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Parody site ClownStrike refused to bow to CrowdStrike's bogus DMCA takedown
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoJust another day: some megacorporation trying to use scary lawyer letters to take down a parody site, banking on some member of the public not having the legal knowledge to know they're full of shit. Also, complete 100% bullshit on it being unintentional. I'd imagine some executive in their organization found that and had a right tizzy about it. It's exactly the sort of completely meaningless deck-chair rearranging that the C-suites LOVE to send urgent-marked emails about, speaking from both anecdote and personal experience.
- daft_pink 2y agoThey need a parody Lewis Hamilton advertisement.
- surfingdino 2y agoThe guy who tried to sue the Hamilton watch company for naming themselves Hamilton decades before he was born?
- daft_pink 2y agoYes, but this ad is just ripe for mockery: https://youtu.be/v5lPph1_h7c?si=ZabgEzmFl84C2AEa https://youtu.be/v5lPph1_h7c?si=ZabgEzmFl84C2AEa
- surfingdino 2y agoNice. I suppose it paid his jet bills.
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoI do wonder if one could learn enough of the law to cheaply defend themselves against bogus DMCA notices. You see this sort of things all the time in emulation where the product itself is technically legal, but the people hosting the project have to shut down anyway because they know the legal costs of mounting a defense would bankrupt them. It would be nice to turn the tables and say to N 'ok, we can do this all day, enjoy burning a mountain of cash with your legal team'
- bombcar 2y agoIt's possible, the biggest downside is to legally respond to a fake DMCA you have to dox yourself to the filer. But if your dox is already out there, there's really no downside once you learn the process.
- HankB99 2y agoI had a post on Reddit taken down a while ago. It was entirely my content and did not even include any quotes. I looked into responding, but it would have included far more information than could be gleaned from my Reddit bio and I suspected it was a sort of phishing scheme to get that information. (I did not respond, it was not an important post.)
- cesarb 2y agoIt goes beyond just doxing yourself; to legally respond to a DMCA notice, AFAIK you also have to consent to the jurisdiction of the USA courts. Which might be acceptable to a resident of the USA, since they're already under the jurisdiction of USA courts, but it can be problematic to residents of the rest of the world.
- account42 2y agoAny sources for this? Doesn't sound something that would hold up since you can't just sign away your rights in sane jurisdictions.
- 2y ago
- jmclnx 2y ago>Reached for comment, CrowdStrike confirmed that the takedown notice probably never should have been sent to Senk yea, right. They got caught and said "oops, sorry". Too bad Senk cannot charge them for the cost of moving his site elsewhere.
- rPlayer6554 2y agoSometimes companies are so big the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Maybe the legal department is overeager but the PR team would never had let this happen, given the chance.
- namuol 2y agoIndeed. It (further) begs the question: Should we depend so heavily on such corporations to protect our infrastructure?
- packetlost 2y agoidk, the DMCA has done an immense amount of damage to society because of what amounts to bullying from those with large legal departments. I usually err on the side of blaming incompetence, but a well-run legal department should know this is a bogus claim.
- rangerelf 2y agoIf it were possible to sink your teeth into them and extract enough cash such that it would sting, things like this wouldn't happen. It's only because it costs them exactly zero dollars and cents that they feel they can get away with bullying anyone they want.
- bornfreddy 2y agoIt does cost them, actually, but they will not be able to measure it. Though they didn't have much good will and trust to start with. I'm more surprised by how CF is handling this. They seemed like the "good guys" (for the Big Tech anyway) so this is not how I would expect them to handle the situation.
- namuol 2y agoApparently the DMCA takedown notice was filed by some third party that specializes in this form of trolling. I wonder how big the market for this nonsense is.
- nottorp 2y agoThey're everywhere. The real question is, are they using AI or are they a boring old style company that will get left behind by progress?
- freedomben 2y ago> Senk immediately felt the takedown was bogus. His site was obviously parody, which he felt should have made his use of the CrowdStrike logos—altered or not—fair use. He immediately responded to Cloudflare to contest the notice, but Cloudflare did not respond to or even acknowledge receipt of his counter notice. Instead, Cloudflare sent a second email warning Senk of the alleged infringement, but once again, Cloudflare failed to respond to his counter notice. I am generally a fan of Cloudflare and I think they are good players and good people, but this is something they really need to fix. The DMCA system is already heavily stacked against the little guy. The least Cloudflare (or any host) can do is listen to both parties. Ideally they should be a neutral arbiter. I use Cloudflare extensively and spend a lot per month with them, but this really gives me pause about whether I want to have CF hosting my actual content. I've never had a DMCA takedown claim against me, but I know people who have been abused by that process. It can really happen to anyone. Cloudflare, please don't be part of the problem. You've long been a champion of a more open web, one in which little people can operate. You've done more to enable creators like that than just about anyone I can think of. Please, don't be a facilitator or enabler for the DMCA bullies.
- ryandrake 2y agoFunny how companies (not only Cloudflare) are super-responsive when it comes to forwarding takedown notifications from other companies, but drag their feet and "forget" when it comes to doing the same for counter notifications, even though both are required by the DMCA. Also, funny how (to my knowledge) no company has been criminally prosecuted for filing a false DMCA takedown notice. Likely because you have to prove intent. The law is comically stacked against the little guy.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoI regularly receive DMCA outside of America, which I wished I could reply to "your law doesn't apply to me, cite the right one in my jurisdiction or get lost". But I can't. Because my hosting will process those by default and shut my sites down unless I just comply to the take down, no matter how legitimate it is. It can be even a bogus take down from a US point of view, or even a take down for a non existing content. Doesn't matter. I have to show that I comply, or 48h later, my server is shut down. That's seriously messed up.
- ape4 2y agoAfter its taken down, he can put up CrowdStink.lol
- annoyingnoob 2y agoClownStroke
- Mistletoe 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Nice job ClownStrike legal. I wouldn’t have heard of the site otherwise.
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussion at the time (1221 points, 5 days ago, 229 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133917
- CodeWriter23 2y agoThe thing about CloudFlare is, I'm fairly comfortable expecting one of their executives to appear out here in the next few hours to own and address this in a common sense way.
- account42 2y agoAdress it in a common sense way? You mean doing damage control for having fucked up yet again instead of dong the sensible thing in the first place.
- charles_f 2y agoFollowing the unfortunate announcement of our screw-up that resulted in what some (unfairly) qualify as the outage of the century, rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to keep our customers happy and as uninformed as possible. Since we're very, very sowy, and since we said "we're sowy", we don't appreciate people making fun of us. Please stop ridiculing us, or say mean things about us. In fact: we'd appreciate you leave us alone, it's already a hard time for us. Dont talk about us, unless, of course to pay us a compliment.
- gmerc 2y agoat least clownstrike.com goes to the real clowns
- willguest 2y ago> just big companies using big processes Too big to care?
- khanan 2y agoHuge disappointment in Cloudflare right there. This needs to be remedied immediately!
- danielspace23 2y ago> [Senk] told Ars he is "a proponent of decentralization." sounds funny when talking about a guy who hosted their site on Cloudflare.
- oddevan 2y agoIt's impossible to be ideologically pure with every single decision. We live in a messy world. In this case, I think he could be forgiven for (a) wanting to use his existing skillset to get his site online quickly and reliably and/or (b) actually believing that Cloudflare—based on previous actions—would robustly defend his site.
- account42 2y agoYou can get your site online just as quick without Buttflare. If anything, adding a reverse proxy is additional work you would otherwise not have to do.
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoIt's possible to support things without being fully invested personally in the idea. Does every proponent of decentralization also live off-the-grid and make computers by mining silicon by hand?
- danielspace23 2y agoThat's not really the same thing though, is it? You have to specifically opt into hosting your website on Cloudflare instead of any alternative, while knowing that it's one of the options more against your ideals. It takes the same effort to host a website on Cloudflare as it takes to go with any of the alternatives, like Netlify, Github Pages and Codeberg Pages (even better!). And all those options are free, too!
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoOkay that's your opinion on which service is "Better" or "Morally Superior" or whatever, I wasn't aware of any common agreements on the moral hierarchy of cloud hosting services. GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and they are pretty low on my list of companies I wish to work with
- josefritzishere 2y agoHilarious trolling. Crowdstrike falling into the trap only makes it funnier.
- amne 2y agois this dmca complaint the second thing (that we know about) from crowdstrike they release without following the proper processes?
- monksy 2y agoCrowdstrike yet again attempts to use the legal system to avoid responsiblity for their actions (theres talk right now if they'll be held financially responsible for the damage caused), fix thier PR (the Delta v Crowdstrike), and demonstrate that they will bully people engaging in fair use parody (clownstrike).
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoEvery court officer who signs off on a bogus DMCA notice is violating their oath and is subject to disciplinary action. They are also committing barratry which appears to be a civil tort in some states.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoI don't believe any court officer is necessary for a DMCA notice.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoIf corporate counsel was involved in the decision to issue the notice they are culpable even if they had a lackey put their name on it.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoCorporate counsel is a seperate thing to a court officer to me, a court officer would be employed by the court. Ignoring that, there doesn't seem to be any provision for punishing a false DMCA claim.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoEvery lawyer licensed by a bar association is a court officer.
- boomboomsubban 2y agoI searched the term before posting, and got this https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-to-become-court-officer https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-to-be... and similar results. So that's what I assumed you meant. And that said, I don't think you need to be a lawyer to submit a DMCA claim. You or I could and I'm not a lawyer at least.
- 2y ago
- RIMR 2y agoWhy do businesses insist on learning about the Streisand Effect the hard way? I would never have known about this low-effort parody site, and even if I did learn about it is of poor enough quality that I would never have shared it. But now I am 100% behind this site, and interested in spreading the word, since it apparently touches a nerve.
- RIMR 2y ago[flagged]
- frereubu 2y agoI set up a site around 20 years ago - now on https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/ https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/ - and got threatened with a lawsuit by Dannon / Danone. I had to give them the first domain because it was a trademark (but not before I'd set up a 301 redirect and let Google catch up with the change). That was in more innocent pre-DCMA times when corporations wouldn't really know how to contact an ISP and get something banned without getting lawyers involved. I enjoyed a realtively long email correspondence with what I hope was a very expensive lawyer from Danone. Edit: I set up the site on bifidusdigestivum.com after getting too irritated by adverts where they talked about their amazing bacteria "Bifidus Digesivum", which was just so ridiculous I found out as much as I could about it and wrote about it in as SEO-friendly a way as possible so anyone searching for it found my site. It's had something like 1.5m views since then, and still gets 400-500 visits a month. Not huge in the grand scheme of things, but it still gives me a chuckle every now and then when I remember it.
- lemarchr 2y agoThe comments section gives me intense astroturfing vibes, especially the way it abruptly starts and stops between 2014. Edit: Although the negative comments stop too. Maybe people were just more passionate about yoghurt a decade ago.
- frereubu 2y agoYeah, it was kind of weird - pretty sure the positive comments about it weren't organic, but there are some other anti comments that didn't feel quite right either. I'm not even sure if the comment section works any more!
- mewse-hn 2y agoThey way this story usually goes: hosts are legally required to respond to dmca takedown requests as quickly as possible, please spare me the outrage. In this case: cloudflare claims they never received any counter-notices from the parody guy (he sent two), and sent a weak "we would've helped you" after he moved the site off their services and they started getting negative attention. They screwed up royally.
- gwbas1c 2y agoI vaguely remember that copyright law allows for damages for bogus copyright violation claims. I wonder if this is warranted here?
- boomboomsubban 2y agoIt's absurd that they're attempting to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to enforce their trademark, and from their reply they seem to have made the same move to 500 other websites without any recourse. I hate that companies have seen how places react to DMCA takedown requests and have responded by trying to force everything into a DMCA takedown request. Using it to avoid the necessary steps for a circumvention bypass was bad enough, trademark is covered by a whole range of unrelated laws.
- scotty79 2y agoIsn't spurious DMCA request criminal?
- smsm42 2y agoOnly if you claim that you own copyright that you don't, and even that probably won't be prosecuted. E.g. see: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-been-convicted-of-perjury-for-false-dmca-takedown-notices https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-bee...
- scotty79 2y agoSo I could just draw a picture, call it Iron Man, never publish it and then send DMCA requests to all people who do anything with Marvel's Iron Man telling them to stop because they violate my copyright to my Iron Man? I own copyright to my Iron Man and I can't be blamed for being misunderstood, right? Or maybe I could name my drawing Iron Men? Blame mistargetting the DMCA on overzealous AI bot?
- boomboomsubban 2y agoWhether that approach would succeed in taking anything down is unclear, but I find it hard to imagine the DMCA claim going to court unless you idiotically sued Marvel. Marvel might have a case against you for copyright or trademark infringement, and pleading ignorance probably won't fly there.
- kornhole 2y agoIf you think Crowdstrike and Cloudflare are not political actors used to take down undesired speech and speakers, remember Kiwifarms and Russiagate. https://yandex.com/search?text=bill+binney+crowdstrike https://yandex.com/search?text=bill+binney+crowdstrike
- move-on-by 2y agoWho is hosting it now? I’m inspired by this website, and hope maybe one day I can have a parody website made popular by the Streisand effect. But who should I use to host it? Who should I use as a registrar? I’m a Cloudflare customer, but it’s clear I cannot trust them in this endeavor. Edit: I did some searching and it looks like it might be hetzner.com hosting it now?
- mikeyinternews 2y agoWhy is he using the CSC logo?
- o11c 2y ago"Apparently, Cloudflare never received" is a much bigger deal than anything else surrounding this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- butz 2y agoI think we should make more parody sites.