I set up a site around 20 years ago - now on <a href="https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/" rel="nofollow">https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/</a> - and got threatened with a lawsuit by Dannon / Danone. I had to give them the first domain because it was a trademark (but not before I'd set up a 301 redirect and let Google catch up with the change). That was in more innocent pre-DCMA times when corporations wouldn't really know how to contact an ISP and get something banned without getting lawyers involved. I enjoyed a realtively long email correspondence with what I hope was a very expensive lawyer from Danone.<p>Edit: I set up the site on bifidusdigestivum.com after getting too irritated by adverts where they talked about their amazing bacteria "Bifidus Digesivum", which was just so ridiculous I found out as much as I could about it and wrote about it in as SEO-friendly a way as possible so anyone searching for it found my site. It's had something like 1.5m views since then, and still gets 400-500 visits a month. Not huge in the grand scheme of things, but it still gives me a chuckle every now and then when I remember it.
> <i>Senk immediately felt the takedown was bogus. His site was obviously parody, which he felt should have made his use of the CrowdStrike logos—altered or not—fair use. He immediately responded to Cloudflare to contest the notice, but Cloudflare did not respond to or even acknowledge receipt of his counter notice. Instead, Cloudflare sent a second email warning Senk of the alleged infringement, but once again, Cloudflare failed to respond to his counter notice.</i><p>I am generally a fan of Cloudflare and I think they are good players and good people, but this is something they really need to fix. The DMCA system is already heavily stacked against the little guy. The least Cloudflare (or any host) can do is listen to both parties. Ideally they should be a neutral arbiter.<p>I use Cloudflare extensively and spend a lot per month with them, but this really gives me pause about whether I want to have CF hosting my actual content. I've never had a DMCA takedown claim against me, but I know people who have been abused by that process. It can really happen to anyone.<p>Cloudflare, please don't be part of the problem. You've long been a champion of a more open web, one in which little people can operate. You've done more to enable creators like that than just about anyone I can think of. Please, don't be a facilitator or enabler for the DMCA bullies.
I do wonder if one could learn enough of the law to cheaply defend themselves against bogus DMCA notices. You see this sort of things all the time in emulation where the product itself is technically legal, but the people hosting the project have to shut down anyway because they know the legal costs of mounting a defense would bankrupt them.<p>It would be nice to turn the tables and say to N 'ok, we can do this all day, enjoy burning a mountain of cash with your legal team'
Every court officer who signs off on a bogus DMCA notice is violating their oath and is subject to disciplinary action. They are also committing barratry which appears to be a civil tort in some states.
They way this story usually goes: hosts are legally required to respond to dmca takedown requests as quickly as possible, please spare me the outrage.<p>In this case: cloudflare claims they never received any counter-notices from the parody guy (he sent two), and sent a weak "we would've helped you" after he moved the site off their services and they started getting negative attention. They screwed up royally.
It's absurd that they're attempting to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to enforce their trademark, and from their reply they seem to have made the same move to 500 other websites without any recourse.<p>I hate that companies have seen how places react to DMCA takedown requests and have responded by trying to force everything into a DMCA takedown request. Using it to avoid the necessary steps for a circumvention bypass was bad enough, trademark is covered by a whole range of unrelated laws.
Why do businesses insist on learning about the Streisand Effect the hard way?<p>I would never have known about this low-effort parody site, and even if I did learn about it is of poor enough quality that I would never have shared it.<p>But now I am 100% behind this site, and interested in spreading the word, since it apparently touches a nerve.
Discussion at the time (1221 points, 5 days ago, 229 comments) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133917">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133917</a>
If you think Crowdstrike and Cloudflare are not political actors used to take down undesired speech and speakers, remember Kiwifarms and Russiagate. <a href="https://yandex.com/search?text=bill+binney+crowdstrike" rel="nofollow">https://yandex.com/search?text=bill+binney+crowdstrike</a>
Following the unfortunate announcement of our screw-up that resulted in what some (unfairly) qualify as the outage of the century, rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to keep our customers happy and as uninformed as possible. Since we're very, very sowy, and since we said "we're sowy", we don't appreciate people making fun of us. Please stop ridiculing us, or say mean things about us. In fact: we'd appreciate you leave us alone, it's already a hard time for us. Dont talk about us, unless, of course to pay us a compliment.
Just another day: some megacorporation trying to use scary lawyer letters to take down a parody site, banking on some member of the public not having the legal knowledge to know they're full of shit.<p>Also, complete 100% bullshit on it being unintentional. I'd imagine some executive in their organization found that and had a right tizzy about it. It's exactly the sort of completely meaningless deck-chair rearranging that the C-suites LOVE to send urgent-marked emails about, speaking from both anecdote and personal experience.
Who is hosting it now? I’m inspired by this website, and hope maybe one day I can have a parody website made popular by the Streisand effect. But who should I use to host it? Who should I use as a registrar? I’m a Cloudflare customer, but it’s clear I cannot trust them in this endeavor.<p>Edit: I did some searching and it looks like it might be hetzner.com hosting it now?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect</a><p>Nice job ClownStrike legal. I wouldn’t have heard of the site otherwise.
Crowdstrike yet again attempts to use the legal system to avoid responsiblity for their actions (theres talk right now if they'll be held financially responsible for the damage caused), fix thier PR (the Delta v Crowdstrike), and demonstrate that they will bully people engaging in fair use parody (clownstrike).
Apparently the DMCA takedown notice was filed by some third party that specializes in this form of trolling. I wonder how big the market for this nonsense is.
>Reached for comment, CrowdStrike confirmed that the takedown notice probably never should have been sent to Senk<p>yea, right. They got caught and said "oops, sorry". Too bad Senk cannot charge them for the cost of moving his site elsewhere.
The thing about CloudFlare is, I'm fairly comfortable expecting one of their executives to appear out here in the next few hours to own and address this in a common sense way.