[amatecha]

Yeah, probably not - because they don't explicitly have to, as outlined in the post. The very architecture of CF's services essentially enables "blackmail as a service" in the sense that, CF protects the attacker and essentially creates a coercive environment in which the victim "has" to pay CF to protect them from... the very attacker that CF protects.

[Dylan16807]

> and essentially creates a coercive environment

This is the part that's wrong. CF is not creating the fact that sites are vulnerable to DDoS, and these attacks would happen even if the sites were kicked off.

If some guys are going around slashing tires, would we demand that tire repair shops not sell to them? Would we say it's blackmail because the tire shop sells to anyone, and selling tires to them "creates a coercive environment"?

[xorcist]

A tire repair shop that also hosted a the National Tire Slashing Club for free in the back?

I think it's fair to assume that would cause some reactions.

[Dylan16807]

That gets confusing because it sounds like a special thing they're doing in addition to their main function.

If the back of the store was a convention center that allowed basically any small club to use it for free, and of their many thousands of hosted clubs one or two were focused around tire slashing, that wouldn't cause the same reactions.