Broadest US Pirate Site Injunction Rewritten/Tamed By Cloudflare

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: After causing outrage among online services including Cloudflare, the most aggressive pirate site injunction ever handed down in the US has undergone significant weight loss surgery. Now before the court is a heavily modified injunction that is most notable for everything that's been removed. It appears that Cloudflare drew a very clear line in the sand and refused to step over it. [...] The injunctions granted extreme powers, from residential ISP blocking to almost any other action the plaintiffs deemed fit to keep the sites offline. Almost immediately that led to friction with third-party service providers and the situation only worsened when a concerned Cloudflare found itself threatened with contempt of court for non-compliance. The CDN company fought back with support from Google and EFF and that led the parties back to the negotiating table. Filings in the case last week suggested an acceptance by the plaintiffs that the injunction cannot be enforced in its present form. The parties promised to work on a new injunction to address both sides' concerns and as a result, a new proposal now awaits the court's approval. [...]

With the contempt of court issue behind them, Cloudflare and the plaintiffs appear to have settled their differences. An entire section in the injunction dedicated to Cloudflare suggests that the CDN company is indeed prepared to help the video companies but they'll have to conform to certain standards. Before even contacting Cloudflare they'll first need to make "reasonable, good faith efforts to identify and obtain relief for the identified domains from hosting providers and domain name registries and registrars."

If the plaintiffs still need Cloudflare's assistance, Cloudflare will comply with requests against domain names listed in this injunction and future injunctions by preventing access to the following: "Pass-through security services, content delivery network (CDN) services, video streaming services, and authoritative DNS services, DNS, CDN, streaming services, and any related services." An additional note states that the plaintiffs acknowledge that Cloudflare's compliance "will not necessarily prevent the Defendants from providing users with access to Defendants' infringing services." Given the agreement on the terms, the amended injunction will likely be signed off by the court in the coming days. Service providers everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief while rightsholders will have a template for similar cases moving forward. The proposed amended injunction documents can be found here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pdf).

Re: So nothing really changed

[ahodgson]

Don't worry, I'm sure Cloudflare will still protect your booter and "testing" services.

Summary paints a different picture

[nadass]

The issue was the original injunction specifically stated that any/all operators of "third-party services" and "now or anytime in the future" must pro-actively, from now in perpetuity, enforce this injunction. Those "third-party services" referred to most regional and national ISPs registered by the FCC, and basically all online services providers regardless which might come into contact with the operators of the original site, israel.tv

The injunction was overly-broad by every measure (especially as they chased Cloudflare which had no active role in the site's access either). CF kicked back by making that promisory statement, "yeah yeah, they're blacklisted, happy now?!"

So now CF is off the hook, residential ISPs are off the hook, and the only real repercussion is the original site host had to take down the site, israel.tv.

There. That's the story.

just wait for an rights holders to go to far an 1s

[Joe_Dragon]

just wait for an rights holders to go to far and hit an 1st issue with an take down.
Now what will the united states supreme court do? maybe ban an DMCA take down? Force them to have FULL COURT REVIEW / ORDER before any think can go down?

Now if residential ISPs become utilities then will take downs become harder / need an full court case to happen.

Re:

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

"What will the united states supreme court do?" Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the recent US SC decisions. Citizen's United (money is free speech), overturning of 50 years of president (Roe vs. Wade) and Thomas saying he wants to get rid of "substantive due process", This is the notion that the 14th Amendment guarantee against depriving individuals of liberty without due process of law encompasses a right to privacy, among other protections. So, if anything, if something like this got up to

but they are very pro 2th and the 1st is bigger th

[Joe_Dragon]

but they are very pro 2th and the 1st is bigger then the 2th.
Roe vs. Wade gone but they did rule for more guns with less rules.

Re:

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

"What will the united states supreme court do?" Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the recent US SC decisions. Citizen's United (money is free speech), overturning of 50 years of president (Roe vs. Wade) and Thomas saying he wants to get rid of "substantive due process", This is the notion that the 14th Amendment guarantee against depriving individuals of liberty without due process of law encompasses a right to privacy, among other protections. So, if anything, if something like this got up to

Re:

[codebase7]

And your argument can be boiled down to "parrot squawking about Republican talking points." But for the sake of argument:

perhaps you're parroting democratic talking points without thinking for yourself?

Just because you disagree with his opinions doesn't mean they are invalid, nor that they haven't thought through them. If anything that comment just casts your own opinions in arrogance.

Citizen's United, what would you have the court do differently?

The court should have held that all men are created equal, and that money, being a differentiator, should have been prohibited from promoting one man over another. Thus ensuring an level playing field fo

Re:

[Hodr]

Will never happen. Copyright and DMCA style legislation pretty much always has full bipartisan support.