Cloudflare Doesn't Want To Become the 'Piracy Police' (torrentfreak.com)

Cloudflare is warning that far-reaching cooperation between copyright holders and internet services may put innovation in danger. From a report: As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe. This includes thousands of "pirate" sites, including the likes of The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent, which rely on the U.S.-based company to keep server loads down. Copyright holders are not happy that CloudFlare services these sites. Last year, the RIAA and MPAA called the company out for aiding copyright infringers and helping pirate sites to obfuscate their actual location. [...] In a whitepaper, Cloudflare sees this trend as a worrying development. The company points out that the safe harbor provisions put in place by the DMCA and Europe's eCommerce Directive have been effective in fostering innovation for many years. Voluntary "anti-piracy" agreements may change this. [...] Cloudflare argues that increased monitoring and censorship are not proper solutions. Third-party Internet services shouldn't be pushed into the role of Internet police out of a fear of piracy. Instead, the company cautions against far-reaching voluntary agreements that may come at the expense of the public.

Comments

I'll bet they don't

[110010001000]

That would cut way into profits if they had to vet everything. Similar to Youtube, they would rather not curate anything.

Re:I'll bet they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

That would cut way into profits if they had to vet everything. Similar to Youtube, they would rather not curate anything.

Exactly - it makes no economic sense for them to be subsidising the film industry's enforcement efforts. I can't see why anyone would even consider this an option.

Re:I'll bet they don't

[Jason Levine]

Which is why safe harbor rules were made. This doesn't just affect CloudFlare, but any site that takes user content. Even Slashdot. Suppose I were to type a few dozen pages of text into my comment that happened to be from a copyrighted book. That could be a copyright violation and Slashdot might be sued. However, maybe the text comes from my own book which I own the copyright to. Or maybe the author placed the book in the public domain so anyone can post it online. How would Slashdot be able to identify that the text is copyrighted and whether the poster is able to upload said text. For a very large organization, this might be difficult but doable. For smaller companies (or hobbyist websites), it would be impossible and they'd find themselves one lawsuit away from being shut down - even if the lawsuit was groundless.

This is why we have safe harbor (possibly the only good part of the DMCA). If the RIAA/MPAA spot a pirate site using CloudFlare's service, they send a DMCA notice to CloudFlare. CloudFlare turns off the service and sends the notice to the site. If the site challenges the DMCA notice, CloudFlare turns their access back on. Then, it's a legal battle between the RIAA/MPAA and the site accused of piracy. CloudFlare is completely out of it (unless the court orders them to turn off access for good).

The MPAA/RIAA wants websites to be the piracy police so that they don't have to do any work. They want the benefits of the DMCA without any of the "costs" (needing to seek out copyright violations). It's pure laziness coupled with greed.

Re: I'll bet they don't

[Opportunist]

So... they're unions of corporations?

In my country we call those "cartels".

Piracy is not that big a deal

[ZorinLynx]

Media companies are making bigger profits than ever, with no signs of it slowing down. Why are they so concerned about the tiny amount of piracy taking place?

1) Most piracy is done by teenagers and people who are broke and cannot afford to watch content legitimately anyway.
2) Piracy is a pain in the ass. Paying a few dollars for content is far easier, so that's what most people will do.

If they want to reduce piracy further, the best way is to make watching content as easy and simple as possible. For example, FOX recently yanked a bunch of their shows from Netflix because they're starting their own streaming service. Most people don't want to pay for multiple streaming services! Their greed is probably going to result in more piracy, as people go "Damnit Firefly is no longer on Netflix. I'm just going to torrent the rest of the episodes." So now instead of making some money, they make none.

And despite all this, like I mentioned earlier, the industry is more profitable than ever. They're basically yelling "THE SKY IS FALLING!!" on a clear, calm day with blue skies and sunshine.

Re:Piracy is not that big a deal

[Registered Coward v2]

Media companies are making bigger profits than ever, with no signs of it slowing down. Why are they so concerned about the tiny amount of piracy taking place?

1) Most piracy is done by teenagers and people who are broke and cannot afford to watch content legitimately anyway. 2) Piracy is a pain in the ass. Paying a few dollars for content is far easier, so that's what most people will do.

If they want to reduce piracy further, the best way is to make watching content as easy and simple as possible. For example, FOX recently yanked a bunch of their shows from Netflix because they're starting their own streaming service. Most people don't want to pay for multiple streaming services! Their greed is probably going to result in more piracy, as people go "Damnit Firefly is no longer on Netflix. I'm just going to torrent the rest of the episodes." So now instead of making some money, they make none.

And despite all this, like I mentioned earlier, the industry is more profitable than ever. They're basically yelling "THE SKY IS FALLING!!" on a clear, calm day with blue skies and sunshine.

Part of the problem is the media company's see each pirated copy as a lost sale; even if that is not true. Online piracy is relatively simple to go after compared to bootlegs; especially if you can offload responsibility to block them to others. You don't have to send out agents to buy bootlegs, find the supplier, get local law enforcement to cooperate, etc. Even if bootlegs represent a larger real revenue loss, going after an easier target is appealing. I guess teh argument would be even if we only get 10% of the piracy numbers in sales that's 10% more than we get now; and we don't have to do much heavy lifting to block a site so why not go for it?