As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe.

As with any service of its size, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the company’s clientele includes many pirate sites. This includes the likes of The Pirate Bay.

In recent years many copyright holders have complained about Cloudflare’s involvement with these platforms. However, the company maintains its position as a neutral Internet intermediary.

Copyright holders can request Cloudflare to share which hosting company serves the underlying content, but the CDN provider doesn’t assume the role of copyright police. That is, it doesn’t terminate accounts for copyright infringement unless there’s a court order.

Considering this well-known stance, it came as a surprise when the owner of the video hosting service RapidVideo informed us late last year that Cloudflare suspended the site’s account.

While RapidVideo doesn’t see itself as a ‘pirate’ site, many copyright holders beg to differ. In fact, the website was reported as a notorious market to the US Government just a few months ago. 

Cloudflare’s didn’t suspend the site for copyright infringement though. Instead, support informed the owner that they took this action due to a breach of the terms. More specifically, because it exceeded the “limitation on Non-HTML Caching.”

As it turns out, Cloudflare can suspend the accounts of customers who use the service to cache a disproportionate amount of non-HTML files, including images, movies, or audio files. RapidVideo didn’t use Cloudflare to cache images, but it did cache video thumbnails through it.

Apparently, that was enough to trigger a suspension, the CDN’s support team informed the site owner.

“We are not a hosting provider nor do we allow our services to store files, or be linked to file storage sites. Using Cloudflare’s services primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a disproportionate percentage of images, movies, audio files or other non-HTML content is prohibited.”

After RapidVideo contacted us we learned that several other video hosting sites had suffered the same fate. Some of these were linked to major streaming sites and generated large amounts of traffic since they were caching video files.

RapidVideo’s operator told TorrentFreak that he believes that the number of DMCA complaints may have influenced this decision. The “non-HTML” rule may be a convenient option to throw out sites that could cause trouble, especially since Cloudflare has been taken to court over alleged copyright infringement a few times already.

Since many of the suspended sites are indeed branded as pirate services, we asked Cloudflare whether reported copyright infringements played a role in the suspension decisions. However, the company informed us that this was not the case.

“Cloudflare takes steps periodically to address the disproportionate caching of certain resources relative to the other traffic for a domain in a content-neutral way,” Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer says.

“This includes situations, covered in our Terms of Service, such as the streaming video/audio across our platform, as well as ‘file lockers’ sites which are not permitted,” he adds.

The response states that Cloudflare’s suspension decisions are content-neutral and not piracy related. According to Kramer, disproportionate caching activity could potentially lead to a negative impact on other Cloudflare users. 

But what about the statement that Cloudflare can’t be used to store files, or be linked to file storage sites? That suggests that file-hosting sites are simply outlawed. However, that’s not covered in the Terms of Service.

So it appears that these sites are ‘fine’ as long as they don’t cache a disproportionate amount of non-HTML content. This is likely what Mediafire does. As one of the largest file storage platforms on the Internet, Mediafire can still use Cloudflare without problems.

RapidVideo didn’t attempt to make amends. The site, which previously routed several terabytes of data through Cloudflare, moved on to Cloudflare competitor CloudDNS and continues to operate from there. 

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Last week the European Parliament and European Council agreed on the final text of the EU Copyright Directive.

Supporters of Article 13 say this will lead to a better deal for the entertainment industries at the expense of Google’s YouTube, since it will have to obtain proper licenses for content uploaded to platform, while taking responsibility for infringing uploads.

Opponents, on the other hand, believe that the Article 13 proposals will be bad news for the Internet as a whole, since they have the potential to stifle free speech and expression, at the very least.

It’s important to note that Article 13 opponents come in all shapes and sizes, some more militant than others. However, last Friday the EU Commission took the ‘one size fits all approach’ by labeling every dissenting voice as being part of a “mob”, one groomed, misinformed and misled by Google.

Given that the Commission’s own Code of Conduct mandates that “both Commissioners and Commission staff are bound to act objectively and impartially”, the publication of the piece was a real surprise. That it also appeared to demean and devalue the public protests of millions of its own citizens bordered on the outrageous.

Proponents and opponents of any pending legislation should be free to undermine the position of their opponents by any legal, non-violent means, but this intervention by the EU seemed flat-out wrong. Taking sides in this way – even if the piece had been against Article 13 – is inappropriate at this stage of the game.

Before we published our report on Friday, a short discussion here at TF concluded that a record of the piece should be taken. None of us here believed it would stay up for long and it transpires that gut instinct was right. Visitors to the Medium page where the piece was published now see the following text;

The piece appears to have been removed (archive copy here) following a torrent of complaints on social media, with supporters of Article 13 incensed that they were essentially being told they hadn’t made up their own minds about the proposed legislation, but had become mindless zombies hypnotized by an insidious Google campaign.

Whether there is any truth to claims that Google is behind some kind of ‘bot’ campaign will be for future dissection but organizations like the EU Commission shouldn’t go around implying that voters are stupid. They’re allowed to think it (don’t we all to a degree?), but saying it is incredible.

Quite why this line was crossed is anyone’s guess but someone reasonably important sanctioned this piece and it would be nice to know who – and why.

What is even more bewildering is that the Commission is not sorry for what was written. The article was removed not because it was incorrect, but because the public apparently doesn’t have the capacity to understand it. Evidently, a simple update and clarification wouldn’t have been understood either, hence the deletion of the entire piece.

Mentioning SOPA in the same breath as Article 13 always raises hackles among entertainment industry groups because there are plenty of legitimate reasons why they want it to be forgotten. Now, seven years on, they might finally get their wish because what is happening now is arguably much more ugly. This could be the new benchmark, the new low.

Let’s be absolutely clear and honest here. In common with every political campaign in history, there has been misinformation on both sides of the Article 13 debate. In the middle, however, are genuine people who either want to protect their creative revenues or keep their Internet free and open.

The bias presented in the piece by the EU Commission undermined the credibility of all of them. It doesn’t need to be explained, it speaks for itself.

If the music industries and the EU want to take on the dominance of Google, then they should do so. If Google is found to have done wrong in this campaign, then it should face whatever is coming. That said, why do hundreds of millions of citizens have to be caught in the crossfire?

George Carlin said we should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Or was that the EU Commission, I forget now.

What i’m absolutely certain of is that it was David Brent, the world’s greatest living philosopher, who said that when we treat people greatly, they will show themselves to be great. I guess it’s a bit late for that now.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Piracy settlement letters have become a serious threat in several countries.

Until now, Dutch Internet users have been spared from this practice, but if it’s up to local movie distributor Dutch Filmworks, that will soon change.

Little over a year ago the company received permission from the Dutch Data Protection Authority to track the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who shared pirated movies.

However, that was only the first hurdle, as Dutch Internet provider Ziggo didn’t want to share any customer data without a court order.

The case went to court, where the movie company requested personal details of 377 account holders whose addresses were used to share a copy of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”.

This turned out to be a disappointment for Dutch Filmworks (DWF). The court rejected the request, ruling that it’s unclear how the movie company plans to approach the account holders, and whether it sees these people as the offending downloaders.

In addition, it is unclear whether the proposed settlements, which are expected to be around €150 per infringement, do indeed match up with the actual damages the movie company suffered. That number may be a ‘fine’ to some extent, which shouldn’t be part of a settlement.

DWF was disappointed with the outcome but it’s not letting the case go. A few days ago, the company announced that it will appeal. According to the movie distributor, it should be entitled to find out who the ‘infringing’ subscribers are.

“In the verdict, the judge agreed with DWF on almost all points. In the end, after weighing all interests, the judge rejected the claim of DFW nonetheless,” the company writes.

“DFW is of the opinion that this decision should have been in favor of the rightsholder and it is convinced that the claim should be awarded on appeal.”

Since the initial request was denied because several issues were unclear, a win on appeal is certainly possible. DWF notes that while the court ruled that subscribers are not by definition liable for everything that happens on their connection, they do have a certain responsibility.

“Moreover, in its verdict, the court indicated that the fact that the IP address holder is not necessarily the infringer does not relieve the subscriber of the same IP address from his or her responsibility for what happens from that IP address,” the company adds.

As such, there may be a reason to hand over personal information of subscribers to the movie distributor. For example, to contact the account holder in an attempt to track down the actual infringer.

Overall, Dutch Filmworks is confident that the appeal will turn out in its favor. Ziggo hasn’t commented in detail on DWF’s decision. “We wait and see,” a spokesperson told the local news site Nu.nl.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Creed II is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

The entertainment industries regularly warn the public at large that pirate sites are riddled with malware and viruses, posing a threat to unwitting visitors.

While these comments are partly made out of self-interest, they’re not entirely overblown. There are indeed plenty of scammers who upload nasty content that is added to, or disguised as, popular files.

This is nothing new and generally speaking, these files are easy to spot and swiftly removed from well-moderated sites. However, in a recent case, this wasn’t as apparent, since it involved a well-known uploader that had a “trusted’ status on some sites.

The uploader in question is Cracksnow, who shared tens of thousands of cracked software titles in recent years. A dedicated group of followers watched these torrents and “Cracksnow” was previously listed as one of the most searched for terms on torrent sites.

In recent months, however, numerous reports claimed that these popular releases contained malware, or even ransomware, which can do serious harm to one’s computer. 

Below is an example of a now-removed torrent on 1337x.to which reportedly included a copy of the GandCrab ransomware.

A few of these reports are nothing out of the ordinary. Anti-virus vendors sometimes flag cracks as malicious, without good reason, for example. Also, “rival” uploaders may try to discredit the competition with fake malware reports.

However, in the case of CracksNow, the complaints were plentiful, persistent, and not without consequence.

Earlier this month, the popular torrent site 1337x took action and banned the account. This is quite unusual since it was a “trusted” uploader, but a senior staffer informs TorrentFreak that the reports were warranted.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.