- USA judge ruled Cloudflare doesn't contribute to piracy through its copyright-infringing clients.
- As a result, the content delivery service is not forced to terminate collaboration with pirating websites.
- This ruling comes as a conclusion to the court trial from 2018, when Cloudflare was sued for enabling piracy and copyright infringement.
Finally, some good news for Cloudflare - US court decided it's not liable for third-party copyright infringement and doesn't need to cut off the unlawful websites it serves. In a ruling in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that happened yesterday, Judge Vince Chhabria granted Cloudflare's motion for summary judgment.
Cloudflare is one of the largest CDN and DDoS protection services globally, so it makes sense that some of its clients are pirate sites. This is why back in 2018, it was sued for contributing to and aiding copyright infringement, facing trial at the California federal court against Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs.
The judge said that simply providing services to a copyright infringer does not qualify as a 'material contribution.' Rather, liability in the Internet context follows where a party 'facilitates access' to infringing websites in such a way that 'significantly magnifies' the underlying infringement.
The plaintiffs claimed they sent Cloudflare thousands of takedown notices and that the service ignored them, taking no action against its clients' copyright-infringing websites. However, after the judge's ruling, they are found not guilty of enabling the knock-off selling websites that use Cloudflare and are not forced to do anything about them anymore.
As a response, the defendant said that the plaintiffs base their court trial on a "fundamental misunderstanding" of Cloudflare's services.
Cloudflare also mentioned in court that a victory for the plaintiffs would amount to "an expansion of the contributory infringement doctrine far beyond its established limits."