Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users

Usually we only describe the last link in the chain as the host. Everything else is usually not "the host" for a website. DNS providers, TLD registries, Domain registrars, IP address providers, VPNS, reverse proxies, web caching, CDN (which often, but not always, act as caches), DDOS protection, IT management layers, micro services, backups, IP management, (and many more) do not call themselves hosts for websites. The ones that call themselves as host are usually web hosting providers, web shops, "cloud", and vps. Hardware as a services seems like a bit more of a grey zone, similar to rented space in a data center.

The article specify that the pirate shops used cloudflares services of pass-through security and CDN. The more accurate description I would describe that is that cloudflare are selling services to pirate sites, and that this services has been blocked. How shocking that is depend on how much responsibility we as a society want to place on people who provide those kind of services. How much liability should a service provider have, say a security management services, when their customer is known to break local law?

Reminds me a bit of the specific case law in Sweden used in the pirate bay case. The law that the prosecutor used was a law directed toward biker gangs that targeted the bars that those gangs tended to use as a base. The law specified that even if the bar itself operated legally, the fact that the biker gang used it as a base made the owner legally liable if the bar provided services to those members.

This is definitely how Cloudflare attempts to defend themselves! In essence, my above comment is rejecting Cloudflare's interpretation.

They aren't a preliminary step in the chain like DNS/domain stuff, they are the final step, they are the service the user asks for the actual content of the pirate site, and they return the actual content.

They aren't a tool being used by the user like an ISP or VPN that might have a privacy defence of being deliberately blind to the traffic they are forwarding, they are rather specifically contracted by the pirate site.

There's no expectation on the users behalf that when they query the pirate site hosted by cloudflare that query will go beyond cloudflare (like with a proxy). The user is perfectly happy if cloudflare serves that request entirely by returning data stored on their own servers. So is cloudflare, and as much as the time as feasible that's exactly what cloudflare does.

So I'm rejecting the notion that cloudflare is distinct in any relevant way from a typical webhost here.

--

> The more accurate description I would describe that is that cloudflare are selling services to pirate sites, and that this services has been blocked.

I'd be happy if the title read "court blocks Cloudflare from providing services to pirate sites" (though that's not the editorial slant the article was going for). Your phrasing leaves the blocking party ambiguous, which is sort of missing the point of my complaint.

If you mean "this services has been blocked [by Cloudflare]" like the original title, it runs into the same problem as the original title. You've changed the party Cloudflare is declining to transact with from the end-user to the pirate site. It's still the case that this is merely Cloudflare declining to provide services, not those services being blocked (which would only be possible if Cloudflare chose to provide them) by Cloudflare.

The distinction here matters because this isn't Cloudflare acting as an extension of law enforcement to step in and block a crime from occurring, this is merely Cloudflare itself choosing not to commit the crime. Maybe because a court ordered them not to, or maybe just because they decided not to (which the article seems to be trying to suggest).