it had taken. On top of that, the company’s actions don’t seem to have worked as the above sites continue to function as they should.
In addition, the plaintiff’s technical experts pointed out that it is highly likely that the above pirated website operators are still using CloudFlare’s services, as well as the cache continues to be used.
Because of the above manifestations, 4 major Japanese publishers jointly filed a lawsuit against CloudFlare company, asking for a ban on transmission and copying of pirated content and a claim for damages.
CLOUDFLARE is one of the world’s largest content delivery network (CDN) providers, has been providing its services to 9 of the 10 top piracy websites in the world. traffic as of December of last year.
About CDN: CDN providers set up many high-capacity servers in various parts of the world and temporarily copy (cache) the contents of the contract site (original page) onto these servers for distribution. distributes access points from the user’s side, thereby ensuring the communication speed of the pages by providing data from the nearest server to the user. This is a necessary service for users to have a comfortable internet environment. Most CDN service providers have various methods in place to correctly confirm the identity of the web operator when signing a contract and ensure that the site will not distribute illegal content.
However, CLOUDFLARE’s CDN service does not limit the free use of the service and still contracts when the other party does not need to provide sufficient identification. As a result, website operators can still use the service optimally while keeping their server origin and IP address secret.
The origin servers and other communication infrastructure used by pirated websites are not capable of handling more than 100 million visits per month let alone from an operational cost perspective. Therefore, if CLOUDFLARE’s CDN service is discontinued, many piracy websites will be unable or very difficult to maintain. In short, CloudFlare’s service has become indispensable for the operation of many pirated websites.
Through this lawsuit, the four plaintiffs question whether CloudFlare’s uncooperative conduct over the past few years in response to a joint anti-piracy proposal is appropriate for a company with responsibility for telecommunications services. through or not.
At the end of the minutes, Shueisha Publishing House emphasized again that they will be strict with copyright infringement, both criminal and civil; We hope readers and stakeholders will understand and cooperate.
