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by henhouse 1714 days ago
Cloudflare forwards DMCA copyright infringement complaints to the hosting provider, probably automatically to an abuse@ domain that it can detect. I’m not sure if they do the same for any other copyright claims, but they do pass it on to the parties that should be involved.
2 comments

But don't they store the copyrighted content on their servers? It's one thing just to be a transit mechanism it's another thing to store and serve copyrighted material like a hosting a provider.
If someone ships drugs through UPS, and it sits in a UPS warehouse for a few days, did UPS store drugs? Technically yes, but should they be liable for that?
If UPS finds drugs, they call the cops and you are probably better off not having that package delivered. If someone tells Cloudflare they are hosting copyright-infringing content.. they sue to say the Cloudflare service is ineffective and does nothing to provide the infringing content?

Is this the analogy you were going for?

Except UPS doesn't find drugs because they don't look for it. Just like Cloudflare doesn't look for illegal content.

If someone told UPS a package has drugs in it, they'd say, "that's nice, talk to the sender" and then deliver the package. If someone tells Cloudflare, "that content is illegal", they say, "that's nice, talk to the site owner".

> If someone told UPS a package has drugs in it, they'd say, "that's nice, talk to the sender" and then deliver the package.

Would they? Or would they turn the package over to the police?

Usually, people don't tell UPS they have a drugs package, they tell the police directly and the police go and work with UPS. That's the issue with many of these analogies, people don't talk to the car dealership/UPS/landlord/hotel staff/etc, they talk to the authorities because that's the normal thing to do.
In this case, it would be like if you told UPS someone is continuously shipping drugs through their system, and they said 'that's fine they are a paying customer' and continued to let them traffick with their infrastructure, rather than contact the police. At a certain point UPS is complicit and could be charged themselves even.
So what should UPS do? Open a box because someone claimed something potentially illegal is in the box? What if UPS does not have the tools or right to open the container and determine that the thing is actual illegal drugs, do they now need a drugs lab and drugs experts?

Isn't more simple and correct that you contact police directly, present the evidence, have the authorized person to decide if the thing you claim is illegal or that the evidence is convincing then intercept the package.

UPS already doesn't consider their customers packages private property and does in fact open boxes that are deemed suspicious. But even then, cloudflare isn't even doign the latter. They aren't bringing this information to the police, they are continuing to collect money from the phisher and stonewalling OP until he shows up with a lawyer and a much bigger can of worms for them.
You are ignoring my main point, CloudFlare should act for each complaint? Like some Skyrim modder bitches that someone stole a texture from his mod , then what ? An employee starts an investigation to determine who is right?

Like in the case with a website, some dude complains that some other dude stole some css, now you need a detective to find the real author, licenses and then detect if is fair us ... this seems to be a job for police/justice. It is not a clear case like you are hosting an entire Disney movie.

If someone reported it to UPS and they didn’t do anything. UPS would be complicit. Just like if someone sent a CDN a DMCA notice. Justice do prosecute the shipping companies for illegal materials that use their network.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/ups-agrees-forfeit-40-m...

Well, they don’t _not_ store it - their whole dealio is they cache website content on their servers. Not forever, but they’re not just a transit mechanism.
They cache it across a geographically-distributed network of edge nodes, even. Potentially very hairy if this had gone south for them.
> But don't they store the copyrighted content on their servers?

IF they cache content, then they do store that content though, that's the whole idea behind caching.

I have never seen these work. I've submitted a couple and they just go into a blackhole, never to hear from their hosting provider.