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> The argument that they are 'just a common carrier' and have no influence over the content they serve went out the window that day. I thought you were taking

> The argument that they are 'just a common carrier' and have no influence over the content they serve went out the window that day. I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. Which to me seems like the logical stance. Upthread you mentioned CF as not being essential, but based on the current limitations of the web - DoS protection is essential for small publishers. It would be too easy to silence marginalized communities with a small botnet. Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment.

jacquesm 9y ago
> I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. CF took that position, in the past to defend their leaving all kinds of outright illegal stuff such as booter websites (sites that offer easy to use interfaces to DDOS tools) up and running. > Which to me seems like the logical stance. But that makes your argument more a strawman than anything else. No, I don't think CF is special in any way, not until they litigate that and get an official stamp of approval that they are not going to have to comply with 'regular' takedown requests, since normally aiding and abetting criminals is bad. CF does not have to provide service to every comer and they have gone out of their way to prove this. > Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. That I agree with, but this is no different from Facebook, Google or any other tech giant. Cloudflare claimed to be somehow special in this respect, I've yet to see FB or Google make such an argument. Though, Google to some extent tried to do this by claiming for a while that only their algorithms determined what is visible without human input. Nowadays human input is as important a signal as the algorithms and it has final say too. > We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment. Unfortunately, your point of view is still US centric, which means you are missing an important piece of the puzzle here. The web is much larger than the United States, 'first amendment' protections do not apply outside of the US, and Cloudflare is routinely hiding behind that first amendment in a way that makes it very hard to prosecute - or even do anything about - the criminals they enable. Cloudflare wishes to have it both ways: to claim first amendment rights when it suits them and to play judge, jury and executioner when it does not. And in the meantime the rest of the world has to dance to their tune because they are not in the jurisdiction of the victims. That's not a tenable stance in the long term and the Elsevier case shows you quite nicely just how hypocritical this is.
- smokeyj 9y ago
  I agree CF wishes to have it both ways. I think they should have never been the content police. Policing should be left to the police. Go after the host server and the criminals who set them up. Countries have IP and extradition agreements for exactly this sort of thing. CF is closer to an ISP than something like FB because CF only provides the pipes. It's literally providing an internet service. I'm aware they haven't legally earned that distinction, but from a logical perspective - mirroring a server is nothing like providing a social networking platform.
  - alysdexia 9y ago
    "they wishes"? Dolt.
- alysdexia 9y ago
  nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled.

jacquesm 9y ago

> I thought you were taking the position that CF should be a common carrier. CF took that position, in the past to defend their leaving all kinds of outright illegal stuff such as booter websites (sites that offer easy to use interfaces to DDOS tools) up and running. > Which to me seems like the logical stance. But that makes your argument more a strawman than anything else. No, I don't think CF is special in any way, not until they litigate that and get an official stamp of approval that they are not going to have to comply with 'regular' takedown requests, since normally aiding and abetting criminals is bad. CF does not have to provide service to every comer and they have gone out of their way to prove this. > Leaving it up to CF to be the judge jury and executioner is too much power for one company. That I agree with, but this is no different from Facebook, Google or any other tech giant. Cloudflare claimed to be somehow special in this respect, I've yet to see FB or Google make such an argument. Though, Google to some extent tried to do this by claiming for a while that only their algorithms determined what is visible without human input. Nowadays human input is as important a signal as the algorithms and it has final say too. > We have democratic courts for this sort of thing. The web is broken and until then I think DoS protection is essential in exercising our first amendment. Unfortunately, your point of view is still US centric, which means you are missing an important piece of the puzzle here. The web is much larger than the United States, 'first amendment' protections do not apply outside of the US, and Cloudflare is routinely hiding behind that first amendment in a way that makes it very hard to prosecute - or even do anything about - the criminals they enable. Cloudflare wishes to have it both ways: to claim first amendment rights when it suits them and to play judge, jury and executioner when it does not. And in the meantime the rest of the world has to dance to their tune because they are not in the jurisdiction of the victims. That's not a tenable stance in the long term and the Elsevier case shows you quite nicely just how hypocritical this is.

smokeyj 9y ago
I agree CF wishes to have it both ways. I think they should have never been the content police. Policing should be left to the police. Go after the host server and the criminals who set them up. Countries have IP and extradition agreements for exactly this sort of thing. CF is closer to an ISP than something like FB because CF only provides the pipes. It's literally providing an internet service. I'm aware they haven't legally earned that distinction, but from a logical perspective - mirroring a server is nothing like providing a social networking platform.
- alysdexia 9y ago
  "they wishes"? Dolt.
alysdexia 9y ago
nice < niais < nescius := not-skilled.