#8 - Why does Russia hate Cloudflare so much?
#8 - Why does Russia hate Cloudflare so much?
Four major Japanese manga publishers – Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa – will sue Cloudflare accused of hosting servers that facilitate piracy of their graphic novels. These companies dominate the market for Japanese comics.
It’s not the first time Cloudflare has faced legal actions from manga publishers. In 2017 they asked for help to take down a site called Mangamura. Cloudflare submitted information on Mangamura to the Tokyo District Court, and Mangamura collapsed. In 2019, the same four companies settled after Cloudflare promised to stop mirroring Japanese sites if it was satisfied the content they hosted was pirated.
The new litigation was in the news for several days and some major media outlets echoed the announcement. But there was one that caught my eye after watching this video. Please take some pop corn and enjoy:
If you are familiar with the Cloudflare business, you are probably now thinking, “What the f**k…?”.
If you are not familiar with it, Cloudflare is the largest Content Delivery Network (CDN) worldwide with an 81.2% share of this market, with a staggering 18% of the total internet web traffic. It also provides security and anti-abuse services like DDoS protection, DNS, and VPN-like access. Now an internet giant, it is another example of how a Silicon Valley company became a monopoly thanks to massive funding from Venture Capital, visionary founders, and excellent execution. Sadly, tragedy was also part of this success story.
According to RT (a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by the Russian government) journalist, Cloudflare is a shady business with close links with the US government that supports terrorist groups, copyright piracy, images of child abuse, and neo-nazi content.
It stinks like fake news. But why is RT -a propaganda arm of Russia- so belligerent with Cloudflare?
Cloudflare has a policy of post factum. They prefer to wait to address problems until enough complaints pour in or law enforcement gets involved. It perfectly fits the Silicon Valley culture of “move fast and break things.” For a fast-growing company, they can’t bother to verify what is legal or not before executing. They execute. Period. And they can always claim the “Freedom of Speech” to act post factum.
Cloudflare is known to be lax when dealing with users not following their Terms of Service. But the truth is Cloudflare reacts to court orders, takes down requests, and stops delivering content if mandated from a court. They have hosted (and probably they still host) hate-speech content, copyright infringement, and more, but they abide by the law when requested. And in some cases, they have kicked out of the platform customers they don’t like.
To understand why Russia attacks Cloudflare, we need to go back to September 2021. Roskomnadzor (the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling, and censoring mass media) tried to block all access to websites linked to the jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Many internet sites were down for hours because they attempted to block widely-used internet services like Cloudflare to prevent access to a banned app backed by Navalny's allies. It was too obvious and too noisy, even to the eyes of the Russian media. They shut down 20% of the internet to all Russian citizens to block a voting app. The distributed design of the internet and the pervasive use of Cloudflare services worldwide beat the censorship of the Russian government.
Cloudflare has become a threat to any government trying to censor access to internet content, because blocking Cloudflare means blocking almost the whole network. And for any leader (no matter if you are in Canada or Kazakhstan), it’s never a good idea.
The Music Snippet
I always loved the noisy plane sound at the beginning of this The Beatles’ White Album masterpiece: