Cloudflare Wants to Eliminate 'Moot' Pirate Site Blocking Threat

Cloudflare is not happy with the RIAA's efforts to hold the company liable for pirate websites on its network. From a report: Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull in 2015. Last year a Florida federal court sided with the RIAA, awarding the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site's domain names. Despite the multi-million dollar verdict, MP3Skull continued to operate using a variety of new domain names, which were subsequently targeted by the RIAA's legal team. As the site refused to shut down, the RIAA eventually moved up the chain targeting CDN provider Cloudflare with the permanent injunction. The RIAA argued that Cloudflare was operating "in active concert or participation" with the pirates. Cloudflare objected and argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. However, the court ruled that the DMCA doesn't apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering. The court stressed that, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still had to be determined whether the CDN provider is "in active concert or participation" with the pirate site. [...] Cloudflare now wants the dangerous anti-piracy filtering order to be thrown out. The company submitted a motion to vacate the order late last week, arguing that the issue is moot. In fact, it has been for a while for some of the contended domain names. The CDN provider says it researched the domain names listed in the injunction and found that only three of the twenty domains used Cloudflare's services at the time the RIAA asked the court to clarify its order. Some had never used CloudFlare's services at all, they say.

"...dangerous anti-piracy filtering order..."

[turkeydance]

says you.

The "Subject" is the thread I'm posting in.. :-O

[mutantSushi]

"The CDN provider says it researched the domain names listed in the injunction and found that only three of the twenty domains used Cloudflare's services at the time the RIAA asked the court to clarify its order. Some had never used CloudFlare's services at all, they say." This seems grounds for contempt of court / sanctions on lawyers involved, wasting courts time with spurious crap they didn't even both to do due diligence on before asking for injunctions against non-events.

Re:

[Anubis IV]

Reading the article, it turns out that it wasn't just moot on account of none of the domains still being with CloudFlare at the time of the RIAA's request for an injunction against CloudFlare, it was also the case that 7 of the 20 domains were owned by Sony, a member of the RIAA, at the time the request was made. If you already own a third of the domains because of a prior court order, there's nothing "urgent" about your "emergency" request for an injunction.

Shameless.

Re:

[KingMotley]

I would think then, it is apparent that Sony is behind the pirating, and Cloudflare should pro-actively remove any and all links to any site that is owned by Sony.

Re:

[BronsCon]

I'd go a step further. I would publicly, and with much fanfare, announce the development of anti-piracy filtering on the CloudFlare network, in part using domains and WHOIS details appearing in copyright cases (public record). When ready, offer to test it with "a handful of the most easily verifiable known sites" which, of course, would be code for "every Sony property that touches CloudFlare".

Let them see the results of early testing and ask if they still want it. When they backpedal, stop development. D

Cloudflare wants to eliminate Moot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Christopher Poole has gone into hiding.

Gathering blocking hosts file data I see... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: TONS of bad sites hosted on CloudFlare (@ least 2 dozen a day). Not only on piracy grounds but malscripted, phishing, malware hosting etc. (& more).

* I personally have nothing against them (why would I) but perhaps they ought to screen what their clients are up to/doing...

APK

P.S.=> Personally, I don't think they "big & cheap" hosters etc. (or 'cloud services' etc.) give a shit - they only want the payments monies... apk

Re: Gathering blocking hosts file data I see... ap

[Anonymous Coward]

Screening won't help, and would make CF liable. As it is now with no screening they can claim to be neutral and not really affiliated with their users. If they screen sites then they are liable, so just don't allow illegal sites... but websites change. So on screening they see a fan site with just a list of song titles. Then next week they become links. Now CF can be sued.

More bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should everyone who provides any service on the internet have to invest the time and resources to police what users do for the RIAA or MPAA? They should be forced to pay people to remove their trash. If you want me to police a site you should have to pay me the costs of security.

Re: More bs

[joetomato]

That's a good way to set up a protection racket. "That's a nice movie you've got there. Shame if someone were to distribute it for free..." ( which for the record the riaa/mpaa deserve at least that, but it could be damaging to smaller, honest publishers if there are any left)

The correct solution is to treat services like that as common carriers. If there is bad stuff happening on the service, use existing legal processes to subpoena logs or whatever and go after the actual "bad" guys.

Happy cycle

[easyTree]

Like any good product which in the short term appears to fulfill its promise but in the long term creates the very problem it apparently exists to solve, one could assume that if the mafiaa were wise they would be switching their business model over to covert auto-piracy and damages suits.