Posts Tagged: "material contribution"

Cloudflare Tests Limits of Contributory Copyright Infringement

One recurring thorn in the side of copyright owners is Cloudflare, the San Francisco-based web performance, optimization, and security company. Cloudflare offers many services to its customers, including a content delivery network that utilizes hundreds of servers around the world to cache its customers’ content. When an end user requests content from one of Cloudflare’s customers, it is delivered to that user from the cached copy on the nearest Cloudflare server—not the customer’s own web host server. This saves on bandwidth costs, improves security, and decreases page load times. It also raises important questions about Cloudflare’s liability for contributory copyright infringement when it knowingly allows infringing content to remain on its cache servers. Under Ninth Circuit precedent, web hosting services like Cloudflare can be held contributorily liable for assisting in the infringement under the material contribution theory. However, a recent district court decision misconstrued the case law to conclude otherwise in Mon Cheri v. Cloudflare.