I'm a bit worried about the abuse potential here. It seems like a great way to distribute movies, warez, etc since not only is Cloudflare paying for the bandwidth but they're also caching the content so you won't be bottlenecked by IPFS itself.
IPFS is a peer-to-peer network, so there is the possibility of users sharing abusive content. This is not something we support or condone. However, just like how Cloudflare works with more traditional customers, Cloudflare’s IPFS gateway is simply a cache in front of IPFS. Cloudflare does not have the ability the modify or remove content from the IPFS network. If any abusive content is found that is served by the Cloudflare IPFS gateway, you can use the standard abuse reporting mechanism described here.
What are you going to do when people (on other sites) put up pages with fake ipfs links that are identified as copyrighted information, but are really legitimate files (let's say, <a href="ipfslink">Crazy Rich Asians (2018) 1080p</a> where ipfslink is the latest minified jquery on your gateway? You're going to get a takedown for a link like that, regardless of the actual content, if copyright holders operate as they do now.
Do you think you can require copyright holders to be more diligent and start ignoring their takedowns if they make too many mistakes? Require them to actually verify that the ipfs content (direct hash, or some perceptual hash of it) is their copyrighted content? That seems highly unlikely to be acceptable to copyright holders. If you could require that copyright holders do that before sending takedowns, the next step would be copyright violators hosting massive random files, linking to them as if they're movies. Copyright holders would waste tons of bandwidth downloading that random data, and burning cpu to hash it only to discover it's not their stuff.
I want ipfs to catch on, but I don't see how gateways like this can work, without getting sued into oblivion, or getting into bed with copyright holders and suffering so many mistaken and maliciously false takedowns that your gateway becomes a neutered content distribution platform... like youtube... with lots of legitimate content getting censored.
So where does this abuse report end up?
For IPFS -- there isn't an "owner" of the content in IPFS per se, and as such we will review the specifics of the report and then determine the appropriate next steps.
- I understand this thing is new and policies are being created as issues are discovered, I think it would be best to be more up front about the coming blocking of things, if you all will post a notice or just make it appear that the whatever-file is not found, and things like this.
That statement is very broad, and I can see a future where lots of niche communities are eventually blocked for varying reasons.
Which countries are going to be able to tell you all what to take down?
There was a time when I had a lot of faith in Cloudflare, and the whole, it's a pipe / telephone line, not a moderated server - but the whole stormfront thing weakened your position with all the powers that be from what I can tell.
So if a bunch of <insert-niche-com-here> start posting links based upon the cloudfalre-ipfs-gateway/controversial-not-mainstream-whatever1 , 2 , 3 etc.. and you all end up nuking all of them, will people know that the files still exist and can be accessed with other means aside from the cloudflare portal?
I would think that cloudflare needs to split up and create US company and an EU company and Cananda one, and a Japan... I mean there are so many conflicting things around the world, when you want to censor the internet you just pick a rule from some place on the planet and file a complaint - I think you could removed just about anything.
I like the things you all are trying to do, but being a central place under whatever authorities with a fickle CEO that can single handedly change everything, along with who knows how many agencies and stick a paper to your head and make you change, I think it's time your company became decentralized itself.
I hope that happens, or some rule is made saying you all are just dumb pips and can't make censor decisions, but I'm not holding my breath for that.
I have had to do this when a botnet was fetching its code from my public gateway and accidentally DDoS'ing my server :).
In my experience they end up with the DMCA officer for the site.