[HN Gopher] Publishers carpet-bomb IPFS gateway operators with D...
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       Publishers carpet-bomb IPFS gateway operators with DMCA notices
        
       Author : gslin
       Score  : 161 points
       Date   : 2023-06-25 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
        
       | lmkg wrote:
       | Here's my completely-unsourced conspiracy theory:
       | 
       | Someone is using ChatGTP to look for infringing content. DMCA
       | notices are being sent on the basis of AI hallucinations.
        
       | unshavedyak wrote:
       | Related, what's "modern best practices" in both software (ie what
       | to write) and operator (ie you are running software, and need to
       | do something with DMCA)?
       | 
       | I ask in the context of ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc.
       | I'm writing software for ActivityPub and i want to ensure self-
       | hosted instances have the tools to respond and manage to legal ..
       | threats _(or w /e)_ like DMCA. Likewise i don't even know what is
       | good advice for people to manage these notices. Of course there's
       | also all the other undesired things too, CSAM, etc. Hosting user
       | content is tough, heh.
       | 
       | As someone invested in getting people to self host more of their
       | life in ways like ActivityPub, that also then means more exposure
       | to this type of .. stuff. Not sure what the current consensus
       | even is, tbh.
        
         | imtringued wrote:
         | The solution is to make instances publish their block lists and
         | import these block lists to the self hosted instances.
        
           | unshavedyak wrote:
           | I don't think that touches on specific content violations
           | though, does it? Ie dealing with a notice of a DMCA on
           | something from a non-blocked host _(or your own!)_
        
         | schroeding wrote:
         | One thing you have to be aware is that there are many hosters
         | (like e.g. Hetzner, which is excellent otherwise IMO) who will
         | drop you like a hot potatoe (i.e. blackhole your server in the
         | best case, terminate your account in the worst) if they recieve
         | multiple DMCA notices (or abuse notices in general) for your IP
         | / Server / VPS.
         | 
         | It does not always matter if those are actually legit if they
         | look credible enough and thus, if someone hates you very much,
         | it can be used as a weapon to kill your instance.
         | 
         | This can be somewhat remedied by hiding your hoster via
         | something like e.g. Cloudflare, if having a middle men is
         | acceptable.
        
         | deadly_syn wrote:
         | Isnt the beauty of activity pub that you can tenat an instance
         | juat for yourself? That could avoid a lof ot the legal
         | headaches. You could also make it invite only through yourself,
         | your instance doesnt need to be big if everyone elses is.
        
           | unshavedyak wrote:
           | That would be nice but i don't think it's realistic in the
           | general space. ActivityPub in what i've researched so far is
           | inefficiency for that granularity of P2P. For example I've
           | seen complaints with Mastodon where small instances get
           | ignored on the federating. Which i believe translates to data
           | that comes from those instances taking a long time to get
           | populated on the larger instance. Leaving the smaller
           | instances feeling like they're speaking into the void - as no
           | one replies, because no one can see it.
           | 
           | Instead i think it will shine with many small instances.
           | 500-30k maybe? Still similar issues with federating, but less
           | so than hundreds of thousands of 1person instances.
           | 
           | I'm focusing on what i'm calling micro instances, 50-1000
           | range i suspect. So we'll see.
        
       | cookiengineer wrote:
       | How about a counter strategy?
       | 
       | - randomize the url list
       | 
       | - ask for evidence of copyright violation of a specific url
       | number
       | 
       | - if human does not answer, claim they acted in bad faith
       | 
       | - give them 14 days to respond
       | 
       | Win/win. Gotta game the system, and increase the
       | cost/effectiveness ratio.
        
         | realusername wrote:
         | Maybe we should create a fund to sue those illegal DMCA
         | requests back
        
       | compilator1 wrote:
       | Wondering, where is that red line where publishers cross and
       | someone introduce complete resilient and super simple solution to
       | this whack-a-mole.
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | > "The weird thing is, [the system used] doesn't actually verify
       | that a given file is available through my server before sending a
       | DMCA request. I've looked through the traffic logs, and the vast
       | majority of the files listed in these takedown requests have
       | never been requested in the history of my gateway. I haven't
       | checked all of them, but I've checked a lot," Lang says.
       | 
       | So... DMCA is infamous for its lack of protections against
       | misuse, and I'm not a lawyer, but that's gotta actually qualify
       | as perjury, surely?
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | It doesn't. With the DMCA being a corrupt law wholly bought and
         | paid for by the content cartels, the "perjury" bit only applies
         | to someone falsely claiming to be authorized by the imaginary
         | property owner.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Interesting; that does appear to be accurate:
           | 
           | https://www.aclu.org/documents/text-digital-millennium-
           | copyr...
           | 
           | > "(3)ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION.-
           | 
           | > "(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification
           | of claimed infringement must be a written communication
           | provided to the designated agent of a service provider that
           | includes substantially the following:
           | 
           | [...]
           | 
           | > "(vi) A statement that the information in the notification
           | is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the
           | complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner
           | of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed.
           | 
           | But that makes it _completely_ trivial to abuse. But like...
           | for everyone. What prevents a person from returning the
           | favor? Say, if one of the folks in the article decided to
           | make a list of parties involved in this farce and inundate
           | them with DMCA notices for something they have nothing to do
           | with. Either that 's legal, in which case it can be used
           | against the initial aggressors, or it's not, in which case
           | they're equally liable.
           | 
           | Edit: Okay, I read to the bottom of the post that pointed me
           | to that text:
           | https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-
           | bee... and it _does_ in fact list  "at least two" civil suits
           | that look _really_ similar to the situation we 're discussing
           | here.
        
         | kyrofa wrote:
         | IANAL, but I believe perjury can only happen under oath. This
         | seems more like a bluff.
        
         | rodgerd wrote:
         | > but that's gotta actually qualify as perjury, surely?
         | 
         | Lindsey Ellis did an exhaustive series of videos on exactly
         | this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3v5wFMQRqs); yes,
         | you can sue over false DMCA filings, but it's expensive and
         | time-consuming and you may run out of money in the process.
        
         | TeMPOraL wrote:
         | The way IPFS works though, isn't it by definition that any file
         | you can get from one gateway, you should eventually be able to
         | get from _any_ gateway?
         | 
         | In other words: it doesn't matter your gateway logs shows that
         | no one ever requested a file with a specific content hash,
         | because should one eventually request that content hash from
         | your gateway, they'd get the file in question.
         | 
         | Honestly, until reading the headline, it never occurred to me
         | what now I realize is stupidly obvious: the promise of p2p
         | content-hash-based distribution is that it's robust and
         | censorship-resistant, as the targeted data isn't bound to
         | specific places, but rather is automatically mirrored and made
         | available across the entire network. The flip side of the data
         | being accessible from any point in the network, however, is
         | that... the data is accessible from any point in the network -
         | meaning that every point individually is distributing
         | everything that's in the _entire_ network, and is potentially
         | liable for it all.
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | A gateway is a bridge from http to ipfs. Not all nodes are
           | gateways.
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | But all gateways are nodes. Of course, unless we're talking
             | CSAM, no one will be targeting arbitrary nodes. But
             | gateways are, by definition, the publishers of what's in
             | IPFS. They are frontends to the same backend - and thus it
             | makes sense for each of them to be liable for _everything_
             | that 's on the backend, i.e. the whole IPFS network.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | NAL. According to some youtubers I have seen who ran into this
         | sort of frivolous claim, you can apparently send counter-
         | notifications to those people, and that sets up some liability
         | on their side if their DMCA takedown was indeed frivolous and
         | they continue to pursue it. It does seem like a lot of work to
         | send all those counter-notifications, though.
        
       | MrStonedOne wrote:
       | "I did some bash-fu to extract the IPFS hashes from the emails
       | and grep for them in my nginx logs, and was surprised to find not
       | a single match," Stanley explains. "None of them have ever been
       | accessed, and of the ones that I checked, none even worked."
        
       | RobotToaster wrote:
       | Isn't filing a false DMCA takedown perjury, which is a criminal
       | (rather than civil) matter?
        
         | Natsu wrote:
         | The provision is infamously toothless. A proper DMCA notice
         | (yes, you can send improper ones...) is supposed to contain a
         | statement made under penalty of perjury saying you are or
         | represent the owner of the allegedly infringed upon work.
         | 
         | So you just have to own the thing you claim is infringed, you
         | do not have to be correct that the items you target with the
         | notice are actually infringing upon your work. That stops me
         | from claiming to own Mickey Mouse and sending notices against
         | it. It does not stop me from claiming something I actually own
         | copyright to and sending spurious notices to non-infringing
         | works.
         | 
         | Now, there might be some minor monetary liability for costs
         | incurred by a completely bogus notice, but they're probably not
         | large enough to sue over without ending up losing more money on
         | the suit than you win in most cases, so it's relatively
         | untested, though I think there may have been a settlement or
         | two over such claims.
        
       | RagnarD wrote:
       | Any lawyers think that there's a case against the publishers for
       | these harassing, inappropriate notices?
        
       | gigel82 wrote:
       | I recommend they hire an expensive law firm to process the
       | requests, and a few contractors, then send the bills back to the
       | reporter (one per request). I recon if more recipients do this
       | it'll become expensive to carpet-bomb and they'll want to do some
       | modicum of review on their side before sending these out.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | You can bill for subpoenas and warrants but I've never heard of
         | billing for DMCA takedowns. It's a cost of doing business.
        
           | hedora wrote:
           | Skip to the last paragraph:
           | 
           | https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-
           | no...
           | 
           | Fraudulent takedown notices and fraudulent responses create
           | liability. There's probably room for a "no-win, no-pay" law
           | firm that bills $500/hour to handle fraudulent DMCA takedown
           | notices. Bonus points to them if they donate half their
           | income to the EFF.
        
             | derbOac wrote:
             | To be honest, this imho is what the EFF should be doing,
             | hiring laywers to counteract this kind of thing. If they
             | were doing this (or some whatever strategy they decided
             | would be most effective), I'd probably donate more money to
             | them.
        
             | creer wrote:
             | This is interesting. I was not aware of effective counter
             | attacks to abusive DMCA notices. That site lists two very
             | different results from 2004 and 2007 (and that web site is
             | unmaintained and out of date.) There were other attempts,
             | Cox in 2021, California Beach Co., LLC in 2020. And this
             | law firm calls for customers in that area of DMCA abuse:
             | https://www.hinchnewman.com/internet-law-
             | blog/2015/04/legal-...
             | 
             | There might be a developing environment in which to
             | monetarily fight that abuse.
        
       | jwilk wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36425433 ("Did I receive
       | fraudulent DMCA takedowns?", 3 days ago, >150 comments)
        
       | shrubble wrote:
       | At least in the USA, it is a requirement that any legal
       | representation by a corporation, be done by an actual lawyer.
       | 
       | If a law firm or solo lawyer is not identifying themselves
       | properly in a DMCA takedown request, which is a legal document,
       | what happens? Does anyone know?
        
         | kevingadd wrote:
         | You can basically do anything you want as a large corporation
         | when it comes to this stuff. The law doesn't have any teeth, as
         | a smaller player you can't do anything about bogus DMCA notices
         | or legal violations.
         | 
         | Many services like Twitter or Chrome Web Store will _at best_
         | put your content back up a few weeks (or months) later after
         | you file a counter-notice; in some cases they will just nuke
         | your account after a few notices even if the notices were
         | bogus.
        
       | wellthisisgreat wrote:
       | Is there a societal benefit to US approach to lawsuits where
       | anyone can sue anyone for anything?
       | 
       | Is it something like MAD?
        
         | 0xcde4c3db wrote:
         | My understanding as a non-lawyer is that one can _file_ a
         | lawsuit against anyone for anything, but for it to actually go
         | anywhere instead of being quickly dismissed, it needs to be
         | within the court 's jurisdiction and it needs to "state a
         | claim", i.e. allege a violation for which the court could apply
         | some relevant remedy.
        
         | trompetenaccoun wrote:
         | Maybe one could use this analogy, but those with the WMDs are
         | the rich, the right owners that can hire an army of lawyers. So
         | it's legal warfare against regular people.
         | 
         | Also unlike MAD large corporations do regularly engage in
         | fierce IP battles. Like Apple vs Samsung. I do see the pro
         | arguments, but overall I find it doubtful if if it's a net
         | positive for humanity to have strict IP laws at all.
         | 
         | The American approach is the world's approach as far as rule-
         | of-law countries go btw.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | As someone who has moved from a non-litigious society to the
         | USA I used to see it as insane. Then my rights were violated
         | again, and again, and again, so I spent a decade getting legal
         | smart and fighting back. Again and again I have forced
         | government agencies into policy adjustments to stop their
         | rights violations, and I am still in litigation now.
         | 
         | The USA does make it very easy to sue someone, and when that
         | someone is the government you can force practical changes that
         | can affect a large number of people with your litigation. It
         | might not get you any monetary benefit (it certainly hasn't for
         | me), but that might also be a bonus.
        
       | Beldin wrote:
       | "Law enforcement - I.C.E. referals"
       | 
       | This is from a slide deck on how to "protect" content, apparently
       | by someone working for a law firm. Assuming the firm is US-based,
       | this is literally suggesting to get immigration services to check
       | out a suspected "wrongdoer".
       | 
       | Lawyers huh... I just can't even.
        
         | FireBeyond wrote:
         | I have no love for lawyers, but Immigration and _Customs_
         | Enforcement has, for better or worse, a role in these issues.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | What is preventing a class action for frivolous DMCA notices?
        
       | theonlybutlet wrote:
       | Could this not be construed as vexatious litigation?
        
       | riedel wrote:
       | >To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible
       | behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities. (IEEE
       | Code of Ethics) [1]
       | 
       | Letting this happen IMHO is clearly a breach of IEEE's own rules.
       | This goes against the public and has serious side effects. Nobody
       | with a bit of knowledge on networking (which I hope exists within
       | IEEE) should seriously think that those gateways are hosting the
       | content.
       | 
       | If someone with a role in IEEE reads this they should really stop
       | this rogue firm they contracted before they seriously destroy
       | some part of the internet some people rely on.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html#:~....
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | The IEEE has no power to stop people from doing things. It's a
         | professional society, not a licensing/regulatory body.
        
       | rch wrote:
       | I'd like to be able to run something like an IPFS gateway if I
       | could be reasonably certain I'd never get any annoying legal
       | notices or attention. Are there any community maintained hash
       | tables of verifiably unencumbered content that I could use as the
       | basis of a filter?
        
         | slang800 wrote:
         | It wouldn't matter if you used a filter and your gateway didn't
         | host copyrighted content.
         | 
         | The ciu-online.net application doesn't check whether or not the
         | content is accessible through your server before sending a
         | notice. It sends notices for all content that might be on the
         | IPFS network.
         | 
         | You'll get annoying emails no matter what.
        
       | hecturchi wrote:
       | People operating IPFS gateways might benefit from using NOpfs,
       | pulling the official public gateways badbits.deny list:
       | 
       | https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/nopfs
        
       | wmf wrote:
       | How's the progress on an IPFS browser client that doesn't require
       | a gateway?
        
         | dave78 wrote:
         | Depending on your definition, I think Brave does this already
         | doesn't it?
        
         | brunoqc wrote:
         | Or progress on useful stuff like an encrypted Dropbox clone or
         | something. Everytime I see ipfs stuff it's about silly crypto
         | things.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | inhumantsar wrote:
           | IPFS isn't the right use case for a dropbox clone. It behaves
           | like a CDN with no persistence guarantees.
           | 
           | Arweave is better suited to archival storage. There are
           | options for participants to ban particular types of content
           | which may be illegal to host in their jurisdiction. This was
           | designed to prevent the spread of CP, terrorism related info,
           | etc. but that means it is also susceptible to DCMA issues
           | too.
           | 
           | https://www.arweave.org/
        
             | brunoqc wrote:
             | > IPFS isn't the right use case for a dropbox clone. It
             | behaves like a CDN with no persistence guarantees.
             | 
             | Peergos kinda do it but maybe it's only for the transport
             | and it uses S3 or something like that.
             | 
             | > Arweave is better suited to archival storage
             | 
             | Thanks, I'll take a look.
             | 
             | I wish there was more exciting ipfs news beside nfts.
             | 
             | EDIT: Arweave seems to be part of the crypto/web3 thing I'm
             | not a fan of.
        
               | imtringued wrote:
               | Arweave promises a perpetual motion machine. Prepaying
               | for storage is good but there is no way it is permanent.
        
           | ianopolous wrote:
           | Peergos is the most advanced encrypted dropbox clone on ipfs.
           | Disclaimer, founder here. We even extend the block retrieval
           | protocol so encrypted blocks are not public - like most data
           | in ipfs - you need auth to retrieve them:
           | https://peergos.org/posts/bats
           | 
           | In terms of block stores we support local disk, or S3
           | compatible.
           | 
           | You can log in through any peergos instance (including
           | localhost) and your writes are persisted directly to your
           | instance. The whole thing is also independent of DNS and the
           | TLS CAs (except of course if you use a public web interface)
        
           | colinsane wrote:
           | way back (well before Ethereum and NFTs), i hosted a blog on
           | IPFS. DNS level stuff:
           | 
           | - TXT record with an IPFS content identifier
           | 
           | - A record pointing to an IPFS gateway that ran on my laptop
           | (and was restricted to only serving my own content)
           | 
           | - fallback A records that pointed to the public IPFS gateways
           | 
           | i could publish new content from my laptop, and as long as i
           | had one other reader who browsed it via native IPFS (i did),
           | then i could pretty safely not worry about my own uptime.
           | 
           | that was pretty useful to me at the time who had no clue how
           | to be a sysadmin and keep good uptime and whatnot.
        
             | brunoqc wrote:
             | I like this about ipfs. I don't understand why ipfs didn't
             | lit the world on fire yet and they only seems to care about
             | web3/crypto/nft these days.
        
         | gary_0 wrote:
         | If someone hosts a JavaScript app on their webserver that
         | accesses IPFS using WebRTC or something, won't they still get
         | DMCA-bombed? It's not like these lawyers care where the files
         | are actually hosted, and there are effectively no consequences
         | for indiscriminate DMCA-ing.
         | 
         | Even if you make an IPFS browser extension, you could still get
         | complaints and Google might still take it down, no? Are there
         | any IPFS mobile apps that don't require sideloading?
         | 
         | You have a chance of getting away with anything else on the
         | Web, but anger the Copyright Gods and there's nowhere you can
         | hide.
        
           | aaomidi wrote:
           | Ipfs software is like BitTorrent.
           | 
           | There's no legal pathway to taking down the software. Only
           | the gateways which aren't necessary for IPFS.
           | 
           | This is basically copyright holders sending DMCA to trackers.
           | Trackers haven't been necessary for using torrents but it
           | makes them more accessible.
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | You can download the IPFS desktop app and browse IPFS freely
         | without the need of a centralized gateway. Brave can use the
         | desktop app for its native IPFS support. If you intend to use
         | it to share anything, you need some extra setup, though.
         | 
         | I don't think any browsers have IPFS built in. For IPFS to be
         | at its most useful (as in, your computer exchanging data with
         | the network and actually participating in it), you need things
         | like port forwards or IPv6 pinhole support, and I don't think
         | that's something many people will do.
         | 
         | Edit: Brave supports IPFS natively these days. Go to
         | brave://settings/web3 and set "Method to resolve IPFS
         | resources" to "Brave local IPFS node".
        
           | wuiheerfoj wrote:
           | Brave ships with an IPFS node now
        
             | jeroenhd wrote:
             | You're right! I didn't notice because it's not the default
             | and it auto redirected me, but that's a nice improvement!
        
       | dabinat wrote:
       | The part that caught my eye in the presentation was that it
       | suggested the possibility of digging into someone's immigration
       | status and reporting them to ICE. It shocks me that a private
       | corporation would get someone deported for doing something that's
       | not illegal.
        
         | jonhohle wrote:
         | Read about what private corporations did in the 40s and 50s to
         | maintain land in Central America and the Middle East. Hundreds
         | of thousands of people died and democracies were replaced by
         | dictators so Chaquita didn't have to sell land being
         | repossessed under imminent domain. Simile story in Iran with
         | Standard Oil. Getting someone deported is pretty low on the
         | list of atrocities corporations would do to make a buck.
        
         | FireBeyond wrote:
         | Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Customs applies to digital
         | goods, too.
        
         | ascendantlogic wrote:
         | These are very large corporations with very large profits to
         | protect. It's awful to think about but not surprising in the
         | least.
        
       | jstanley wrote:
       | I'm the hardbin guy.
       | 
       | Since I wrote the post about the DMCA takedown notices the other
       | day, someone kindly offered to provide alternative hosting for
       | hardbin.com that should be more resilient to bogus DMCA
       | takedowns, so happily hardbin.com is back online (but not
       | operated by me any more).
       | 
       | Also I emailed Sean Lang (the guy with the github repo with
       | dozens of example DMCA emails from these guys) and it turns out
       | that in the last few months he _also_ took his IPFS gateway
       | offline because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble.
        
         | slang800 wrote:
         | Yeah, I took ipfs.slang.cx down after Hetzner threatened to
         | kick me off their service.
         | 
         | I was able to stay on top of the takedowns by writing a script
         | to create & deploy nginx block rules for each URL in the DMCA
         | emails. Obviously I had no time for manual review of the URLs.
         | But I guess that didn't matter and Hetzner got annoyed with all
         | the emails and decided my business wasn't worth the trouble.
        
           | qingcharles wrote:
           | How did Hetzner become aware of the notices? Were they CC'd
           | to them?
           | 
           | I ask because I'm building a web site currently hosted on
           | Hetzner that will provide access to files that have fallen
           | into the public domain, _but also files that for all intents
           | and purposes appear to copyright orphans_. I will take down
           | anything where an entity asserts a valid copyright against
           | anything where a mistake has been made, but I don 't want
           | Hetzner just arbitrarily shooting down my site.
        
             | tinco wrote:
             | Don't directly expose your servers to the web, proxy them
             | through some other provider so that whenever that provider
             | falls under pressure you already have the infrastructure to
             | move to different ip addresses and you don't have to deal
             | with the hassle of migrating your data to other servers.
        
             | slang800 wrote:
             | First the ciu-online.net people sent DMCA notices to myself
             | and Cloudflare, since I used Cloudflare as a caching proxy.
             | Eventually Cloudflare gave them the IP address of my server
             | and the ciu-online.net people were able to determine that
             | IP address was owned by Hetzner.
             | 
             | Now they send DMCA notices to myself, Cloudflare, and
             | Hetzner. I think the goal is to annoy as many people as
             | possible. Even after I shut off my IPFS gateway they
             | continued sending notices.
             | 
             | Anyway, if you're hosting anything that might generate a
             | DMCA notice, don't use Hetzner. They will kick you off even
             | if you're complying with the DMCA process. Also, they make
             | you submit a statement on abuse.hetzner.com for every
             | single DMCA notice that gets sent to them. If you don't
             | submit the statement in 24 hours they threaten to block
             | your IP address. It is extremely tedious and annoying.
        
               | qingcharles wrote:
               | Thank you for the advice. I will shop around. The trouble
               | is that Hetzner are almost an order of magnitude cheaper
               | than the next best. You get what you pay for.
               | 
               | Any recommendations?
        
               | nanidin wrote:
               | > Even after I shut off my IPFS gateway they continued
               | sending notices.
               | 
               | It seems like those notices were made in bad faith. It
               | would be nice if they faced some punishment.
        
               | grayhatter wrote:
               | >Eventually Cloudflare gave them the IP address of my
               | server and the ciu-online.net people were able to
               | determine that IP address was owned by Hetzner.
               | 
               | Wait... isn't the point of paying cloudflare to prevent
               | DoS attacks?
        
               | rodgerd wrote:
               | Cloudflare will fight tooth and nail to keep Stormfront
               | online, not IPFS.
        
         | hackerfactor1 wrote:
         | Sounds similar to a SLAPP: Strategic Lawsuit Against Public
         | Participation
         | 
         | The goal is to burden the recipient with overhead costs that it
         | becomes impractical or cost-prohibitive to participate.
        
           | sidewndr46 wrote:
           | Doesn't the plaintiff have to be the government for a lawsuit
           | to be a "SLAPP" suit?
        
             | schlauerfox wrote:
             | These are different state by state, but Anti-SLAPP is meant
             | to protect from vexatious litigants, that is someone rich
             | threatening to sue you to shut you up. I'm not a lawyer, I
             | just listen to Serious Trouble podcast.
        
         | ldehaan wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | briantakita wrote:
         | > because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble.
         | 
         | What are the consequences of ignoring these notices?
        
           | thrashh wrote:
           | The DMCA is protection for an operator because instead of the
           | first step being "get sued," you get a letter and if you
           | comply, you are protected.
           | 
           | If you ignore them, it's basically as if the DMCA never
           | existed and they can just sue you. And without the DMCA, you
           | are liable if it's some random user uploading copyrighted
           | content to your website.
        
             | lol768 wrote:
             | > If you ignore them, it's basically as if the DMCA never
             | existed and they can just sue you.
             | 
             | Pretty sure jes is in the UK though, and it's not the sort
             | of thing you'd ever be extradited over... so not really
             | sure why the notices matter. I guess some hosting providers
             | are more sympathetic here than others.
        
               | toyg wrote:
               | US-UK extradition agreements are so lopsided and wide-
               | ranging, you can basically assume that one _will_ be
               | extradited for breaching US law while on Airstrip One.
               | 
               | That infamous treaty has turned the Special Relationship
               | into full-on vassalage.
        
               | masfuerte wrote:
               | Don't be so sure. The English courts agreed to extradite
               | Richard O'Dwyer to America for link sharing. In the end
               | he avoided it by signing a deferred prosecution agreement
               | and paying a fine.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | Like in any corrupted democracy, it depends. See Asange
               | for a counterexample.
        
               | iudqnolq wrote:
               | What exactly do you mean by counterexample? Assange has
               | had access to UK courts to attempt to challenge his
               | extradition, but he hasn't been successful. He's nearly
               | exhausted all the possible things to appeal.
        
           | slang800 wrote:
           | I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll try to sue me for
           | failing to take down content, but I don't want to find out.
           | 
           | Running an IPFS gateway doesn't make me any money and even
           | consulting a lawyer is way outside my hobby project budget.
        
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