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Cloudflare Starts Blocking Pirate Sites for UK Users

10 months ago
  • #Cloudflare
  • #Piracy
  • #Internet Censorship
  • Major UK ISPs like BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet comply with High Court blocking injunctions against pirate sites.
  • A new wave of blocking targets around 200 pirate site domains, with Cloudflare unexpectedly involved, displaying Error 451 for legal reasons.
  • Cloudflare's blocking policy emphasizes proportionality, due process, and transparency, but details of the legal order remain unclear.
  • Transparency issues persist as there's no central repository for blocking orders, and public access to injunction details is limited.
  • Dynamic injunctions allow for the blocking of additional domains linked to original orders without public disclosure.
  • Cloudflare uses geo-blocking in the UK, affecting VPN users attempting to access blocked domains from UK servers.
  • The scale of blocking could involve hundreds or thousands of domains, primarily targeting sites with serious malware warnings.