Cloudflare being sued for faciliting piracy

[robkelk]

Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa filing suit against Cloudflare

Japanese media report the companies are therefore going to file a suit against Cloudflare, which they feel facilitates piracy by providing its services to sites that share unlicensed Manga.

[Bob Schroeck]

That's going to be a great precedent, if it works.

"You provided services to a criminal. You are obviously just as guilty as he."

[hazard]

Which is established law, Bob, for certain services.

[Bob Schroeck]

True enough, but I would see Cloudflare is being more like a utility than anything else. That would be like prosecuting Verizon for providing service to a phone scammer.

[robkelk]

The suit is being filed in Japanese court - US laws don't apply...

[Bob Schroeck]

<sigh> And Bob demonstrates that he didn't follow the link, he just reacted.

[hazard]

True enough, but I would see Cloudflare is being more like a utility than anything else.  That would be like prosecuting Verizon for providing service to a phone scammer.

I would support this notion. Utility and media companies have been doing everything they can to exploit the lack of law around the internet, and in the USA hiding behind USA law that absolves them while at the same time USA government bodies do nothing in the name of the 1st Amendment and it being entirely too difficult for the government to enforce the law, so such a reading of the law would also permit class action lawsuits against Google and Facebook Meta and Twitter for advertisements and scams on their platforms.

It'd need only succeed once and you'd see a shift to tighter controls to keep very expensive legal bills away.

[GethN7]

True enough, but I would see Cloudflare is being more like a utility than anything else.  That would be like prosecuting Verizon for providing service to a phone scammer.

I would support this notion. Utility and media companies have been doing everything they can to exploit the lack of law around the internet, and in the USA hiding behind USA law that absolves them while at the same time USA government bodies do nothing in the name of the 1st Amendment and it being entirely too difficult for the government to enforce the law, so such a reading of the law would also permit class action lawsuits against Google and Facebook Meta and Twitter for advertisements and scams on their platforms.

It'd need only succeed once and you'd see a shift to tighter controls to keep very expensive legal bills away.

I disagree because it's a slippery legal slope.

By that logic, if gas was sold to a car that did a hit and run later, you could sue the gas provider. Telephones are used by so many people, and any blanket restriction to punish those who unlawfully use telephones would also hurt the law-abiding.

Cloudflare just keeps a site up, that's all. They provide a neutral service to all sorts of sites that are legal and illegal equally. Punishing them for keeping a site up that allows pirated content is just screwing over the innocent as well as the guilty. Besides, you can punish the owner of the website and just punish who deserves to be punished for actually committing a crime.

Cloudflare is selling an umbrella to websites in the rain. Just because some of the sites under that umbrella are doing illegal things is in no way proof Cloudflare approves of the site. If applied to real life, the umbrella seller could be sued for allowing a criminal to commit a crime in the rain by that logic. The burglar who buys a flashlight to house invade could have the maker of the flashlight be sued by the homeowner despite the flashlight maker having no way of knowing what all their customers were going to do with said flashlights.

If this succeeds, it will harm the innocent along with the guilty, and the former should not have to unduly suffer from the actions of the latter any more than absolutely necessary.

[Black Aeronaut]

The problem is that they're trying for a blanket solution for a complex problem.

What they should be doing is sending take down requests to Cloudflare.

Instead, they want to punish the company and set the sort of precedent you're talking about... that even unknowingly selling goods and services to a criminal - whether they've been successfully prosecuted or not - makes you as culpable as the criminal themselves.

In essence, these publishing companies simply want to maintain their stranglehold on electronic media - that no one except they themselves may distribute said media, regardless if its translated or not. There's also the fact that there's still evidence of a strong anti-gaijin sentiment in this business.

It's gotten bad enough that some up-and-coming manga-ka have actually authorized scanslation groups to translate their work, going as far as to even provide high-quality "raws" (scanned copies of the originals with the original Japanese text in place still) with annotations. They don't care about the money - they make plenty on the Japanese releases. They just want other people to be able to enjoy their work.

(EDIT: It should be worth noting, too, that many scanslation groups advocate for readers to purchase the Japanese versions of the manga releases in order to benefit the manga-ka. So it's also free advertising in a sense.)

[hazard]

I'm aware it's a bad idea.

It'd also be funny to see the rich and powerful scramble for cover for once now that they can face consequences.

[robkelk]

Folks, read the article.

The lawsuit is because other measures proposed here didn't work.