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.

 

[Stoneheart]

ohhh no, something was slippery after all...

also get fucked!

 

[Tinnitus]

Cloudflare shouldn't exist with how fucking vile some sites are under their protection.

My chinese new year wish is for CF's stock to keep tumbling down and Mathew Prince getting "tongued my angus"

 

[Terrifik]

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.

you get what you fucking deserve Cloudflare Null being 100% right

 

[Nick Gars]

Matthew, when you're locked in your wagie cage, pissing in bottles and being force fed bugs, with a constant stream of monkey torture and CP being broadcasted into your brain via a spinal link, remember.

You asked for this.
You gave in to the impotent fags in dresses and and broke one of the few locks still holding the beast of a true dystopia in it's cage. But you didn't just break a lock, you corroded the whole fucking mechanism. You and all the T1's that were complicit in black holing us.

Eat shit, can't wait to see your company burn.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Pirate sites are just going to do what pirate sites always do. Find backing from anyone and everyone outside of the sanitzed net box. It is no exaggeration that the internet outside of normie net will end up becoming the new frontier once more.

Also, taking that girldick isn't working out for you now, ain't it Matt? You're a bigger failure than the Boulder King.

 

[Hitman One]

I hope one day to piss on Cloudflare's grave.

 

[Yamma Damma]

Oh what do you know? You gave looney troons an inch and they took a goddamn lightyear. I hope Null isn't too entrenched in his Retard War to appreciate a small bit of schadenfreude.

“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.”

This sounds like more censorship bullshit like that SOPA/PIPA/whatever faggotry from years back. I could be wrong but fuck if I know. It just sounds annoyingly restrictive.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Is a slippery slope when it's an obvious attack? First go after the obviously "bad" sites to create a precedent. Then go for the ones you really want gone.

Remember this is all about money. Censuring pewdiepie had nothing to do with him being a nazi, but about him having way more subscribers than Vox, WJS, Vice, and others combined.

 

[Barry McKockner]

Is it bad that I kinda wanna dogpile on CF to start moderating which sites it lefs use it now just to watch it crash and burn? The tard in me just wants to fling shit around the room I'm being kicked out of before I leave.

 

[WelperHelper99]

My question is how much money are the pirate sites paying? That's gonna be a huge fucking hit, and likely enough of a delay for them to come up with a backup plan.

Matt, you played yourself. You're gonna financially ass fuck your own company all over some stupid troons.

 

[rel=alternate]

Matthew Prince broke the minute somebody pressured him the right way, at the right time. If Liz Dong-Gone figured out how to do it, then lawyers being paid a few hundred an hour to find a pressure point will figure it out, too. Cloudflare is a publicly traded corporation. It has pressure points that privately held companies don't, due to having a board, legal obligations to the fiduciary interests of shareholders, and the like.

Just a few things they could do:

• Work with Blackrock to lower CF's ESG score for enabling piracy & cybercrimes. This hurts CF's ability to raise capital.
• Work with individual board members to demand answers for why Matthew Prince uses corporate action to take action against "imminent threats to human life," but not other illegal content. Maneuver these hearings to either remove Prince for misusing corporate assets and replace him with someone compliant, or force him to adopt a stricter policy on illegal content.
• Lobby Congress to haul in Prince for hearings on the specific, criminal content CF hosts.
• Lobby the EU to enact regulations requiring services like CF to deplatform illegal content.
• Sue CF for enabling criminal content - they've already demonstrated they have an internal mechanism to remove it
• Convince CF's biggest customers to switch providers unless CF takes action to protect their IP, deplatforms DDOS services, etc.
• Use your imagination!

The point isn't any of these specific ideas will be the way they break CF. The point is, they know CF will be broken, and they will keep probing until they're the ones, not some dickless freak who never washes his make-up off, who are doing the breaking.



Corporate lawyers and lobbyists are in no way hindered if you and I decide not to talk about this on a website.

The situation is different, because you're basically asking for CloudFare to act as a regulator, which is impossible.

If you believe something is illegal, get a court order. Private companies have no business dictating what is and is not OK when they don't have a direct connection with the infraction.

They provide DDOS protection, it's irrelevant to the issue at hand. Providing a service for websites against attacks does not have anything to do with the content hosted. There are other organs in charge of this.

If you want to make this argument, the next step is to go after Google, because you know they also use Search Console and Analytics, which enables them to grow their presence etc... It's like saying a postman should check your mail before it's delivered incase something illegal would be inside.

 

[Pee Cola]

I hope Mathew Prince's company burns around him. Lick the boot, your company will be replaced.

Hopefully Prince has learned that the taste of amhole is even more rotten when it starts repeating, but somehow I doubt he'd do anything about it no matter how uncomfortable the sensation is.

 

[Scale Smerch]

The better question is why hasn't this already happen especially in regards to pirating.

Because corporate actors were missing the wedge to force open the door, something the Kiwi Farms drama has suddenly provided. As @The Ugly One has elaborated on it becomes incredibly easy forcing through drastic changes the moment you give an inch since it turns into a literal "why that but not this?" situation - something well-funded lawyers salivate at being able to litigate over. The simple act of giving ground to one interest group is what ensures this situation does not get better any time soon.

 

[The Ugly One]

The situation is different, because you're basically asking for CloudFare to act as a regulator, which is impossible.

If you believe something is illegal, get a court order. Private companies have no business dictating what is and is not OK when they don't have a direct connection with the infraction.

They provide DDOS protection, it's irrelevant to the issue at hand. Providing a service for websites against attacks does not have anything to do with the content hosted. There are other organs in charge of this.

If you want to make this argument, the next step is to go after Google, because you know they also use Search Console and Analytics, which enables them to grow their presence etc... It's like saying a postman should check your mail before it's delivered incase something illegal would be inside.

You shouting this argument into the void of the internet has no influence on the outcomes of this campaign. This is doubly so because the things you claim are impossible for CF to do are things it has already done. In fact, Corsearch has already helpfully given suggestions for things CF can easily do to expand its already existing censorship activities, such as simply getting lists from the three most powerful governments in the world (the USA, the EU, and Google), and batch-terminating sites from those lists.

It terminated service for a website due solely to a private allegation of criminal content on that website. If they did it once, they can do it again, and there are plenty of organizations skilled at pressuring corporate boards and executives into making things happen.

Oh what do you know? You gave looney troons an inch and they took a goddamn lightyear. I hope Null isn't too entrenched in his Retard War to appreciate a small bit of schadenfreude.


This sounds like more censorship bullshit like that SOPA/PIPA/whatever faggotry from years back. I could be wrong but fuck if I know. It just sounds annoyingly restrictive.

The fact that this is going to end with Matthew Prince getting buttfucked by Mickey Mouse is hilarious.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Remember this is all about money. Censuring pewdiepie had nothing to do with him being a nazi, but about him having way more subscribers than Vox, WJS, Vice, and others combined.

That was a T-Series gayop.

 

[rel=alternate]

You shouting this argument into the void of the internet has no influence on the outcomes of this campaign. This is doubly so because the things you claim are impossible for CF to do are things it has already done. In fact, Corsearch has already helpfully given suggestions for things CF can easily do to expand its already existing censorship activities, such as simply getting lists from the three most powerful governments in the world (the USA, the EU, and Google), and batch-terminating sites from those lists.

It terminated service for a website due solely to a private allegation of criminal content on that website. If they did it once, they can do it again, and there are plenty of organizations skilled at pressuring corporate boards and executives into making things happen.




The fact that this is going to end with Matthew Prince getting buttfucked by Mickey Mouse is hilarious.

Lets agree to disagree, I don't have anything else to add to my point.

I think you're being misled into thinking that CloudFlare doing something for a shitty forum that does not bring any revenue is somehow a precedent they can't get out off. Which it is not.

 

[Looney Troons]

Here we are, some 40 years later - probably more, and people are still banging their dicks against the wall to figure out how to solve the “piracy issue”. Handle it the exact same way you would when an ethnic minorities loot physical stores run by mom and pop, and turn the blind eye to it because “it happens”.

Piracy, like any form of thievery, are never going away. Ever. Instead of witch-hunting those who pirate, incentivize potential and current customers. Why is this concept so difficult?

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

But thank God all those ISIS beheading and monkey torture websites are still up and thriving.
Thanks, Cloudflare .

Of course protecting "muh sacred copyright law" is more important than refusing service to murderous terrorist groups and animal sadists.
View attachment 4309220

This is like when people compare photos of fat Americans to starving Africans, why would a copyright lawyer whose specialty is in copyright and whose client is an IP owner act like law enforcement & get involved in ISIS or zoosadist sites?

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Piracy, like any form of thievery

FUCKING
LOL
Imagine thinking pirating linkin park is the equivalent of stealing a car also what i am i supposed to do if my country decides to ban huniepop because its Morally questionable.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Oh what a delicious and intoxicating schadenfreude! You really should have held your ground Mathew, you should have paid attention. The warning signs were there, so were the explanations. You really should have known better than to think you could just give a inch and they would not take a mile.

Your company is finished. Living in borrowed time. Enjoy the ride buddy.