Business Report Urges Cloudflare to Terminate Accounts of Pirate Sites - Kiwi's slip-and-slide effect

Report Urges Cloudflare to Terminate Accounts of Pirate Sites * TorrentFreak

Brand protection company Corsearch shows that half of all the pirate sites it flagged use Cloudflare's services.

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Report Urges Cloudflare to Terminate Accounts of Pirate Sites * Torre…

archived 21 Jan 2023 15:57:05 UTC

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by Ernesto Van der Sar

A new whitepaper released by brand protection company Corsearch shows that half of all the pirate sites it flagged use Cloudflare's services. The Internet infrastructure company clearly stands out and should do more to address the issue, the report suggests. Banning domains that are removed or demoted by Google could be a good start, Corsearch notes.

Popular Internet infrastructure service Cloudflare has come under a lot of pressure from copyright holders in recent years.

The company offers its services to millions of sites. This includes multinationals, governments, but also some of the world’s leading pirate sites.

These sites have proven to be quite a headache for the San Francisco-based tech company. Ideally, however, the company prefers not to be the arbiter of what content is allowed and what is not.

The Curation Conundrum​

The company reiterated its position a few months ago. To shield itself from escalating removal demands, including plain censorship, Cloudflare said it would no longer terminate customers without a court order.

Just days after taking this hardened approach, Cloudflare reversed its position. Citing an immediate threat to human life, CEO Matthew Prince justified blocking access to the controversial Kiwi Farms site.

There’s no question that death threats are in a league of their own, but copyright holders would also like to see more cooperation from Cloudflare. This call is backed by a recent report from brand protection company Corsearch.

Corsearch is no stranger to copyright issues. The company works with several of the largest rightsholders and its subsidiary Incopro has produced a wealth of piracy research, some in collaboration with governments. In this case, the research focuses on Cloudflare.

Whirepaper: Cloudflare & Pirate Sites​

The overall tenor of the whitepaper is that when compared to other intermediaries, Cloudflare appears to be linked to a relatively high percentage of torrent sites. Of all the sites flagged by Corsearch, which are all demoted by Google as well, half use Cloudflare’s CDN service.

“Cloudflare is not the host of these websites. However, the host is not readily identifiable and Cloudflare is most closely associated with 49% of websites notified for delisting by Corsearch,” the report notes.



There’s no denying that Cloudflare stands out but it should be noted that the company is not a hosting provider, like the others on the list. In addition to Cloudflare, these pirate sites may use Amazon or Google’s services as well, even though that’s not immediately visible.

Besides pirate sites, the report also links Cloudflare to trademarking. Again, it is the most common online intermediary for these outlets.

Technically, Cloudflare can’t take these sites offline, as they are hosted elsewhere. However, Corsearch believes that the company could and should do more to tackle the piracy problem. And it has some ideas on where to start.

“Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to do more to protect rights holders and substantially to suppress the scourge of online piracy and counterfeiting,” the report reads.

“We are asking Cloudflare to do more to support rights owners by voluntarily implementing certain measures. These measures are reasonable, proportionate and if adopted by Cloudflare will have a significant impact.”

Recommendations​

Corsearch doesn’t have just one, but a whole list of suggestions for the CDN provider. Most of these boil down to terminating services to sites that others deem to be infringing. Those include the following;

– Cloudflare should terminate accounts of sites that are demoted or deindexed by Google search.

– Cloudflare should withdraw services to any site that’s deemed unlawful by a recognized law enforcement body or the ‘Infringing Website List’ (IWL).

– Cloudflare should ban sites that are on the US Trade Representative’s annual notorious markets list.

– Cloudflare should stop working with sites that are added to the European Union’s Counterfeit and Piracy Watchlist.

What Can Go Wrong?​

While it’s understandable that rightsholders want Cloudflare to do more, these suggestions are not without issues of their own. The IWL, for example, is private and can’t be scrutinized by the public. As reported recently, this includes domains of organizations such as GitHub, Blogspot, and a Portuguese University.

The USTR’s Notorious Market lists and the EU’s Piracy Watchlist also have various entries that deserve some nuance. These include the Chinese Wechat, which has over a billion users, as well as Russia’s largest social media platform VK.

Up until recently, USTR even listed Amazon’s foreign online stores as “notorious markets”. Does that mean that these shouldn’t be allowed to operate?

Given Cloudflare’s previous comments, it seems unlikely that the company will start banning accounts left and right. That being said, Corsearch also has some other suggestions that may be more realistic.

The report proposes a robust “Know-Your-Client” policy, for example. In addition, it calls for a comprehensive transparency report where Cloudflare would disclose which domain names are flagged by rightsholders and how often.

 

[Marvin]

Cloudflare used to and should've continued to: respond only when legally required to and only to the bare minimum.

If this subpoena they received was solid, I see no reason to criticize them in this specific situation.

Null himself responds to valid legal requests. If one of you threatens the president (outside of Minecraft), that's totally a legit for law enforcement to subpoena your information from Lolcow LLC. And US based Lolcow LLC will respond to the extent that it's capable of and required to. There's nothing wrong with that.

The problem has never been "ree they answered to a lawful subpoena". It's always been dumbass tech nerds taking it on themselves to preemptively steward society.

Cloudflare used to be almost perfect at this. Francisco Espinoza of Frantech and BuyVM also used to be pretty decent at telling nonsense complaints to fuck off. He only really failed when Vordrak started threatening his personal property in Canada, which may've been possibly vulnerable being in a commonwealth country.

If DMCA is the problem, it's silly to ree at half a dozen random companies for obeying lawful subpoenas. We should be reeing at the mouse.

 

[mindlessobserver]

You'd make a fortune doing that

I hate to burst your bubble, but outer space based servers introduce a whole host of problems thanks to the magic of general relativity. For one thing, time moves faster in orbit then it does on earth. Admittedly not THAT much faster. Certainly not fast enough for humans to notice. But computers definitely do notice, and any computer network having to crunch and transmit terabytes of data at speed will quickly run into software and hardware issues from the time dilation alone.

Secondly, there is the cosmic speed limit of light speed. If your server is on the moon, assuming no errors, no Interference and perfect connection via direct line on sight, a connection will take 2.5 seconds. 1.25 to transmit, 1.25 to receive. But that is not how it works. Your signal has to travel from your computer through any number of fiber optic cables that eventually lead to the transmission tower beaming at the moon. But the moon may be on the other side of the planet at that time! Which means your signal will require a satellite relay around earth's orbit before a satellite with clear line of site to the moon can transmit. At which point the return signal would then have to be sent back up from the Moon, all the way back down the relay to earth, and then on to your computer.

Assuming absolutely zero latency, this would require several minutes of waiting around. Now imagine this entire convoluted chain being under DDoS attack.

It's a nice idea in theory. Our current standard model of physics makes it impossible to work at scale.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I hate to burst your bubble, but outer space based servers introduce a whole host of problems thanks to the magic of general relativity. For one thing, time moves faster in orbit then it does on earth. Admittedly not THAT much faster. Certainly not fast enough for humans to notice. But computers definitely do notice, and any computer network having to crunch and transmit terabytes of data at speed will quickly run into software and hardware issues from the time dilation alone.

Secondly, there is the cosmic speed limit of light speed. If your server is on the moon, assuming no errors, no Interference and perfect connection via direct line on sight, a connection will take 2.5 seconds. 1.25 to transmit, 1.25 to receive. But that is not how it works. Your signal has to travel from your computer through any number of fiber optic cables that eventually lead to the transmission tower beaming at the moon. But the moon may be on the other side of the planet at that time! Which means your signal will require a satellite relay around earth's orbit before a satellite with clear line of site to the moon can transmit. At which point the return signal would then have to be sent back up from the Moon, all the way back down the relay to earth, and then on to your computer.

Assuming absolutely zero latency, this would require several minutes of waiting around. Now imagine this entire convoluted chain being under DDoS attack.

It's a nice idea in theory. Our current standard model of physics makes it impossible to work at scale.

I don't think time dilation is going to be a serious issue.

Latency can be reduced by doing what Starlink does, having satellites in much lower orbits. Starlink can theoretically have lower latency than submarine cables connecting two continents. Put your satellites in VLEO and they will deorbit and burn up sooner without maintenance. However, air-breathing satellites are being worked on which could be a game-changer, possibly allowing you to remain in even lower orbits indefinitely.

High latency to Moon servers can be tolerable depending on the application. Not good for a chat application, could be fine for downloading large files if you don't mind a few seconds delay before starting.

The main barriers I see are cost, which can go down if launch costs plummet, the fact that you can't quickly radiate heat away from the satellite, constraining the hardware, and possibly the effects of increased radiation. That's being worked on, but it will add to the costs unless new radiation-tolerant transistors make their way into most consumer/commercial off-the-shelf hardware.

Also, your libertarian file servers will likely have to comply with the laws of some country on Earth, if not multiple. Starting with wherever you launch them from. If you are somehow subject to no laws, maybe the Space Force will just hack or blow up your shit on somebody's orders, and you can't do anything about it.

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

You know what happens when you try that and aren't a Troon? You get the book thrown out you, so no that's not an option and is down right retarded if you don't have the resources to back you up. The fuck you want people to do? Go full unibomber and get the Feds to ruin their lives, fuck off.

The game was rigged from the start so you know what the best option is? Don't play and make it yourself. It might be harder at first but pays off in the end.

I tell you to learn how to exert influence and your first thought is to commit terrorism, it's no wonder the right is so hopeless.

 

[Some Dumb Faggot]

I tell you to learn how to exert influence and your first thought is to commit terrorism, it's no wonder the right is so hopeless.

You're the one that brought up how the left "exerts influence" to get their way, guess what? That's what they do because they are allowed to do it without being punished. The chink that got us booted off the clearnet called up and threatened providers families and constantly harassed them. You can't play the troons games because the rules are rigged in their favor and you have more to lose than they do.

You constantly bitch that people do nothing so what would have them do? Why pointlessly get in trouble to accomplish nothing. Building alternatives so you don't have to interact with the freaks at least is doing something and future-proofing yourself. What other path is there foward?

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

You're the one that brought up how the left "exerts influence" to get their way, guess what? That's what they do because they are allowed to do it without being punished. The chink that got us booted off the clearnet called up and threatened providers families and constantly harassed them. You can't play the troons games because the rules are rigged in their favor and you have more to lose than they do.

You constantly bitch that people do nothing so what would have them do? Why pointlessly get in trouble to accomplish nothing. Building alternatives so you don't have to interact with the freaks at least is doing something and future-proofing yourself. What other path is there foward?

If you can't do it then either learn to live with being subservient or learn to ride the wave, either one is better than indulging in delusional coping mechanisms.

 

[Some Dumb Faggot]

If you can't do it then either learn to live with being subservient or learn to ride the wave, either one is better than indulging in delusional coping mechanisms.

Then how is building an alternative or finding work arounds a cope? It's better than just sitting there crying about how unfair it is when there are things you can do to improve your situation.

 

[ロボ﹏§¤r﹏h¶rœ]

Tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down... Get eaten by competition, CuckFlare.

 

[Charles Bronson]

They terminate pirate sites and yet don't terminate an isis affiliated website.

 

[Vesperus]

They terminate pirate sites and yet don't terminate an isis affiliated website.

Did you just necro a thread to upload a video of you doing a web search?
Neck yourself you retard.

 

[pikachudidnothingwrong]

They terminate pirate sites and yet don't terminate an isis affiliated website.

So they actually pulled the trigger on pirate sites?

That slope is looking pretty slippery after all isn't it?

 

[LeChampion1992]

Where's that video...


View attachment 4308939
This is pretty much exactly what Josh warned about. Once the trail has been blazed and people realize how to get stuff blown off the Internet, there's nothing stopping them. First it will be sites like this and copyright infringing sites. And then it will be alt-news sites, opinion pages and personal blogs.

The problem is the wests progressives have achieved and maximized all their power. Now the Internet being open and free represents far too much of a risk. This is why Germany and the UK arrest more people a year on speech offenses then the Russian federation has in its existence since 1991. The powers that be know a free and open internet is a risk. The telecommunications networks, TV networks, cable companies need their control over things.
The powers that be know that freedom of speech and freedom of thought represents the ultimate risk to their regime. If the progressive world order is discovered if it is proven as a fraud who would support the nearly trillions of civil rights and grievance studies. Who would try to encourage the masses to stop white surpremacy when Hitler is sanitized by his love of Tohou. We live in a age where the internet has united and broke down barriers. It is because of this that the powers that be know their livelihoods are at risk. The masses could turn on them and they will do at nothing to retain power.

 

[Charles Bronson]

Did you just necro a thread to upload a video of you doing a web search?
Neck yourself you retard.

Sit the fuck down you dumb bastard. I don't have to ask you.