Forum - View topicNEWS: Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, Kadokawa Win Copyright Suit Against Cloudflare
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 908 Location: PA |
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honestly good luck with collecting on that judgement folks. As far as I know cloudfare does not host any of these sites, and DMCA would be the route to take assuming they did host. So long as Cloudfare is not violating any US statutes as a US company located in the US any judgements by Japanese courts will most likely be ignored as they are outside their jurisdiction to enforce any penalties. Along the same vein as the UK is learning about trying to fine 4chan and Kiwi farms and how well is that going for them.
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Vanadise
 Posts: 599 |
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I'm not sure why you think they'd need to do anything with the DMCA at this point. They just won a copyright suit. The legal case is already over, and it ended in the plaintiffs' favor. As the USA and Japan are also both part of the Berne Convention, the USA is obligated to recognize the claims of Japanese copyright holders. Also, Cloudflare has a business presence and hardware in Japan, so sure, they could just try to ignore this, but that would probably end with their business license being revoked, and I'm going to assume they don't want to pull out of Japan entirely. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4856 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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DMM/FANZA among other jp websites uses cloudflare as a host site so im surprised they went after them THIS HARD not knowing of the consequences. for while those companies are rigjt to go after cloudflare for their blatant copyright violations by hosting pirate streaming websites, its a double edge sword! cause if they completely pull out of jp markets or god forbid, they were forced to file for ch 22 bankruptcy to avoid paying the damages, it can do far more harm than good. which is why none of the US companies, even those hollywood corporation dared to even try to sue or file a DCMA complaint againt cloudflare anytime the site host a pirate streaming website until now. it was too dangerous to try. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2286 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I'm of two minds about this: Cloudflare should have better vetting over which businesses it does business with.
But also, this wasn't "hosting" so much as CDN activities, which is essentially temporarily storing data on servers closer to the end user that's commonly accessed so they get better speeds/latency when downloading things. Personally I think companies/computers that do this shouldn't need to police the data that flows through these systems. Like, if you take this to the extreme, internet backbone services and end ISPs could also be liable for ultimately sending data of illegal things, which would destroy the concept of the open internet. (This is one of the things that the DMCA was designed to protect in the first place and at least for this goal it has succeeded IMO) In Japan the law is different and ISPs can be held liable for the types of data they send to you, but thankfully it's not such a litigous society that all ISPs went out of business. Cloudflare in this case was actively accepting money from the pirate sites themselves this time, which makes them a bit more liable in my opinion, but it's a very tricky issue. |
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Mizlude
 Posts: 78 |
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"Kodansha then alleged in the lawsuit that Cloudflare's policy of only requiring an email address to register for free allows piracy sites to hide their identity, and that Cloudflare has allowed multiple piracy sites collecting advertising revenue to operate. The court's ruling on Wednesday emphasized Cloudflare's liability by failing to implement stricter identity verification procedures."
So is this going to help lead to those ID laws people want to pass for using the internet? |
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Meexa
 Posts: 328 |
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This probably why cloudflare's servers been acting funny recently, they just got their booty kicked in court.
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Egan Loo
Posts: 1470 |
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In this case, they're not asking for IDs from anyone who uses the intenet, but from specific clients of Cloudflare who use its services for sites allegedly serving their content without permission (and they're asking through orders from U.S. courts). https://group.kadokawa.co.jp/global/information/news_release/2025111901_en.html |
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Egan Loo
Posts: 1470 |
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Cloudflare explained what caused its outage earlier this week. In any case, the outage was one day before the Tokyo District Court decision: https://blog.cloudflare.com/18-november-2025-outage/ |
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 840 |
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They used less ID verification than it takes to order a pizza online. This ain’t the totalitarian nightmare you’re pretending it is. A business bypassing as much verification as possible is only doing so in order to allow shady operations to exist, and it’s no surprise that it got seen through. |
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TheSeventhSense
 Posts: 174 |
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The smart thing to do is host via torrents/XDCC and use Namecheap or just put them on Nyaa. Hell, I'll start sharing on Soulseek. Don't let them win.
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Tenbyakugon
 Posts: 824 Location: Ohio, United States |
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This is like trying to charge a parent for the crimes of their adult child — Sure, Jan. CloudFlare is under no obligation to pay this judgement, nor should they, but cute of Japan to try to make them based on authoritarian law and not reason.
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Mune
Posts: 415 |
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Companies in the past have been sued to oblivion for hosting, even if that was not their intention or without their knowledge. The timing of this is uncanny. |
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Jirroy
Posts: 4 |
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That's the problem Cloudflare is scared of losing business in Japan, which is why they need to follow Japanese law there. If not, they risk being replaced by other services, and Japanese companies will stop using Cloudflare's services, causing Cloudflare to lose billions in Japan. Also, just wait South Korean copyright holders will follow suit. This is only the beginning, and more lawsuits are on the way since south Korea has been nonstop arresting and jailing pirate site operators. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 1433 Location: North America |
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The hack of 4chan by Soyjak Party revealed that it was a cooperative "honeypot" venture between the USG and a foreign intel agency intended to collect the identities of the people posting there from the USA (not the people from a certain country paid to post there), so it is not a good example on how hard it is to fine a web organization. It is also much harder to successfully sue for damages for libel than for IP infringement in the USA since posting nasty opinions is protected due to the lack of hate speech laws (need to modify or repeal the 1st Amendment to enact such laws). |
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