
‘Daily Stormer’ Termination Haunts Cloudflare in Online Piracy Case - vespian
https://torrentfreak.com/daily-stormer-termination-haunts-cloudflare-in-online-piracy-case-170929/
======
alecco
Besides the politics, this was a very stupid move by Cloudflare. Cloudflare
set up a limit to what they allow or not so now they will have to fight where
that limit is. It can become death by a thousand papercuts. It'll start from
the most controversial ones like child stuff and revenge porn. Then will keep
moving, scandal by scandal.

Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't tolerate the intolerant (e.g.
nazis/terrorists), but who decides what belongs in that category is a huge
problem that shouldn't be in the hands of a private tech company.

See how Google/YouTube/Twitter did mass bans and ended up including people
like Jordan Peterson.

~~~
marindez
Not tolerating the intolerant makes you an intolerant too.

~~~
moomin
Nah. Read your Popper or your Rawls. Every modern moral philosopher has come
to the same conclusion: intolerance of intolerance is a practical necessity to
the maintenance of a tolerant society.

I could give you the canonical example of why that's the case, but I'd trip
the Godwin wire.

~~~
vim_wannabe
The good thing about Popper and 'intolerance of intolerance' is with the moral
high ground you can use whatever force is necessary while setting 'intolerant
behavior' as a moving goalpost.

Today it's 'mildly sceptical over mass immigration'. Tomorrow it's 'not
advocating for free healthcare'.

~~~
moomin
The great thing about tolerating intolerance is that you can have people shot
in the streets and pretend it's nothing to do with you.

Every slope is slippery.

~~~
vim_wannabe
I dunno, that sounds like a crime though.

~~~
_jal
Which leads to other complications. Who enforces the law when the police are
the law breakers?

~~~
occultist_throw
Depending on which school of though...

If you refer to peaceful methods, then look no further than Ghandi and MLK.
Protest peacefully. Make them raise their fist. And record it, tell the
stories, reduce their mandate.

If you come from Malcolm X's or IRA's point of view: assassinations, military-
like strikes, and generally war.

I reserve judgement on which way is better.

~~~
moomin
Then of course there's Nelson Mandela. He started with peaceful means, came to
the conclusion it was ineffective in his case and turned to violence. Later he
refused opportunities to leave prison that would have required him to renounce
violence. Ultimately, he didn't need to fire a shot after he was released but
he would have done so with a clear conscience. Non-violence can be a moral
choice, but so can violence in the face of great, violent injustice.

Of course, we're assuming asymmetric warfare here. No-one honestly believes
FDR was wrong to declare war on Japan.

------
dawnbreez
Regardless of the political causes in question, it's nice to see that the CEO
is being held accountable. And he seems to be a responsible person, judging by
the concern he expressed over his own actions.

It's easy to say that we should take every opportunity we can to fight Nazis.
It's much harder to explain why we really should stop and think before trying
to enact vigilante justice. This is one of the reasons why; vigilante justice
is hard to enforce equally and fairly, and raises the question of how
impartial and fair the vigilante is.

~~~
Clubber
>It's easy to say that we should take every opportunity we can to fight Nazis.

We fought the Nazis in 1941-1945. These guys aren't Nazis, they're angry,
misguided white people trying to look tough. Why is this an important
distinction? If we as a society are going to upend core values and norms, we
need to have a damn good reason.

If I were a cynic (which I sometimes am), I would say this guy was trying to
ride a political wave and it is now biting him (and us) in the ass. DCMA
takedown without a warrant is bad for everybody. It sounds like there is a
decent chance he just squandered that to score a political point that no one
will remember 6 months from now.

Politics and business don't mix, regardless of how much of a "slam dunk" it
seems.

~~~
Mithaldu
I'm a german who spent 6+ years of his school life continuously learning about
nazis, lived for the first 25 years of his life in a town where i saw people
in nazi attire on my way home or shopping every single day and always kept a
key ring at the read, and is from a voting district that voted 20%+ for a
party whose leadership explicitly hires neo nazis as security for
demonstrations, a town where the lamp posts on the 200m way from my apartment
to the shopping centers call for violence against foreigners.

And i have to say:

Those guys are nazis. They believe in fascism being the good and right way of
the world. They hate people who're unlike them.

Don't try to sugarcoat them.

~~~
Clubber
I was specifically referring to the US flavor of Neo-Natzism. I'm unfamiliar
with the current German flavor. The US flavor seems to be all talk. For
example, the leader of the Charlottesville protests where the lady was run
over and killed, cried on the internet when he found out the cops were going
to arrest him. They act fierce, but when it comes down to it, they're all
talk.

~~~
Mithaldu
Fwiw, i've read people say that that was fake to garner publicity. Part of the
"spread the message to 10000 people even if it makes you look bad to most of
them, if it means reaching the 10 among them who'd sympathize with it" thing.

Also, as a german again: There's no useful difference between action and talk,
especially in peace times. The holocaust was at its root caused by words after
all.

~~~
Clubber
I think the 60 minutes interview with him did a much better job of
disseminating his rhetoric. It probably had 10 million viewers on airing, and
several million more after. This was of course a direct result of the antifa
movement's attempt to protest / silence them in Charlottesville. I believe
this is a textbook definition of irony. I guess my biggest protest against
silencing groups like this is more times than not, it does the opposite.

>There's no useful difference between action and talk, especially in peace
times.

We'll have to agree to disagree. Wanting to murder someone and actually
murdering them has an ocean of difference.

~~~
Mithaldu
> We'll have to agree to disagree. Wanting to murder someone and actually
> murdering them has an ocean of difference.

If unopposed both lead to the same result.

------
moomin
Booting Daily Stormer has definitely caused problems in their case, but let's
be real here: 1) DS hasn't in fact been kicked off the Internet. 2) There's a
huge difference between being a _possible_ copyright infringer and a
_declared_ Nazi. 3) DS hasn't engaged in the kind of identity-cloaking whack-
a-mole so beloved of copyright infringers.

I'm sure any competent lawyer could add another 20 points off the top of their
head. In short, yeah it complicates the case, but the fat lady hasn't even
cleared her throat.

~~~
blfr
DS has in fact been kicked off the Internet although not by Cloudflare
(replaced with BitMitigate[1]) but by registrars/registries. They are
currently on their nth domain name and these keep getting yanked.

What I wonder about is why they're not using a .us domain. Its operators
should be bound by the US first amendment since they derive their monopoly
from the USG. Maybe it's an elaborate troll. Especially since they're now on
.cat.

Either way, the abandonment of free speech on the Internet by the companies
which benefited the most from it is very worrisome.

[1] [https://bitmitigate.com/a-commitment-to-
liberty.html](https://bitmitigate.com/a-commitment-to-liberty.html)

~~~
orwin
But the abandonment of free speech by _private_ company, while worrisome, is
very understandable. Internet and the SV made everyone more utilitarist. A lot
of CEO (or website owner) think that way: it may not be very legal, but since
it reduce cost and make more people happy than it make people unhappy, it
should be fine. But from an utilitarist point of view, intolerance have a huge
cost and create more unhappy people (not talking about violence, just people
being the target of this intolerance) than happy people. Therefore, intolerant
behavior should be stopped if there is some possibility.

Now, of course this was a mistake, but this mistake is understandable.

(I'm more of a negative utilitarist myself, but this work the same way)

~~~
moomin
Consider this: spam is speech too. No-one's seriously suggesting Twitter and
Facebook shouldn't clamp down on that.

------
kevmo
This isn't that haunting. It's just another iteration of well-funded standard
lawyer games. CEO foresaw this kind of stuff before he undertook the action.

If you're looking for a sympathetic plaintiff, Nazis aren't a good place to
hang your hat.

~~~
cabaalis
> If you're looking for a sympathetic plaintiff, Nazis aren't a good place to
> hang your hat.

Perhaps not a popular choice, but the constitution and bill of rights did not
have an "unless you're a nazi" clause.

~~~
baby
I'm not American, so I'm not going to quote the constitution, I'll say I'm
comfortable not giving rights to Nazis and no there are no slippery slopes.

~~~
orangecat
_there are no slippery slopes_

Of course there are. Progressives are constantly widening the definition of
"Nazi" so that it now includes people like Charles Murray and Ben Shapiro.
Combine that with their moral imperative to punch Nazis, and it quickly gets
unpleasant.

------
refurb
This is one of those unintended consequences that highlight the value of good
legal representation.

CEO shuts down website lickity split, but then claims in court he can't stop a
piracy site.

I've had this happen before at work where legal has told me "if you ask that
question it will come back to bite us since if something bad comes up, it will
show we knew nefarious behavior was happening. Better to not ask at all."

------
lern_too_spel
Where were these "free speech" activists when ISIS recruiters' online accounts
were shut down? It's different when the lives endangered by violence-inciting
speech include your own.

Germany learned a lesson on violent speech after the Holocaust, but many in
the US keep their heads in the sand despite the violent oppression of blacks
and gays in recent history. I blame it on the religion of Libertarianism,
which promotes the nonsensical belief that the invisible hand is benevolent.

------
nebabyte
> “By his own admissions, Mr. Prince’s decision to terminate certain users’
> accounts was ‘arbitrary,’ the result of him waking up ‘in a bad mood,’ and a
> decision he made unilaterally as ‘CEO of a major Internet infrastructure
> corporation’

I'm actually amazed that's from the press release they put out.

~~~
icebraining
_I 'm actually amazed that's from the press release they put out._

It's not, though. It's from an internal email that was leaked.

------
toomuchtodo
Called it in the Daily Stormer thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032517)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032956)

------
baby
Props to Cloudflare for evicting DS and dealing with subsequent bullshit. Some
people might think it's a bad move, I'll just say I'm glad you guys acted.

------
aaron695
I really like the fact he said I'm being a dick and it's a dick move but it
still was at the end of the day a dick move.

Cred for saying it, it's better than most companies but still he kowtowed on
such a important decision, freedom of speech and will the Valley uphold it and
failed. Little sympathy really should be given. Just cred for calling it.

------
tryingagainbro
_“I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the
Internet,”_

He should be FIRED by the board. Decisions on what speech to ban should be
decided by an ethics committee not by a guy that awoke up on the wrong side of
the bed. Because such decisions have consequences, major ones.

edit: "Ban" was supposed to be keep off their network...and I understand the
difference between state and private actions. State can't but private
companies can.

~~~
eugeniub
He's not banning the speech lol he's not the government.

~~~
tryingagainbro
Good thing you lol-d at least. Now the lawsuit isn't it because they chose
what to keep in their network ad what to boot? In other words, they
editorialized.

 _he 's not the government._ I know, I guess he can legally ban the, say, the
Democratic point of view out of his network. But it a wise move?

