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RIAA subpoenas Cloudflare again over piracy sites

By | Published on Monday 16 March 2020

Cloudflare

The Recording Industry Association Of America has secured another subpoena in the US courts that forces internet services company Cloudflare to reveal any contact information it has on file in relation to four piracy websites.

Although Cloudflare is an entirely legitimate company, its services are often used by piracy sites. The music and movie industries would like Cloudflare to be more proactive in cutting off and exposing piracy operations among its customer base, but the tech firm insists that it can only respond to court orders.

One tactic employed by the music industry in the last year or so is to subpoena contact information for piracy sites that utilise Cloudflare’s services.

That contact information can then be used to directly threaten the owners of targeted piracy sites with copyright litigation – which is sometimes enough to get them to cease operations – or other action can sometimes be taken once the extra info is available.

The sites targeted in the latest subpoena against Cloudflare are iPlusFree.org, Asmelhores.net, Baixarcdscompletos.net and Xandaodownload.net. According to Torrentfreak, iPlusFree has a userbase within the US, whereas the other three sites are mainly popular in Brazil.

In a letter to Cloudflare that accompanies the subpoena the RIAA states that: “These websites are offering recordings which are owned by one or more of our member companies and have not been authorised for this kind of use”.

It remains to be seen if this action results in any of these sites voluntarily ceasing operations or facing direct legal action.



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