Piracy has been a hot topic lately in the anime and manga industry and it’s not going to stop easily. Considering the increase in piracy of Manga and anime, four major manga publishing, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa, have filed a lawsuit against American web Content Delivery Network, CloudFlare, for allowing pirate sites to use its services.
4 Major Manga Publishers Sue CloudFlare for 460 Million Yen
The copyright issue between Cloudflare and Japanese manga publishers, Kadokawa, Kodansha, Shueisha, and Shogakukan’s started in 2018. Pirate anime & manga sites use Cloudflare service to deliver content without revealing their identity and to reach visitors faster.
On February 1, 2022, Manga publishers, Shueisha, along with Kadokawa, Kodansha, and Shogakukan, passed a lawsuit and sue CloudFlare. This lawsuit was filed in Tokyo court. It seeks an injunction and about 460 million yen (about US$4 million) in compensation for damages.
Viz Media Update On Shueisha Lawsuit
On February 18, a tweet was released by Viz, which is an American publisher that publishes manga.
If you have a problem accessing “Shueisha Statement” link on your smartphone, then try opening it using desktop mode. According to some comments, this link is accessible from PC or desktop mode. Here’s the statement of Shueisha:
History And Background Of Manga Piracy And CloudFlare
These Japanese manga publishers took their first action against pirate manga site in 2017. When they filed criminal complaints against the website ‘Mangamura’ from summer to fall in 2017. It became inaccessible in April 2018 and after that, manga publishers filed a motion with the Tokyo District Court in August 2018, requesting CloudFlare to stop hosting content for several piracy websites.
CloudFlare responded to their request, but it didn’t take any action. Later on in 2019, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa reached a settlement with CloudFlare to stop caching content on its Japanese servers of specific sites. Only if the Tokyo District Court deems that the sites are infringing on copyrights.
Later on they had many talks and manga publishers again filed lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against Cloudflare in January 2020. Because Cloudflare was not cooperating in limiting pirate anime and manga sites.
In November 2021, a California District Court allowed Shueisha to request Google and other Internet firms to disclose the operators of Japanese pirate website Manga Bank.
Source: Today Anime news, Viz, Comic Natalie and also Kodansha.