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Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#71

Post by globie »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #59
globie wrote: post #41

Of course it could claim lives. Hopefully Prince has considered people have also likely died as a result of Cloudflare's repeating captcha which holds the next page in front of you like a carrot on a stick, never letting you know that you will be clicking that box forever. I'm sure while someone's in the process of keeling over is the perfect time to arbitrarily scrutinize their connecting details. You need to contac…

What’s the alternative solution? We also don’t want to have critical services DDoS’d or spammed.

Simple: Connect larger NICs and do "dumb" DDoS filtering at your fattest point.

Consider an HTTP daemon serving static content on a physical server. If that physical server has a 10Gig NIC it will withstand 90%[0] of the real-world DDoS attacks which would affect the same server with a 1Gig NIC.

"Dumb" DDoS filtering means blocking UDP and SYN floods, and other simple attacks. Your goal is essentially to block traffic which could be spoofed, making your downstream traffic somewhat attributable. Many ISPs provide functions like this, and is not nearly as complicated or invasive as letting Cloudflare MITM every bit of your traffic.

Any effort past that point should just be made in caching static assets, and optimizing dynamic pages. If your website uses sessions, you can implement basic rate controls very easily. No WAF required!

[0]: I made it up

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#73

Post by fidotron »

vessenes wrote: post #39

I was unaware of this controversy so in brief: 1. La Liga (Spanish Football) finds pirates streaming their games objectionable 2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing. 3. They appear in court in Spain and get an ex-parte TRO blocking all Cloudflare IPs. (Ex parte TRO: restraining order granted without Cloudflare being summoned to court) 4. Based on t…

> 2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing.

And DDoS protection.

Sports broadcast piracy has a history of serious organized crime involvement, and then some, such as https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/13/murdoch_company_crack... where the allegation was NDS did the hacking and leaked the keys of the rival tech to various mob groups for exploitation.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#75

Post by stego-tech »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #59
globie wrote: post #41

Of course it could claim lives. Hopefully Prince has considered people have also likely died as a result of Cloudflare's repeating captcha which holds the next page in front of you like a carrot on a stick, never letting you know that you will be clicking that box forever. I'm sure while someone's in the process of keeling over is the perfect time to arbitrarily scrutinize their connecting details. You need to contac…

What’s the alternative solution? We also don’t want to have critical services DDoS’d or spammed.

Then maybe don’t put critical services on the open internet. I know most tech people would balk at such a possibility, but the status quo isn’t really compatible with either long-term goal:

* If we want the internet to be a place of anonymity and free speech, then we shouldn’t be putting critical services on the public internet - or we need to stop using intermediaries like Cloudflare where a single court order could disrupt legal services

OR

* If we want critical services online and widely available, then verifiable identity is a must from the outset, such that these sorts of blocks can be highly targeted when enforced.

Piracy exists between those two forces: an anonymous internet would be rife with piracy, while an authenticated internet would see minimal amounts of it because it’s so easily eradicated. Coexistence of both worked because the internet was optional, which is no longer the case.

But nobody wants to talk about that, I find. Everyone wants the status quo to continue unabated forever, because it’s familiar. Familiarity does not mean permanent, though.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#76

Post by Beijinger »

candiddevmike wrote: post #58
vessenes wrote: post #39

I was unaware of this controversy so in brief: 1. La Liga (Spanish Football) finds pirates streaming their games objectionable 2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing. 3. They appear in court in Spain and get an ex-parte TRO blocking all Cloudflare IPs. (Ex parte TRO: restraining order granted without Cloudflare being summoned to court) 4. Based on t…

Cloudflare becoming Too Big To Block. Sounds like it should become a utility.

[flagged]

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#77

Post by brookst »

globie wrote: post #41

Of course it could claim lives. Hopefully Prince has considered people have also likely died as a result of Cloudflare's repeating captcha which holds the next page in front of you like a carrot on a stick, never letting you know that you will be clicking that box forever. I'm sure while someone's in the process of keeling over is the perfect time to arbitrarily scrutinize their connecting details. You need to contac…

As someone who implemented cloudflare because of a massive DDOS and bot problem, sorry, but I will cheerfully allow 1% of my visitors to find the site unusable rather than 100%.

It sucks, but no sane business would be so invested in equality of experience that they’d allow it to be completely broken for everyone.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#78

Post by jfengel »

candiddevmike wrote: post #58
vessenes wrote: post #39

I was unaware of this controversy so in brief: 1. La Liga (Spanish Football) finds pirates streaming their games objectionable 2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing. 3. They appear in court in Spain and get an ex-parte TRO blocking all Cloudflare IPs. (Ex parte TRO: restraining order granted without Cloudflare being summoned to court) 4. Based on t…

Cloudflare becoming Too Big To Block. Sounds like it should become a utility.

Usually, they call that "nationalizing". For a worldwide company, would it be "globalizing"?

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#79

Post by brookst »

stego-tech wrote: post #75
spacebanana7 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative solution? We also don’t want to have critical services DDoS’d or spammed.

Then maybe don’t put critical services on the open internet. I know most tech people would balk at such a possibility, but the status quo isn’t really compatible with either long-term goal: * If we want the internet to be a place of anonymity and free speech, then we shouldn’t be putting critical services on the public internet - or we need to stop using intermediaries like Cloudflare where a single court order could…

What if there’s no singular “we” and different people / companies have different needs?

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#80

Post by stego-tech »

blibble wrote: post #6

sounds like centralising most of the the internet behind a single easy target (Cloudflare) is a bad idea

My sarcasm well is tapped, but this is why I was sus of CDNs like Cloudflare and Akamai at the outset. Yes, they’re highly convenient and enable more sites and services to weather large attacks or traffic spikes, but we willingly sunk a huge swath of the net behind a handful of for-profit entities and yet somehow expected nothing but sunshine and roses forever.

Stop. Trusting. Companies. To. Do. The. Right. Thing.

Cloudflare could’ve prevented this if they’d taken a stand on anything but profit motives, but they’ve repeatedly chosen not to. Piracy sites pay the bills just like Porn or Government sites, after all, and companies won’t turn down money unless forced to through regulation.

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