Japanese manga publishers seek $3.5 million in damages against US firm Cloudflare for copyright infringement

Four leading Japanese manga publishers Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa will sue US-based web infrastructure company Cloudflare for copyright infringement at the Tokyo District Court this week.

They will seek a combined $3.5 million in damages.

The publishers accuse Cloudflare of copyright infringement of its role in hosting sites that illegally disseminate copies of their graphic novels.

Cloudflare’s server can handle an estimated 300 million views a month and distributes about 4,000 manga titles.

Piracy sites distribute copies of manga epics for free, resulting in losses estimated at millions of dollars in Japan alone.

The case is not the first time that Cloudflare has come under fire from manga publishers.

The same four companies reached a settlement with Cloudflare in 2019 after it vowed to stop providing its services for a piracy site.

Kodansha spokesman Tomoyuki Inui said all the profits made from those manga piracy sites go to their illegal operators, without anything going to the bookstores, publishers, and manga artists who have dedicated their lives to creating these works.