A court in Tokyo has ordered a US internet infrastructure firm to pay over 3.2 million dollars in damages to major Japanese publishers over manga piracy websites.
The company, Cloudflare, was found to have aided publishing-rights infringement by providing content delivery network, or CDN, services to piracy site operators.
The lawsuit was filed by the four Japanese firms, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa in response to piracy sites that post popular manga works, such as "One Piece" and "Attack on Titan," without authorization.
The Tokyo District Court handed down its ruling on Wednesday.
It noted that CDN services allowed the piracy sites to efficiently distribute large amounts of data.
It also said Cloudflare is presumed to have failed to verify the identities of the operators of these sites when entering into service contracts with them.
The court ruled that the company neglected its obligation to stop providing its services despite being made aware of the rights infringements through notices from the publishers.
The court ordered Cloudflare to pay a total of over 500 million yen, or over 3.2 million dollars, in damages, fully granting the claims of three of the publishers.
Lawyers for the publishers say this is the first court ruling to order a company to pay damages for providing CDN services to piracy sites.
Cloudflare released a statement to the media following Wednesday's ruling.
The statement, released the same day, maintains that companies such as Cloudflare that provide CDN cannot control or delete content that they do not host that is uploaded on their services.
It says the latest ruling handed down to a technical go-between serves as a problematic precedent on a global scale and may have a serious effect on the efficiency, security and credibility of the internet -- not only in Japan, but the rest of the world.
It says it plans to appeal the ruling to ensure that limitations on liability, which are essential for an open and secure internet, remain in place.