At the beginning of the year, it was announced that more than 450 companies would form an alliance against the piracy of manga and anime. Now we could see a small outline of what is coming: The four largest companies in this industry prepare the largest lawsuit against CloudFlarea platform that hosts many sites with illegal content.
If the suit goes through, it could put a stop to several illegal sites for good and provide a path for other publishers to do the same in the future. This news was shared on social media by VIZ Media, which showed the official statement of demand from Shueisha, Kadokawa, Kodansha and Shogakukan.
These publishers publish some of the biggest manga and anime franchises like Shingeki no Kyojin, One Piece, Naruto, Pokémon, Detective Conan, among others, so your lawsuit against Cloudflare could limit illegal access to your audience. According to the information, this is a ‘an injunction against public transmission and reproduction of the contents and compensation for piracy and compensation for damages’.
Shueisha’s statement mentions that CloudFlare ‘is one of the largest content network (CDN) providers in the world’. In fact, the publisher claims that nine of the ten largest piracy sites on the internet use this platform and that it is thanks to its omission that illegal content has proliferated.
In addition, Shueisha argues that CloudFlare has provided protection for illegal manga and anime piracy sites through its ability to hide IP addresses from website operators, as well as its limited limitations on its free services.
Is this the end of manga and anime piracy?
If the claim is successful, CloudFlare would stop offering services in Japan and cancel contracts with anime and manga piracy site operators. This is an ultimatum from the company, as they claim that they have sought to remedy this situation for years without much success.
As we have seen in previous cases, shutting down hacked websites has not been very successful. A page with manga and anime piracy is closed, but shortly after there are others that cover the demand such as Your Manga Online or AnimeFLV. For this reason, cutting out a crucial aspect of the sites’ infrastructure might be more effective.
Therefore, this lawsuit could seriously alter the landscape of piracy, as well as the way in which the public consumes manga and anime.
However, this could only be the beginning, in April 2022 some of the actions of the Overseas Content Distribution Association or CODA, an alliance against piracy that brings together 32 Japanese and American companies, as well as 450 Chinese.
The greatest alliance against piracy has arrived
Masaharu Ina, director of the association, commented on how he will proceed with the problem that manga and anime piracy represents: ‘Our plan is to start the new organization around April this year and share the information about the piracy sites compiled in each country…’.
As if that were not enough, he added that he will contact the police of each country where the servers are hosted to initiate legal action. In fact, he has claimed that they are supported by legal copyright protection groups in 13 countries.
Among the Japanese companies that are part of CODA are Aniplex, Kadokawa, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Toei Animation, who publish series like Dragon Ball, Kimetsu no Yaiba, among others. Among the members of the Motion Picture Association are Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.
To those mentioned above is added the China Copyright Association, comprising 450 Chinese companies, as well as other groups from South Korea and Vietnam.
In addition, CODA will monitor the efforts of the International Anti-Piracy Organization, or IAPO, in combating manga and anime piracy, using international partners to improve the investigation process. So it seems that the current lawsuit against CloudFlare could be just the beginning.
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