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How does Cloudflare treat DMCA?
Hello all,
I’ve found many piracy sites use Cloudflare as a CDN, which by extension ‘masks’ the real origin IP.
Reading Cloudflare’s website, I’ve found that they forward DMCA takedown requests rather than act on it.
Does this mean that if the origin server is DMCA ignored, there is a certain level of ‘immunity’ to DMCA takedowns? I haven’t found this anywhere in Cloudflare terms, but does Cloudflare reveal your contact information to anyone who files a DMCA takedown, or will they only do this under court order?
Is it known that Cloudflare will deactivate your account due to DMCA complaints?
I have a bit of paranoia as I am currently hosting a small amount of document archives offshore and would like to ideally keep anonymity as well as ensure the operation of the site.
Is it a better idea to skip Cloudflare and just go straight to offshore server?
Cheers.
Comments
They do mostly just forward.
Yeah there is, though I wouldn't bet on it too hard. Cloudflare is just a compay afterall, and will most likely comply if they receive a court order or enough notices.
They probably don't, though as always, after enough DMCA notices, depending on what you are hosting, courts might get involved.
Also with this: I'm not 100% sure that the above is definitely true, though considering the fact that if someone would share my details, I'd be pretty mad [esp. as fake DMCA exists]
In this case, if you fear this so much: just host directly. It doesn't even matter that Cloudflare might have a low chance of taking down your account/forwarding your details. You'll just sleep better knowing Cloudflare isn't involved.
cloudflare never cares they only forward to host no matter how many dmca you get, they can reveal your info/ip address if they get court order so just make an account with vpn
they will only care if it is hosted under their platform (streams/R2/workers/etc)
Does the Dutch hosting service disregard copyright?
These i can state from experience:
Cloudflare ONLY forwards complaints to your origin provider without even as little as telling the complainant the name of the Provider.
In my over 10 years in the space, I am yet to hear of any website being kicked off CF.
"Offshore" is not entirely a safe haven, it is basically a provider who fits one or more of the following:
i. Operating in a country where laws are either brittle compared to the countries of your anticipated complainants.
ii. Lenient in enforcing the laws of other countries until the complaint comes from within their operating country and is based on their local law.
iii. Yet to receive an official complaint from local authorities regarding your service.
Cloudflare protection adds another layer to the hurdles that anticipated complainants have to scale.
Using your "offshore" service outside CF, makes the job easier for complainants. With enough determination and resources, they can stir things up for the provider in the local country and in the end, they may only have to kick you out of their service at best.
Thank you for informing me.
As far as I know after getting DMCA'ed when using Cloudflare, they only forward complaints. They never deactivate your account because of DMCA, unless you are using too much of their free tier, e.g too much bandwidth, they will ask you to upgrade uour plan or GTFO.
they're only forward to owner IP
Unless they get a court order, they only forward complains and not suspend.
I wonder what happens if I use their 'Zero Trust' Tunnels feature. Would this count as 'Cloudflare hosted', they basically don't have anyone to forward the complaint to.
well they do know the IPs used from your side to connect to their tunnel. literally on the ZT dashboard
but are they integrated with their dmca/reporting system? idk and seems to be a FAFO thingy
yeah that's true, everything can be traced back to your IP
they probably have every piece of information about me, no point worrying lol
you need a real court order in the US to block a domain using Cloudflare CDN, that gonna cost some, sending abuse email do not work, CF only forward the email to your hosting provider
i will not skip CF, because the so called offshore hosting provider do NOT like tons of abuse emails, they will let you move, using CF will reduce the number of abuse emails, because CF will not forward every email they received
They forward it to the abuse contact of your ISP or server admin. However you can get around that by placing a vpn/proxy in front, as detailed here. Note, however, that you cannot stream video this way.
Have you considered that Cloudflare can still be compelled to act by a court order, even if they generally just forward DMCA notices? For true immunity from such issues, your origin host needs to be completely resistant to takedowns. Skipping Cloudflare and going direct to a bulletproof offshore host simplifies the chain of responsibility and might give you more peace of mind regarding anonymity and site operation.
I've definitely seen the forwarded complaints. Only website I can recall being kicked off Cloudflare was The Daily Stormer, not to say there haven't been others.
That said, is a Tor hidden service not an option for you? I realize it limits your audience.
Cheap "offshore" VPS used as a reverse proxy to some cheaper mainstream host. That's how it's usually done.
We own the IPs.
Does this mean we can host anything on Cloudflare without consequences?
Yes, brother, you told the truth !!
Cloudflare adds banner for phishing/malware + they reveal your organisation (and probably IP) on court request so you will get sued eventually
Trump has direct tail -f to traffic.log in CF. Be careful.
Cloudflare forwards DMCA reports to the origin hosting provider.
Cloudflare pass all available data of its customers when DMCA moguls demands it. Also suspension of accounts happen.
The jurisdiction the request comes from also matters. A court order from specific countries is required for a ban.
If you are big enough to care about - no jurisdiction will save you.
To be extremely blunt, Cloudflare will never act on DMCA, not once have they done that to any of our clients, its the same routine they will forward the complaint to you and you do with it what you will, they will tell the complainant or law enforcement the origin IP address so they can tackle you head on but beyond that CF does not care about DMCA (which is good)
Not even.
I think they just forward unless they have to hand it over via subpoena or the likes
You are right to a degree, I remembered wrong, there have been two specific cases where Law enforcement has reached out to us with direct IP from CloudFlare, it would fall under the Emergency Requests section on their site, which is there for Law Enforcement specific email if the case is imminent danger of death or injury to any person, or what we all hate in this world CSAM. I misremembered, thanks for the correction, normal situations require the judicial process.
Only the origin IP? They wouldn't actually reveal an account holder's personal details (name, address, email, etc.) to every dingbat filing a DMCA with them, right?
Or, should we be making new CF accts with fake deets through a VPN?
No, not at all they don't divulge it to just anyone, only authenticated law enforcement. For example I know for a fact through a contact of mine that they have a specific email on cloudflare, when you email that and you are verified police, they will reveal the host IP behind the domain that is proxying through cloudflare, this has been known but if I were to just ask them to give me the IP they wouldn't do that. I am no one to them.