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Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users

(torrentfreak.com)
234 points gloxkiqcza | 5 comments | 15 Jul 25 14:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.218s | source
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gpm ◴[15 Jul 25 15:59 UTC] No.44572526[source]▶
Blocking is the wrong terminology here. Cloudflare is not an ISP which fetches whatever you ask for from third parties. It's a company contracted by the web site owners to distribute their websites. It's much more accurate to say that Cloudflare is no longer acting as a host for pirate sites in the UK.

The shocking part of this isn't that they aren't participating in that form of crime in the UK, it's that they're somehow able to participate in it in the rest of the world.

And I say this as someone who thinks that copyright laws are largely unjust, preventing people from engaging with their own culture, but that doesn't make them not the law.

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1. wmf ◴[15 Jul 25 22:30 UTC] No.44576552[source]▶
Most of the world doesn't bother playing whack-a-mole with pirate sites because it usually doesn't work. The UK, however, is no stranger to enacting policies that are known to be ineffective.
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2. 1317 ◴[16 Jul 25 12:05 UTC] No.44581281[source]▶
well, it certainly seems to be effective in this case
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3. hoseja ◴[16 Jul 25 12:43 UTC] No.44581655[source]▶
for a whole two weeks probably
replies(1): >>44628956 #
4. voxic11 ◴[16 Jul 25 15:30 UTC] No.44583386[source]▶
Cloudflare offers Tor access for free. So to access these sites in the UK you just need to connect via Tor now. (Or of course you could pay for a VPN, but Tor is free).

https://developers.cloudflare.com/network/onion-routing/

5. bojanga ◴[20 Jul 25 20:22 UTC] No.44628956{3}[source]▶
cybermania.ws is hosted on cloudflare, has been down for 3 days in a row; it deceptively says 'Verification is taking longer than expected. Check your Internet connection and refresh the page if the issue persists.' It is inaccessible apparently globally, including here, Canada, and via VPN, tor, etc...