
CloudFlare and Free Speech - jgrahamc
http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech
======
cosmie
I really dislike reporters with biased/loaded questions.

I was once on the operating side of a site that was controversial to several
traditional/entrenched industries, but we were just a small little flea to
them and they ignored us (for those that even noticed). Until a lovely blogger
happened upon our site and decided to write a story about how innovative we
were. All of a sudden we started getting C&D letters from very large firms
that had tenuous (but expensive to litigate) claims against us. Turned out the
bloody blogger had gone around asking loaded questions to them all about how
we were undermining the industries' business model and what they planned to do
about it. Once it was put to them in that way, we were no longer an annoying
flea but a blood-sucking tick that needed burned. We had to shutdown because
of that. :(

I can forgive uninformed people inadvertently asking loaded questions, because
it takes practice and effort to be unbiased. However, it is inexcusable for
the media to do so (even if it is par for the course).

~~~
bigiain
"James Cook, have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

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devindotcom
What sort of magazine attempts to intimidate the objects of its reportage by
front-loading FUD (and poorly informed FUD at that) into its inquiries?

Not the sort of magazine that anyone here would read or support, I would
hazard. Let these hacks run themselves into the ground — for the second time,
apparently.

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Terretta
Kudos to CloudFlare for expressing a human voice, and a humanist response.

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msantos
I agree with CloudFlare for taking a stand and making it public - I'm a huge
fan of their work and John's.

Surely CloudFlare just like any other company should take a stand against
possibly pretentious bloggers, but the whole america-land-of-the-free is
tiring, more so given the recent spying disclosures brought to light by
Snowden and others.

~~~
jgrahamc
_I 'm a huge fan of their work and John's_

Don't be a fan of me; I'm just a guy doing stuff some of it total crap.

~~~
hpocr1t
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4664938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4664938)

How come you don't step away from being associated from distasteful content
here?

~~~
jgrahamc
I answered your question in the thread you cite.

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ScottWhigham
_I 'm curious if the blogger would ask the same of Google? A quick search
shows that Google has about 334,000 pages from the site in question in its
cache. Would the blogger suggest that Google should be required not to index
this website?_

It's a faulty analogy IMO. Cloudflare chooses to let this company pay
CloudFare for services provided. It is 100% CF's choice as to whether they
accept this person/company as a paying customer. Google isn't asking for money
for their index. There's a massive difference there. In one case, the paying
customer agrees to follow CF's TOS. In the other case, Google agrees to follow
the site's robots.txt and meta tags (which operate almost as a proxy for a
TOS).

 _No, nor would it be right for us to monitor the content that flows through
our network and make determinations on what is and what is not politically
appropriate. Frankly, that would be creepy._

This reads as, "We don't have any filters whatsoever - anyone can be a paying
customer and, as long as they pay their bill, we'll let them use our services
no matter what." That's just disingenuous - no company operates that way.
Take, for example, a case where Group A uses a CF-hosted site to attack Group
B. Group B complains to CF - does CF take the same stance? I doubt their
lawyers would approve. I suppose CF could now backtrack and say, "See that
line where we say 'politically appropriate' \- we're really talking about
censoring people, not about copyright/attacks/etc." If that's the case, they
need to take this post down and have a re-write in which they make it clear
what they mean.

Or what about DMCA takedown notices? Is CF's stance just to thumb their nose
at them and say, "Nope - we aren't even going to investigate."?

What about pirate sites - is CF saying, "We don't want to know. We're just
closing our eyes and ears and just letting whatever happens happen." Bull#%*^&

Perplexing.

~~~
Zikes
As the author repeats several times, they are not a hosting platform. They're
more of a cache. They're like a network through which web sites hosted on
other platforms can travel.

~~~
ScottWhigham
In a court of law in the situations I provided, would the difference you are
trying to argue (a semantic difference IMO) be satisfactory to a judge such
that the judge would eliminate CF from a lawsuit? Take your average judge - is
"They're more of a cache" as an argument going to be enough to convince
him/her to rule for CF? I think the answer is no. As with any case, "if you
can find a sympathetic judge, you can win" so sure - there are judges who will
choose to see a difference. But who wants to build a business strategy based
on finding a sympathetic judge if/when a major problem occurs?

~~~
eastdakota
There are explicit differences under the law. For example, see the difference
between DMCA §512(a) = network vs. §512(b) = cache vs. §512(c) = host.

------
ihsw
The article has a very interesting statement:

> A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it
> creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make
> determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may
> contain.

Replace _website_ with _song_ and _provider_ with _record label_ , and you'll
have a very familiar conversation from nearly 30 years ago:

Frank Zappa on Crossfire,
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc)

The comparison is loose, but it's eerily reminiscent.

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nilved
While very nicely written, I stopped using CloudFlare because of their
analytics (which they seem to use in blog posts, and cannot be disabled.) They
do watch your site and that is creepy.

~~~
samstave
How can they run their service if they don't have a solid understanding of the
flows and the consumption of resources their customers are using?

I don't think they watch your site in the way you mean it: they are content-
agnostic.

~~~
nilved
Any user should be able to opt out of per-site analytics. I don't use Google
Analytics or gaug.es or any of that junk because my users deserve better, so
tying analytics to your service is a good way to make me not use your service.

~~~
true_religion
I don't think you're going to find the majority of people supporting you if
you take a moralistic position on analytics software.

~~~
nilved
Tracking is tracking is tracking. What's wrong for Google is wrong for you.

~~~
smtddr
Your position is unsupportable. Anonymous analytics is not a threat.

What's next, I can't stand outside and record how many people walk by with
t-shirts versus long-sleeve shirts? That's how I see anonymous analytics. Now
if you want to argue that the analytics are not anonymous and they can be
linked to real people, like that one AOL search-data leak a few years back,
then that's a discussion. But you can't say websites/app collecting
_anonymous_ analytics is bad anymore than you can say me standing outside in
the city collecting visual info on the people walking by is somehow an
invasion of privacy. That's just paranoia. You might as well just not use the
internet at all if you're that worried because I'm sure whatever ISP you have
collects _some kind_ of analytics too. In fact, I'm sure just about every
successful business ever has some kind of stats on its users/costumers. You'll
just have to exit modern-society if you don't want anyone collecting anonymous
analytics from you.

~~~
nilved
That's a lot different than (e.g.) tracking somebody's click patterns on your
site to better serve them advertisements.

And there isn't such a thing as anonymous data in 2013: it's just data that
hasn't been identified yet. Surely a small portion of "anonymous" analytic
data can be used to match a user's two identities.

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coolnow
Wow, those leading questions are particularly sneaky.

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gojomo
I only regret that I have but one upvote to give for this post.

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phoboslab
So, 4chan, I guess?

~~~
ScottWhigham
I was guessing the pirate bay which has been down repeatedly lately according
to the headlines here

~~~
eastdakota
Nope. Controversial site is advocating for Chechen independence. Allegedly
linked to extremist activities.

~~~
foobarqux
In light of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project what is CloudFlare's argument
that you are not "providing material support to terrorists"?

