I got the feeling that these features should be part of a browser extension the same way as there are AdBlock extensions. I guess the reason it is not is "personal preference" of the author, or is there some technical reason?
There's a few links in sibling comments. But basically they are collecting some identifying data to try to optimize load times, but if they don't get that data they just reject the request instead of allowing for longer load times. Archive promises that they throw away that data and aren't tracking users but I mean why rely on trust? And as others point out, there are weird aspects of the code too so even if you trust what about mistakes? And btw, it isn't just cloudflare that's affected.
Archive is intentionally violating copyright, and needs to know which country you're coming from, so they can serve you content from a country that isn't yours. they need that information to protect the service and keep it running.
I definitely am not buying that, especially since it isn't just Cloudflare users being affected, including Quad9, or the wiki[1] which claims the issue was resolved. Note that I can't reach them from cloudflare or even with mullvad's DNS. Not giving me faith tbh. See the linked thread and the links from there for more info[0]. And I trust Cloudflare way more than one guy who users are having difficulties with answering emails[2]. Sure, maybe he gets too many and is only one person, but that gives me less faith that things are being done correctly. Or see weird comments from this hn thread[3]
I don't know for sure, but I would imagine there are more severe actions taken against circumventing paid material (content behind a paywall) than there is for free content supplemented by advertisements..
Edit : The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing an effective technological means of control that restricts access to a copyrighted work. I guess that would apply here.
Given how liberally the DMCA is applied, you definitely don't want to be on the wrong side of that.
I remember some guy that wrote a WoW bot and got sued using the DMCA, with the argument that his bot was circumventing the anti-cheat and the anti-cheat could be seen as a 'mechanism protecting copyrighted material', because it was safeguarding access to the game servers, the servers were generating parts of the game world (such as sounds) dynamically, and those were under copyright... Wild stuff.
It happened to Honorbuddy, a very advanced bot for World Of Warcraft made by a German company. The argument in relation to DMCA was that the bot was circumventing warden, the games anti-cheat system. The legal battle was long and they ultimately had to strip many features of the bot, until the company went under.
Isn't anything that can be circumvented ineffective?
Or, looking at it the other way, if you put a small sticker that says "do not do X" and even one person follows that, isn't that therefore an "effective" method?
> The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing an effective technological means of control that restricts access to a copyrighted work. I guess that would apply here.
