Cloudflare Blocks Pirate Sites After Web Sheriff Filed Laundry List of Violations

Anti-piracy company Web Sheriff was once known for its off-the-wall approach to tackling infringement. Presumably part of its strategy to get noticed in the market, the company has since matured as an all-round brand protection service. Still, a pair of copyright claims sent to Cloudflare recently are so ridiculously over the top, it's hard to take them seriously. Unexpectedly, Cloudflare responded by blocking URLs on two pirate sites leading to the rarely-seen '451' error.

Retelling a few funny stories about the early antics of Web Sheriff might be quite fun. At least until the realization that was around sixteen years ago when the internet wasn’t facing a serious threat of censorship and regulation.

So much has changed since then it would be difficult to recapture the essence of those stories today. However, the Web Sheriff’s plan to board and then scuttle The Pirate Bay stands out as a watershed moment in the development of alternate realities in the anti-piracy space.

Planned in absolute secrecy apart from a few press releases, it involved the formation of an elite unit to take down The Pirate Bay, once and for all. Led by a Sheriff, the team consisted of a construction worker, a cowboy, an intimidating fellow dressed head to foot in black leather, a policeman, a gentleman resplendent in full Indian regalia, and a lone GI bravely bringing up the rear.

Some say the imagery accompanying this bold anti-piracy operation aimed to disorientate and disrupt pirates by making them question their own sanity. Even to this day, some believe the campaign caused cognitive disruption and was responsible for inexplicable amnesia among pirates.

While everyone remembers the images, it’s perhaps telling that nobody can recall anything about the operation or its damaging effect on The Pirate Bay.

Yet, here we are a decade-and-a-half later, potentially witnessing something even bigger. A pair of genuine copyright complaints, sent by Web Sheriff to Cloudflare last week, are certainly disorientating. The fact that they caused Cloudflare to do something it rarely does, raises even more questions.

SmashyStream and Movielair Violated All the Laws

The notices sent to Cloudflare targeting SmashyStream and Movielair claim to protect the rights of EDGLRD, which according to the blurb on its website “is a new IP-based studio working with a network of leading artists, musicians & film directors.”

EDGLRD released a movie last September about an assassin on a mission to kill a demonic crime lord. It’s called Aggro Dr1ft, it co-stars Travis Scott, and was shot entirely in infrared. The trailer is headache inducing; yet somehow not as visually and mentally concussive as the takedown notices sent to Cloudflare.

The takedown notices cannot be described as DMCA takedown notices due to their format. However, they’re pretty much identical and right off the bat deliver a powerful statement. For the reasons directly underneath, that doesn’t hinder reporting.

The nature of the take down notices requires direct quotation here to avoid misrepresentation. They amount to a smörgåsbord of allegations made under the legal system of an unidentified country and read as follows:

• Infringed / Violated Rights : A. COPYRIGHT, B. PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS, C. MORAL RIGHTS, D. RIGHTS-OF-PUBLICITY, E. CONSUMER PROTECTION RIGHTS
• Infringing / Violating Materials : PIRATED COPYRIGHT MOTION PICTURE(S) AND / OR TELEVISION PRODUCTION(S) AND / OR OTHER AUDIO-VISUAL RECORDING(S) – ‘AGGRO DR1FT’
• COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS)
• PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS EMBODYING RECORDED PERFORMANCES / PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS)
• MORAL RIGHTS INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS EMBODYING MORAL RIGHTS)
• RIGHTS-OF-PUBLICITY INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS IN CONJUNCTION WITH NAME AND / OR LIKENESS)
• CONSUMER PROTECTION RIGHTS VIOLATIONS (THROUGH MISLEADING & DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES AND / OR FALSE ENDORSEMENTS & BOGUS AFFILIATIONS)
• BREACH OF ISP’S PUBLISHED TERMS OF SERVICE / ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (BY REASON OF THE ABOVE INFRINGEMENTS & VIOLATIONS)
• BREACH OF SITE’S PUBLISHED TERMS OF SERVICE / ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (BY REASON OF THE ABOVE INFRINGEMENTS & VIOLATIONS)
** TRADEMARK & GENERAL RESERVATION OF RIGHTS ** ALL REGISTERED, COMMON-LAW & PENDING TRADEMARK RIGHTS ARE HEREBY STRICTLY RESERVED (AS APPLICABLE) AND AS ARE ALL OTHER RIGHTS OF AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY NATURE (WHETHER EXPOUNDED HEREIN OR OTHERWISE).

Given that a notice in this format makes no attempt to comply with the requirements of the DMCA, some companies in the U.S. might choose to reject it. Nevertheless, it’s still made clear in the notices that access to infringing content needs to be prevented.

On that basis there’s no real reason not to take action and on that front, Cloudflare seems to agree.

Cloudflare Blocks Access to Movie ‘For Legal Reasons’

The ‘Error HTTP 451’ status code was approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) back in 2015 as a more informative alternative to the ‘403 Forbidden’ code utilized by some ISPs engaged in blocking.

While still relatively rare, it has appeared more frequently of late when users outside the bloc attempt to access content subject to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

On rare occasions, ‘Error HTTP 451’ has been observed when pirate sites are subjected to blocking orders. In 2020, Cloudflare began showing the code when DDL-Music was blocked under the orders of a German court.

As the images below show, the takedown notices on the left, sent by Web Sheriff to Cloudflare last week, now lead to the Error HTTP 451 status codes on the right.

Both error pages link to copies of the takedown notices listed on the Lumen Database (1, 2). That’s useful since they explain what prompted Cloudflare to implement blocking.

What’s So Special About These Notices?

As noted earlier, Error HTTP 451 status messages are a relative rarity for piracy-related content. What is even more unusual here, at least as far as we can determine, is that they relate to the specific URLs mentioned in the Web Sheriff takedown notices. Most if not all URLs on both sites appear to be available as normal.

The big question is why Cloudflare has responded in this way to a Web Sheriff complaint alleging violations of seemingly all IP-related laws in existence today, while (at least as far as we can determine) refusing to offer a similar service to the world’s largest movie studios?

At least in theory, how and where the websites are hosted could play a part (Cloudflare does block permanently hosted content following valid copyright complaints). At least one of the sites above uses infrastructure and/or content hosted in Malaysia, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary in itself, so other factors could be at play.

That seems to lead to an uncomfortable conclusion. While the combined might of the Web Sheriff and The Village People proved laughably ineffective against The Pirate Bay, a barrage of legal allegations – fired from a comically broad blunderbuss – appears to have prompted rarely-seen pinpoint blocking by Cloudflare.

People laughed at Web Sheriff’s earlier antics; they might not be laughing now.