Higher Regional Court of Cologne, GermanyRuling, CDN (content delivery network) service provider Cloudflare must be held responsible for assisting the operation of pirated content websites.
This ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Universal Music Germany against Cloudflare in 2019, accusing it of assisting music piracy websites in disseminating content, and a preliminary injunction issued by the court in October 2020 requiring Cloudflare to suspend its services.
Cloudflare subsequently appealed, but was subsequently rejected by the court, which held that it must be held responsible for the use of its services by music piracy websites to spread content.
The court stated that the main purpose of music piracy websites using Cloudflare's services was to disseminate content, and Cloudflare could not shirk its responsibilities on the grounds that it only provided services.
In a similar situation, four publishers, including Shueisha, Shogakukan, Kodansha, and Kadokawa, also filed a complaint with Cloudflare in February last year.class action lawsuit，要求4億6000萬日圓 (約401萬美元，或是新台幣1億1138萬元)經濟損失賠償。
