Cloudflare: Where the CDN Stands
We have already discussed the importance of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) for modern sites; most of the world’s traffic now goes through these services, which help deliver content better by speeding up website loading. To a certain extent, CDNs also protect sites, notably against DDoS attacks, and this is one of their greatest strengths. One of the best-known CDNs is Cloudflare, a company thanks to which anyone with an internet presence can indeed expect safer and faster sites. But this CDN also has a somewhat shady reputation: it is known, for instance, that more than 80% of the world’s pirated content traffic hides behind Cloudflare. We discussed its role in piracy some time ago. How has the situation evolved since then?
Cloudflare and IP blocking
After an ambivalent stance on the far-right site Kiwi Farms in 2022, Cloudflare has repeatedly restated its wish not to be an internet police. They regularly remind us that they are not a government and so have no business making decisions about content. They also regularly point out that there is a strong distinction between hosting providers and intermediaries. According to them, given that intermediaries have no view of their customers’ content, they bear no responsibility for what is published on those customers’ sites, and have no legitimacy to moderate it. They therefore could not be accused of encouraging illegal behaviour on that basis. Yet most governments are increasingly adopting the position that intermediaries are precisely the best placed to put an end to the illicit activities of their customers. Moreover, the measure is proportionate: blocking injunctions are territorial, which reflects the territorial nature of intellectual property rights.
The company relies in particular on the case of Austria: following a decision of the Austrian Supreme Court on IP blocking, overblocking of sites was observed. Cloudflare uses this single example – even though the same measure has been applied in many countries without any problem – to take a strong position against it. However, when removal at the source (which is in principle a better and less costly solution) is ineffective, it must be possible to act in another way against recalcitrant sites; this is where IP blocking comes in, and it is a long, costly and heavily judicialized process. It is therefore obviously a last-resort solution for rights holders, and it is also the best solution for the distribution of live content: even a well-meaning hosting provider will often take a few hours to respond to a request. By then, the match or concert broadcast illegally will have long been over.
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Cloudflare’s position on IP blocking is therefore very clearly ideological, and reflects a bias in favour of pirates and support for these illicit sites.
What responsibility for intermediaries?
Take the example of Cloudflare and The Pirate Bay, the famous Swedish pirate site: Cloudflare currently provides services to 4 of TPB’s 14 domains.
If we imagine how a CDN could react, Cloudflare could, for example, decline to provide services to manifestly high-risk sites or, if they are already customers, at least temporarily move them to quarantined spaces. In the Kiwi Farms case, for example, the harassment had gone so far that the transgender activist video game developer Chloe Sagal ended up taking her own life publicly, by setting herself on fire in a public park in 2018. Likewise, Clara Sorrenti, also a trans woman, was forced to flee Canada because of threats to her life from Kiwi Farms users. They took advantage of the site in particular to exchange personal data about Sorrenti, including her home address. Cloudflare’s position and its so-called protection of privacy are therefore unacceptable, even though they eventually withdrew their services from Kiwi Farms following an NBC report that highlighted the responsibility of intermediaries in this kind of tragedy.
Most people, including those who are victims of harassment, partly understand Cloudflare’s position: indeed, no one wants to live in a world where private companies decide what should and should not be online. However, there must be limits, and those limits must be set by governments: when real and serious threats endanger people’s lives, for example, intermediaries must step in. Even if harassment or piracy does not disappear with one of these sites, it becomes harder for the followers of such behaviour to organize.
Join us in mid-February for the rest of our theme on Cloudflare and CDNs. In our next article, we will see whether there are solutions to make intermediaries accountable. In the meantime, if you have a film, a series, software or an ebook to protect, don’t hesitate to call on our services by contacting one of our account managers. PDN has been a pioneer in cybersecurity and anti-piracy for more than ten years, and we are bound to have a solution to help you. Happy reading, and see you soon!
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