EU's First Attempt At Building A List Of Evil Pirate Sites… Lists Non-Infringing Sites
from the not-inspiring-confidence dept
In mid-January, the EU is hoping to finalize the EU Copyright Directive, including Article 13, which will effectively create mandatory copyright filters for many internet websites (while, laughably, insisting it creates no such burden — but leaving no other option for most sites). One of the key arguments being made by supporters of Article 13 is that it’s crazy to think that this law will be used to block legitimate content. This is pretty silly, considering how frequently we write about bogus DMCA takedowns. As if trying to prove just how bad they are at properly classifying infringing content, the EU recently released its “Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List”, which is a sort of EU version of the USTR’s “notorious markets” list. That list has been widely mocked for basically declaring any site that Hollywood doesn’t like “notorious”, even if no court has ever ruled that it’s breaking the law.
It would appear that the EU list has the same sort of problem. For example among the sites listed in the EU report is Cloudflare, a platform used by tons of internet companies (including Techdirt) as a CDN or to protect against DoS attacks (among other things). Cloudflare is simply a tool — like a phone line — that tons of internet companies use. If some of them are doing things that are against the law, that should be on those sites, not Cloudflare. Unfortunately, the EU doesn’t seem to care.
CloudFlare is a US based company, which provides hosting service combined with other services, including CDN services and distributed domain name server (DNS) services. According to the creative industries (film, music, book publishers, etc.) and other organisations, CloudFlare is used by approximately 40% of the pirate websites in the world. It operates as a front host between the user and the website’s back host, routing and filtering all content through its network of servers. Out of the top 500 infringing domains based on global Alexa rankings, 62% (311) are using CloudFlare’s services, according to stakeholders. A sample list of 6,337 infringing domain names presented by the film industry showed over 30% (2,119) using CloudFlare’s services.
This is, again, kinda like saying “40% of illegal bookmakers use AT&T to provide phone service, and thus we should all blame AT&T.” Except, that’s not how it works. Lots of sites use Cloudflare, because Cloudflare is good at what it does. It’s providing infrastructure. Also, the EU gets it wrong in claiming that Cloudflare provides “hosting service(s).” Cloudflare is a pass-through service. It is not hosting the content of the websites it works with.
Including Cloudflare on a list of dangerous pirate sites suggests that whoever put together such a list (EU regulators) or whoever suggested its inclusion (“film, music, book publishers, etc.”) haven’t the slightest clue what they’re talking about.
And it gets worse. Torrentfreak later notes that a few of the “pirate sites” listed in the EU’s report no longer host any infringing content, and have actually changed hands entirely to someone who is pointing them to legitimate sources of purchasing/subscribing to content. As Torrentfreak correctly notes, some of these sites used to mostly be repositories of links to infringing content, but most stopped a while ago, including some that stopped well before this report was put together.
Now, some may argue that it doesn’t matter — since those domains used to be used for infringement, that’s all that matters. That, however, seems incredibly silly. The fact that a few of those links are now driving people to legitimate, licensed sources, certainly shows why blocking such links or sites entirely is a truly silly idea. Those sites can be better purposed in a way that actually adds value and provides traffic to licensed content providers.
But, really, if we go back to the questions around Article 13, it should lead us to question what is going to happen here when the rules state that sites could face massive fines for allowing any infringing content through when even the EU itself — the folks creating this regulation — can’t seem to do a very good job of accurately naming “infringing” sites. How is it that all of these internet companies, which will face the burden of Article 13, be expected to accurately figure this stuff out when the regulators themselves are so confused?
Filed Under: article 13, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, piracy, pirate watch list
Companies: cloudflare
Comments on “EU's First Attempt At Building A List Of Evil Pirate Sites… Lists Non-Infringing Sites”
40%, why not make it 80%
It’s 40% of pirate sites that use cloudfare, not 40% of cloudfare that is pirate sites. Also the sample list was provided by the movie industry. A perfectly unbiased source for sure.
This is a perfect example why it’s so easy to mislead people with numbers. Just don’t show the true context and you can make anything sound worse or better than it really is.
Like, 100% of the people that wrote this comment agree with me and think it should be most insightful or funniest for the week. Hard to beat 100%, so it must be true.
Look out EU you’re about to be taken on a magical ride by Hollywood.
Re: 40%, why not make it 80%
None of the listen numbers shows how much of Cloudfare traffic is infringing.
Re: Misleading people with numbers
NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement
Re: Re: Misleading people with numbers
Hey now, John Kyl just retired.
Again.
The filter at the library here has TorrentFreak blocked as a pirate site
Re: Re:
How does the block work?
Funny how they are so easily bypassed, is there any downside? Do you get a library fine?
“Out of the top 500 infringing domains based on global Alexa rankings, 62% (311) are using CloudFlare’s services, according to stakeholders”
Apart from the obvious “we haven’t got a clue what the services are that we’re trying to police” aspect, there’s 2 huge issues here.
First – lack of context. OK, lots of infringing siters appear to be using them – what about non-infringing sites? This is the problem with trying to base everything on scary sounding numbers. “96%* of criminals use cellphones” sounds scary until you realise that 96% of everybody uses them (*figure made up for illustration)
Secondly, “according to stakeholders”? So, presumably (and apparently confirmed later), they’re just taking the entertainment industry’s word for which site and are not infringing? Excuse me if I need a giant trunkful of salt to take that with.
Oh, and:
“Out of the top 500 infringing domains based on global Alexa rankings”
I’m surprised they haven’t gone after Alexa/Amazon, given that they are “obviously” telling people where to go to pirate. They use that logic against Google, of course, but here they’re happy to advertise the sites that list all to infringing sites people can use… hmmmm….
Re: Re:
Just to clarify, “Alexa” in this context isn’t related to Amazon, but to the much older site ranking site of the same name. https://www.alexa.com
Re: Re: Re:
Check what’s on that link next to the logo 😉
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I was going to make the same post until I went to alexa.com and went.. hmm well then I guess Amazon is a part of the story lol
Re: Re: Re:
And I believe that after Amazon bought Alexa, they killed off or at least significantly changed this service — I believe it hasn’t been updated for a number of years now. Which means anyone quoting global Alexa rankings today is quoting stale data. The domains may not even be pointing to the same site they pointed to when they got their Alexa ranking (back in 2014?)
Anyone know if Alexa is still doing a site ranking service now that they’ve killed off their invasive IE toolbars?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They definitely still do site ranking as part of their SEO business. I don’t know exactly how they compile their stats though, I didn’t look that deeply.
Re: Re:
100 percent of criminals eat food. Let’s ban food.
Re: Re: Re:
Think about it. Without food none of those criminals would be able to perform any crimes. Food enables them to perform the crimes they perform, food is responsible. No food = no crimes.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Finally, someone has solved the problem.
the EU is so fucking useless at everything it does, it couldn’t find it’s ass if it had it in both hands! the biggest culprit is the EU Commission! it is trying so hard to do whatever the entertainment industries order it to do, it is screwing up so much more, it’s ridiculous! the sad thing is, it shows exactly what can be bought and the entertainment industries do an excellent job of bribing, in my opinion!!
Re: Re:
"the EU is so fucking useless at everything it does, it couldn’t find it’s ass if it had it in both hands! the biggest culprit is the EU Commission!"
For some reason EU member states have consistently used the EU commission as the waste disposal site for any politician who was too incompetent and/or odious to place anywhere in the national bureaucracy but who couldn’t just be sacked outright.
The utter lack of comprehension the EU commission has visavi any technology younger than early 19th century is just one of the very sad side effects of this.
And the member states have little choice but to suffer. Even leaving won’t get you out of having to abide by whatever the EU decides to implement.
The sad fact is not so much that the first EU blocklist is filled with flaws…but that it’s likely to escalate in error rate rather than diminish, as every tinpot wannabe dictator in the EU commission decides to make that list serve whatever else they decide is personally odious.
Re: Re: "Scary Devil Monastery" 65 month gap, yet another Zombie.
This “account” has been making many comments since resurrected 8 Aug 2018, but I didn’t miss the FIVE YEARS and FIVE MONTHS gap! Strikes me as just ODD.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So, this is where your mental illness takes you? It’s no longer enough for you to lie about the people and subjects you comment about, no longer build up a fantasy of a conspiracy against you when you can’t find a suitable lie, but now you’re scouring the entire comment history of people who have been commenting recently to look for gaps that might support your lunatic ravings?
This is desperately sad.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Even sadder is that it’s fairly regular thing.
Seems fair to me
Now, some may argue that it doesn’t matter — since those domains used to be used for infringement, that’s all that matters. That, however, seems incredibly silly
With Hollywood being on the west coast originally to avoid patents held by Thomas Edison by their logic any and all sites run by studios over there should be classified as pirate havens even now, and therefore blocked.
After all, once host to infringers/violators of the law, always host to infringers/violators of the law, so unless they want to once again expose their gross hypocrisy seems they need to add a few more entries to the list they’re handing over.
Re: Seems fair to me
IP addresses linked to the Vatican, the US government and the RIAA were also found to be sharing music and movies.
Arrest them all for criminal copyright infringement.
After all, as one of the usual trolls so proudly says, “An IP address should allow for the instant arrest of someone if the president is threatened!”
did it list it’s own website and when someone called them out, did they come back saying they are exempt from the rules that everyone else has to follow? asking for a friend
98% of pirated content is uploaded with a computer using an Intel CPU. — Signed “Somebody Not In Any Way Affiliated With AMD”
Re: Re:
That’s nothing, I hear that 100% of Terrorists eat food they bought at grocery stores. – Signed “Somebody definitely not affiliated with the restaurant industry who definitely isn’t trying to force you to eat out 3 times a day”.
Re: Re:
100% of pirated content is viewed on a monitor. When will monitor makers institute technological measures to prevent this??
Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file...
Then it can’t be touched, none of the massive body of copyright law developed over 200 years matters and it can host PETABYTES of obviously infringing files.
Unlimited infringement of someone else’s valuable work for your pirates and commercial-scale grifter pals to benefit is what you actually want, Mr Mike "Supports Copyright" Masnick. This is YET AGAIN a piece in which YOU actually support piracy by trying to put on a respectable "front" for pirates — as does Cloudflare.
First, it’s fairly brazen to just wave away FORTY PERCENT: "Oh, that’s nothing. — Look over there! ONE legitimate use!"
Then your own next sentence is apt: Except, that’s not how it works. In fact, pirates are using Cloudflare to hide identity. It’s not "like ATT" the base hardward provider doing this, but is EXACTLY like a call (answering) service cut-out (as used to be common) between, say, prostitutes / bookmakers / drug dealers and clients. In one memorable case, a Los Angeles beauty salon was handy front for a call-girl service. — Of course you kids don’t believe that those are or should be crimes, which is a key point at Techdirt: you simply always favor criminals (especially pirates) and have no concern for the working / productive people who are harmed by your thefts.
Re: Copyyrignt enforcement logic
If somebody who committed a crime drives through a town, then the whole town should be wiped off of the face of the earth, and its inhabitants put in jail. Mean while nothing is done to stop the actual criminal causing the destruction of another town.
Re: Re:
You are fucking terrible at math.
Re: Re: believable
If you expect to be read and believed you will loose the profanity and express a real opinion best back with facts and references.
Re: Re: Re: believable
Well, I can’t speak for the AC, but he’s clearly referring to the fact that the regular fool believe that removing a service from 60% of users because 40% of them misuse it is justified by the numbers.
Even ignoring the fundamental misunderstanding already pointed out by others above (it’s 40% of “infringing sites”, not 40% of Cloudflare’s customers), he’s clearly bad at his calculations.
That it comes from someone who goes out of his way to hide his identity on this site is just gravy.
Re: Re: Re:2
And he does a shit job of it. You would think he would try to be more subtle about his trolling, but nope.
Re: Re: Re:
That troll does not deserve anything more than insults and profanity. If you want to be taken seriously, stop sticking up for him.
Re: Re: Re: believable
How cute, blue boy has a fan.
The copyright madmen plaguing this site have made several vulgarity-laden calls for everyone else who disagree with them to be put through a wood chipper while alive.
If calling out their inability to use reasoning and arithmetic triggers you this badly I’d say you have other issues.
Re: Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file
Funny how “60%” becomes “one legitimate use” in your fantasy world.
Re: Re: Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file
Actually you misread that.
The stat is that 60% of (identified) infringing sites do not use Clourflare. This stat has nothing to do with the percentage of CloudFlare customers that host infringing content – that number is certainly less than 40% of them and most likely in the single digits.
Re: Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file
“Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file… Then it can’t be touched, none of the massive body of copyright law developed over 200 years matters and it can host PETABYTES of obviously infringing files.”
Kinda like … no it’s not anything like that at all.
The point is that the infringer should be investigated, not the mechanism. The law is not written very well if it hand waves the expected collateral damage. And they are aware that it will cause problems for some who are not infringing and they do not care unless it is themselves or their buddies.
With the coming of the new year, perhaps it is time for you to seek professional help as you seem to be having difficulty differentiating political talking points from reality.
Re:
G.F.Y.
Re: Kinda like saying if Megaupload hosts ONE non-infringed file
Pay no attention to this one. It’s just a youtube comment section bot that has forgotten where it’s supposed to be.
Cloudfare is an infrastructure company used to protect companys against ddos attacks ,
listing it as a pirate site shows how stupid the eu commission is.
And they expect all large website to build filters to
block all infringing content including images and photo content.
By this logic we could just reduce piracy by blocking all app platforms and banning tablets and smartphones since in theory they could be used to
host infringing content.
The eu seems to be in a contest with australian government as to who can break the internet .
Re: Re:
Or we could turn the hardware into one-way broadcast devices that can only load “approved” software. Which, ultimately, the major media corporations would love.
Re: Re: Re:
Except that at times those broadcasting companies have infringed so they must be blocked too.
Hope everyone enjoys their new paperweights.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And as any of their executives would say: “So what?” Those companies can afford to make the law look the other way.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Well, at least for smaller broadcasting companies, it can come back to bite you. Not saying that Ringgold v. Black Entertainment Television, Inc., 126 F.3d 70 (US 2d Cir. 1997) was correctly decided, but it does show that copyright maximalists hold some serious influence.
Remember, there, it was 26 seconds of out-of-focus viewing of part of a poster of a quilt was sufficient to infringe on the qulit-maker’s copyright.
(Which reminds me, who came up with the silly idea for this "markdown" stuff, where you cannot nest includes and cannot use proper quotes? Did there not used to be a fairly common language for marking up this sort of thing. Let me see, something about hmxs, no, hrts, no, now I remember, HTML.)
Hollywood, politicians nor the gouvernments will be affected. The won’t be put on watch lists, and they will not be falsely accused of infringement.
If you’re important enough laws will be explained in your advantage.
Cloudflare is a de-facto proxy for many sites. Those who take issue with the sites that use Cloudflare will tend to take issue with Cloudflare itself.
Re: Re:
Cloudflare is actually a pretty good spammer and scammer concealment service. If you have bad intentions, you need someone like Cloudflare to help keep you hidden when the marks catch on and the complaints come in.
I am sure there are legitimate uses, too, though where I have seen them Cloudflare does not appear to work all that well. Lots of failed fetches, permission problems, and the like.
Re: Re: Re:
“I am sure there are legitimate uses, too”
There are a huge number, yes. Maybe you should look into them before assuming things.
“though where I have seen them”
…and there’s the rub. You almost certainly use Cloudflare’s services on a daily basis, you just don’t know which sites they are until there’s a problem.
Same issue with any security or operations role – people assume you do nothing until there’s an actual problem, then you’re just not doing it properly. Nobody gives you credit for the other 99.999% of uptime.
Re: Re: Re:
As the article notes, you are looking at a Cloudflare-protected site right now.
Does Cloudflare host content supplied to it by others, which content is then served up to others upon request?
Re: Re:
Cloudflare turns up (or used to turn up) as the host server for many of these sites, making them more of a proxy rather than the conduit they like to portray themselves as being.
As a proxy they provide a shield of anonymity for a site whose hose cannot be tracked except through them.
Re: Re: Re:
If CF is actually hosting content uploaded to its servers by others, on what possible and persuasive basis can it argue that it is not engaging in any infringing activities? At a minimum it would be a participant in distribution to the public, a right exclusively reserved to copyright holders.
BTW, The Trichordist has an interesting post concerning CF.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
They claim to be “dumb pipes” even if they physically act like a proxy (who makes the actual IP owner anonymous except to Cloudflare).
If they comply with DMCA that should be sufficient especially since they’re so good at gathering evidence to go after the actual infringers.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Given creation of a cached copy, the dumb pipes argument rings hollow. Doubtless CF recognizes the weakness of its argument given that it settled last summer the lawsuit filed by ALS.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
The trichoridist is your news source? The website ran by an embittered old curmudgeon who’s angry that people dared to seek legal advice when sued by Malibu Media, he has to buy fightcopyrightrolls.com to redirect to his site?
Sure… Whatever floats your allegedly unbiased boat I guess…
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Apparently reading for comprehension is not your forte. I merely mentioned that there was an article on another site, expressing no opinion on its veracity.
Still trying to figure out the relevance of an unrelated matter being raised. It adds nothing other than possibly showing you are easily sidetracked.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
So if the site you mentioned was Breitbart or Alex Jones’ now nonexistent Twitter feed I would be disallowed from having a pinch of salt at the ready?
You mentioned the site’s article on IP related business. Based on the moderator’s reputation, I compared it to his known behavior and decided on whether it was worth the time. Not my business if it offends your sensibilities this badly.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Hi, Slonecker. Hurricane head wake up those thousands of sleeping giant artist friends yet?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“The Trichordist”
Oh, I was about to give a serious answer, then I realised it was you. Never mind, carry on.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Perhaps it is best you did not provide a serious answer because such an answer would require that you possess an accurate understanding of substantive US copyright law.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Okay, what’s your understanding? That anyone who has money you covet is probably guilty of vicarious and/or contributive infringement? Give me a break.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
According to the Perfect 10 rulings, if another service similar to CF can do the same thing, then CF doesn’t “control the infringing activity” because they can’t stop the activity, merely move it to another non-enabler.
This is how Visa beat Perfect 10 btw.
Re: Re:
They claim they “hub” the content, without actually hosting it. Their copy of the content is not for the purpose of hosting, but to facilitate the speed of the site or whatever.
EU Budget €150 Billion
Yet no money to commission independent research as a basis for legislation that might destroy the internet as we know it:
"6,337 infringing domain names presented by the film industry showed over 30% (2,119) using CloudFlare’s services."
The Governments Fault
If they would simply cut off the pirates from any water sources, they would no longer be a problem once dehydration runs its course.
Re: The Governments Fault
But less pirates means even moar global warming!
Plus i thought you were going to say that if they cut off pirates from water sources, they wouldn’t be ab;e to float a ship. My imagination ran ahead of my reading speed.
Incompetence is a vast understatement
I have a question: Does any country allow people who have barely ever seen an aeroplane in their life, and have absolutely no idea how engines and aerodynamics work, to create flight regulations and cause thousands of planes to crash? No? If so, why do we allow the exact equivalent for the internet? No, seriously… I don’t even know where this is on the line between ridiculous and tragic.