Submitted 19 hours ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/20/japan/crime-legal/cloudflare-manga-piracy/
Cloudflare provided a server for “two massive manga piracy sites that distribute over 4,000 manga titles without permission and rack up 300 million views a month,” the publishers said.
At issue in the lawsuit was whether Cloudflare was the main entity in charge of pirated manga distribution.
Sounds quite dystopian, setting a precedent for either (or both) the host being considered accomplice for any wrongdoings of any third parties, and/or inducing hosting companies to become informal polices. And it comes in quite a curious time, when the EU is trying to push for chat control, some US states are trying to push for AI surveillance cameras, Brazil passed a law that requires apps to do facial recognition, GrapheneOS is being targeted by French news media, and all those using potential crimes and cherry-picking cases to justify.
I agree that holdibg hosts liable for user actions is a real slippery slope, in this case it seems to be a result of Cloudflare not following up a previously agreed upon settlement with the publishers in 2019. If you agree to remove the content, and then don’t do it, then further suits are to be expected.
However the article does not go into further details about the specifics of the 2019 settlement, so it’s hard to conclude if this is a classic fuck around and find out or just a further step of IP-holders going after everything and anything willy nilly
Canada is attempting to pass age verification with bill s-209 and Spain bans Graphene from being used in Catalonia.
Are you sure Spain band graphene? AFAIK police are merely biased against graphene because they presume drug dealers use it.
People believing in public pressure and grass roots should understand that these don’t work.
Power works, and it depends on what’s possible and what’s not. Surveillance and censorship over these means is possible, takes power and makes one more powerful. Hence it happens.
Technical affect on social matters is slow, we’re seeing it only now. Want different trees - build different genes.
No conspiracy is required.
Japan needs to chill
Japan isn’t doing so hot right now.
They don’t have anything else left to sell
Does cloudflare actually provide servers?
I thought they were more of a middleman.
They don’t aknowledge provider privilege?
As a CDN? As far as I know, cloudflare doesn’t host sites.
echodot@feddit.uk 6 hours ago
I’m confused about how any of this can be cloudflares fault. That’s like blaming the electricity supplier because someone is using that electricity to grow weed.
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Its a Japanese court, you’re basically guilty the second you’re accused.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
The court ruled that cloudflare made it too easy to register an account and create a domain. And that they didn’t do enough to prevent those domains from being used for piracy.
Apparently under Japanese law that’s the barrier of proof they needed to cross.