Cloudflare is actively disabling access to some pirate site URLs on its network, informing visitors that the requested pages are unavailable for legal reasons. While these types of ‘HTTP 451’ error messages are relatively rare, they are nothing more than Cloudflare complying with its legal obligations under the DMCA.
It was my understanding that “net neutrality” revolved mainly around ISPs and their “common carrier” status. Specifically not being able to create “fast lanes” or other shaping and pricing decisions around content. This would also give them some shielding around content by ensuring they treated all information “equally”.
Based on that, I’m curious how your statement applies given that CloudFlare is not an ISP, but rather a paid for service that is not required to access the internet.
Tell that to the 12345678x captchas and “unblock challenge” notices I get whenever I try to browse common sites on the internet!
That is correct, I made a not very precise comment. However, Cloudflare is the defacto CDN of the internet and therefore they should be considered an ISP with monopoly status. Therefore some neutrality regulation should apply (although I realize that nobody will make regulation to keep illegal content online, which is understandable). And this decision should not be made by assumed copyright holders via DMCA, but by some type of jurisdiction.
Cloudflare is not an ISP and doesn’t haven’t the same relationship to consumers as an ISP. This is quite the stretch.
There are major issues with their market capture and role but it’s a very different problem than net neutrality/ISP’s acting as monopolies.