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.

 

[Some Dumb Faggot]

Look at the general popolous then look at our dear feeder, he admits his way of keeping his site up takes all his time. People are to fucking lazy or stupid to do that, unless they can make money off it. Most people will just roll over and accept getting fucked in the arse.

The kinds of people who would have their sites taken down are far from the general populus. Where there is a will, there is a way if you take something away from someone they will suddenly be motivated to get it back.

 

[Illuminati Order Official]

Welcome to the hell of your own making, Matthew Prince, you spineless cuck.

 

[mindlessobserver]

what shold've they done, break the law?
blame the courts in tšhis ones, not cloudflare.

They could have challenged the Subpoena by saying they were the wrong people to be served. They just provide an infrastructure service, and are not obligated to control what people do with it. Which is TRUE.

 

[MavisBeaconTeachesSnipin]

completely retarded. under on what grounds would these publishers take cloudflare to court? if you catch someone printing bootleg copies of your books you can't sue their landlord or the paper manufacturer.
or maybe you can these days and guilt by association has turned into legal culpability.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

surely this and that thing with the creepy gay lady man will not start a precedent of creepy gay kids successfully threatening cloudfare over any website they don't like

 

[AbyssStarer]

These sites tend to shut down once in a while over DMCAs and legal complaints, I guess the complaining to cloud flare is new? What is anybody supposed to say? It's not like the pirates have the archival excuse for books that they like to fall on for video games. It's books, they'll already be in the library if they've got official releases. Otherwise it's not like much of value is lost. I read manga I know just how much of it is pulp fiction.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

if you catch someone printing bootleg copies of your books you can't sue their landlord or the paper manufacturer.

Well maybe we should sue those people.

Great idea!

 

[mindlessobserver]

These sites tend to shut down once in a while over DMCAs and legal complaints, I guess the complaining to cloud flare is new? What is anybody supposed to say? It's not like the pirates have the archival excuse for books that they like to fall on for video games. It's books, they'll already be in the library if they've got official releases. Otherwise it's not like much of value is lost. I read manga I know just how much of it is pulp fiction.

Its how its being done which is the issue. I can get the frustration publishers have with playing whack a mole, but choosing to instead whack centralized internet infrastructure is a problem. Nobody like a mouse infestation, but the solution to the problem isn't setting the entire building on fire to get rid of them. Cloudlfare shouldn't be in the business of content moderation at all, let alone having to play Janny for the content corporations like Youtube does.

I hope Matthew Prince has to pay a fuck ton of extra operating money to pay for his new "compliance" department.

 

[DrNow]

Matthew Prince is a hero who saved a life that was in imminent danger by facilitating DDOS attacks against a small forum. A normal person might alert authorities if a persons death appeared imminent, but Prince is exceptional and stepped up to resolve the situation himself.
Nobody died in the end, which proves he was playing genius 4d chess when he dropped kiwi farms rather than relying on law enforcement to deal with something like an apparently imminent murder.

Either that or he’s a lying sack of shit who pissed himself when Kermit the thwomp head called for a girl talk.

 

[Happy Little War Painter]

Cloudflare has positioned themselves as the police of the internet and now must cave to any and all demands from those above them. Good job retards.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

If anyone complains that their weebery got taken down I will tell them that cloudflare only drops far right hate sites if they are an immediate threat to someones life. Maybe that will get them to pirate Iznogoud instead...

 

[NoReturn]

Cloudflare cucked out again! All of weebery will submit. You have no choice!

I am not fond of CloudFlare.

the internet is becoming gay af
this really is like the poem about fascist and nobody coming to save the narrator, only since we're not communist we don't deserve this

First they came for the problematics, and I did not speak out—because I was not problematic.​

​

Then they came for the Kiwis, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Kiwi.​

​

Then they came for the Weebs, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Weeb.​

​

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.​

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Sooo... new possible customers for KiwiFlare?

My weak understanding is that KiwiFlare can't scale to offer the level of protection that CuckFlare does.

I'm sure that Null has little interest in courting customers that have been specifically targeted for their rampant facilitation of piracy, no matter how based it is. But if it was offered as open source, they could just use it if they wanted to.

Look at the general popolous then look at our dear feeder, he admits his way of keeping his site up takes all his time. People are to fucking lazy or stupid to do that, unless they can make money off it. Most people will just roll over and accept getting fucked in the arse.

I think the idea is that the for-profit pirate scene (including streaming sites, manga sites, etc. running ads to the % of users not blocking them) has leaned hard into CloudFlare's protective embrace and grown fat and complacent in some cases. If every piracy site suddenly disappeared one day, there would be a huge gap in the market, and some would adapt and become more resilient.

On the clearnet with a domain name? Easy money. Start requiring alternative DNS roots or Tor, and the profit plummets, at least for now.

 

[ZipDisk]

I would like to elaborate on Ernesto's faggotry, and why DDOS protection is important for everyone, especially pirate sites.

I was a member on Demonoid, and occasionally the site would be DDOS'ed, didn't really matter who the bad actor was, but one speculation was because the RIAA couldn't find the hosting at the time, they went dirty tricks.

Every time it happened, Ernesto would post an article about Demonoid being BUSTED. He once claimed he got into the data center where demonoid was hosted himself, and showed a rack server with a label sticker that said "DEMONOID" and that it was a massive scoop.

Deimos, the actual owner of demonoid said that was not the server, and we all did funny photoshops of what the demonoid server "really" looked like.

When the site went down for an extended time, Ernesto said that Deimos had died in a car chase with the police, driving off a cliff.
I believe he later retracted the cliff diving article.

MASSIVE FAGGOTRY.

 

[AnOminous]

Cloudflare cucked out again! All of weebery will submit. You have no choice!

https://torrentfreak.com/japans-largest-manga-piracy-site-shuts-down-following-cloudflare-probe-230605/
13DL is shut down, following demand by cloudflare to dox the operators.

Unfortunately section 230 doesn't give them free rein to blow off an otherwise valid subpoena, nor does it protect against litigation unless they comply with valid notices/subpoenas pursuant to the statute. If they didn't comply, they could be held liable for the infringement.

With a potential for as much as $150,000 per infringement and tens of thousands of infringements, this could put even Cloudflare out of business.

 

[TouchFluffyTail]

With a potential for as much as $150,000 per infringement and tens of thousands of infringements, this could put even Cloudflare out of business.

Well we wouldn't want that, now would we

 

[Super-Chevy454]

I think the handful of troons was just the cover story.

View attachment 5151719

Ok Mr. Figliuzzi tell us if KF is a domestic terror threat,tell us if Antifa is also a domestic terror threat?

 

[Flamin Park]

I hope they do it

Honestly the more they do this the more they'll create emergent demand for ddos protection that ignores this nonsense
I'm eagerly awaiting the .os (outer space) domain when some rich madlad launches servers on satellites outside of any jurisdiction and immune from any court on earth literally

You'd make a fortune doing that

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

If you want an optimistic take, if Cloudflare really is starting to break and we see sites getting taken down we'll see people starting to build work around like Null did. This could lead to a more decentralized internet which seems invetiable at this point.

You know, leftists and people who don't like being cucks would suggest figuring out how to exert influence of the centralized entity instead of indulging in decentralization delusions but "what kind of sad powerhungry greedy narcissist would seek power?" asks the man complaining non-stop about how powerless he is.

Look at the general popolous then look at our dear feeder, he admits his way of keeping his site up takes all his time. People are to fucking lazy or stupid to do that, unless they can make money off it. Most people will just roll over and accept getting fucked in the arse.

Kiwifarms isn't even on the clearnet anymore lol

 

[Some Dumb Faggot]

You know, leftists and people who don't like being cucks would suggest figuring out how to exert influence of the centralized entity instead of indulging in decentralization delusions but "what kind of sad powerhungry greedy narcissist would seek power?" asks the man complaining non-stop about how powerless he is.

Kiwifarms isn't even on the clearnet anymore lol

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.

Also stop being a dooming faggot the Farms will make it back to clear.net, Null sounded more assured in today's stream and just sitting there and saying everything's fucked and that you should commit terrorism to get what you want is fucking retarded.