U.S. IT Firm Ordered to Pay Japanese Publishers ¥500 Million Over Pirated Manga

By Shunpei Nakamura and Ryohei Fuji / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

7:00 JST, November 21, 2025

The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday ordered a U.S. information technology company to pay compensation of about ¥500 million to four major Japanese publishers for helping to facilitate illegal activities by providing data distribution services to manga piracy websites.

This is believed to be the first judicial ruling to recognize liability for damages on the part of a distribution service provider, rather than a website operator, in a case involving losses from piracy.

The four publishers — Kadokawa Corp., Kodansha Ltd., Shueisha Inc. and Shogakukan Inc. — had been seeking damages totaling about ¥506 million from Cloudflare, Inc. In handing down the ruling and ordering compensation of ¥500,900,000, presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said Cloudflare’s provision of the service “constituted an act that helped to facilitate infringements of copyright.”

Cloudflare has indicated it intends to appeal the ruling.

Observers expect that the court’s recognition of the responsibility of service providers that enable wide distribution of pirated data will bolster efforts to combat losses stemming from unpaid reading of Japanese manga and novels online, which are estimated at ¥8.5 trillion per year.

Cloudflare concluded contracts to provide distribution services for huge piracy websites that carry more than 4,000 works without permission. Starting in or before April 2020, data from popular works created by the four publishers, including the hit series “One Piece,” was received from the websites and then distributed to readers in Japan. It has been estimated that users had viewed as many as 2 billion chapters of the works per month.

The four publishers notified Cloudflare about these copyright infringements. However, Cloudflare continued to offer the distribution services, so the publishers filed a lawsuit in 2022 demanding damages. During this case, Cloudfare claimed that the distribution service operator “was not responsible” because the main entity distributing the pirated material was the website operator.

Wednesday’s ruling deemed that while Cloudflare itself was not the main entity distributing the pirated content, its services made it possible to efficiently distribute this content to many people. Consequently, the court determined that Cloudflare had assisted in copyright violations involving the pirated material. Cloudflare had an obligation to halt the services one month after being notified by the four publishers, but it failed to do so. Consequently, the court found that the company was liable for damages.

The compensation amount was calculated based on factors that included the fees the publishers charge for distributing the data of their own titles through their own websites, and the number of times the piracy websites were accessed.

As of June, more than 900 websites carrying pirated Japanese manga content had been confirmed to exist online, according to ABJ (Authorized Books of Japan), an anti-piracy organization formed by publishers and other entities. The group estimated that 1.4 billion manga volumes were read on these websites each month, with this unpaid reading resulting in monthly losses of ¥704.8 billion and a full-year loss of ¥8.5 trillion.

Cloudflare provides what is called a “content delivery network.” Data from the websites of Cloudflare’s contract partners is stored on its servers around the world, and can be distributed to end users through this “intermediary” for the websites. This enables the content to be quickly and smoothly viewed because it prevents data from being displayed slowly even when large numbers of users access the content.

Some observers have pointed out that such services are essential for piracy websites that handle vast volumes of data. The services, which ensure that users remain anonymous, are suspected of being used to conceal the identities of the website operators.

Piracy websites are not the only reason Cloudflare’s services have been considered problematic. A survey conducted in April by an organization of internet service providers found that at least 70% of 45 online gambling websites that were based overseas and targeting Japanese consumers had been using Cloudflare’s services.