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Comment by clwg | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe these groups should have free rein on the internet. However, I am also not in favor of Cloudflare acting as the police of the internet. Ideally the internet shouldn't be so centralized around Cloudflare as it is, while the regulations and laws that would govern such actions to take care of the problem need to be put in place.

It's a tricky situation, and whether or not Cloudflare endorses, facilitates, or turns a blind eye to DDoS attacks shouldn't matter as much as it currently does.

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They shouldn't be acting as the police, but they should have an effective procedure to report abuse coming from their IPs and having it handled.

Cloudflare is SIGIT not law enforcement.

All that delicious data to snoop at and share with the government, or possibly UK in order to avoid legal problems.

It would be difficult to build a better listening station for the Internet.

Given that Google,FB,etc are all open silos for the spooks as well.

The government has even declared that the US near monopoly is of vital national security importance.

(This was in regard to stop the administration from pushing for a breakup of the internet giants).

I think it's more complicated than "open silos" - there's an element of denial that enables this. My experience is that many people working in these organizations are blind to the realities of where their companies are situated, and the level of interest intelligence agencies have in them, and get upset and defensive when you suggest building internal countermeasures.

> I don't believe these groups should have free rein on the internet.

I agree, we need strong legislation to cut down on Cloudflare's activity.

They don't have to be the police. Cloudflare are a private company, not a public utility. They can deny service to anyone they want (within the bounds of the law).

If they want to be a neutral public utility, they can rearrange their business to that effect.

They can also allow service to anyone they want and accept the liability, whatever that may be for doing so, which is what they are doing.

I'm not disagreeing with you, or trying to defend Cloudflare – I just see a very complicated situation, especially when you consider the DNS ecosystem, which in itself is extremely shady. You also run the risk of DMCA-style procedures that would require equal application across service providers and would undoubtedly be abused by bad actors.

No, as a business they are technically liable for their users illegal theft of services once notified of the problem.

i.e. unless they want to host in a lawless foreign data-center begging for scrip-coin they should care.

> lawless foreign data-center

Anecdotal forest city / woodlands in Malaysia / Singapore note. The territorial dispute led to most organizations there doing shady business online, as nobody is ruling these lands, effectively.

Singapore is hardly a place anyone would want to get in trouble, and visitors are specifically warned some folks have weaponized the most punitive aspects of local laws.

i.e. if you aren't careful and someone drops a pill in your luggage, they do shoot people without trial on the following Tuesday.

And yes, having stuff reverse engineered at the local university care of an unscrupulous US company is common. One really can't take it personally, as it is legal there. =)

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