Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Cloudflare Sued for Failing to Terminate Repeat Infringers
In a new complaint filed at a California federal court, Cloudflare stands accused of contributing to, aiding, and abetting copyright infringements. The company fails to terminate customers who are repeatedly called out and is therefore liable, the argument goes. The case in question was not filed by Hollywood or the major record labels, but by two manufacturers of wedding dresses.
[...] In 2016 Cloudflare was sued for contributory copyright infringement by adult publisher ALS Scan. This case ended in a confidential settlement this summer, but now there's more trouble on the horizon for the company.
The new threat doesn't come from any of the major entertainment industry players, but from two manufacturers and wholesalers of wedding dresses. Not a typical "piracy" lawsuit, but it's a copyright case that could have broad effects. In a complaint filed at a federal court in California, Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs argue that Cloudflare fails to terminate sites of counterfeit vendors after multiple warnings. This makes Cloudflare liable for the associated copyright infringements, they add.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday November 23 2018, @11:46PM (2 children)
If you want real freedom on the internet, you won't find it on the surface web. But Cloudflare offers convenience and reliability, and I'm pretty sure you are capable of accessing Cloudflare sites if you choose to. They aren't "gone", you are just refusing to play ball (except they now have a solution for Tor access [cloudflare.com]).
We need to build decentralized systems for communicating and sharing information.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Saturday November 24 2018, @12:19AM (1 child)
What cloudflare 'offers' me is the replacement of the webpage that I am looking for with a page which insultingly (and idiotically) suggests that I need to enable ecmascript to prove that I'm a human being.
There's no way to justify that, there's no excuse for that, it's straight up broken, and on top of being broken it *lies.* It lies in a way that is deeply wrong, this is not just promoting falsehood as 'fact' it's attacking the deep foundation of truth directly.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24 2018, @11:20AM
The only places that remotely resemble the pre-Gamergate internet are Voat and 8chan and there are so many Nazis and morons concentrated in those places that they're hardly worth using. Try building an alternative to any mainstream site and you'll get DDOSed, flooded out by trolls, banned by your payment processor, smeared as "alt-right" in the press, etc, etc, and if you're doing it as a hobby you're likely to be fired from your real job without any explanation.
Nobody could create, say, rotten.com or newgrounds today. You can't have a liberal anti-authoritarian site that says Islam is a hate group and transgenderism is made-up bullshit. A bunch of feminists were banned by Wordpress for this this week. You can't even make Tumblr today, as Tumblr recently found out.
Everybody aggressively denies that there is any pressure from any advertiser, government, or pressure group when they ban people. Suggesting that there might be such pressure will also get you smeared as "alt-right" in the press, fired from your job, etc.