Cloudflare Blocking Access to Internet Piracy Websites in the UK
At present, it’s already quite well known that the UK’s major home broadband ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband, EE, Plusnet, TalkTalk etc.) block customers from accessing websites that have been found, via the High Court, to facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy). But now Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider Cloudflare has started doing the same.
Just to recap. ISPs subject to blocking orders, which in the UK flow from Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), have over the past 15 years or so become very common. Hundreds of websites have been blocked through this approach (thousands if you include their many proxies and mirrors), which usually include file sharing (P2P / Torrent), streaming sites, Sci-Hub and those that sell counterfeit goods etc.
Since then, we’ve also seen similar kinds of restrictions being imposed on some third-party Domain Name System (DNS) providers and efforts have also been made to target providers of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) in some countries (here). But now it appears as if Cloudflare has become one of the first internet intermediaries beyond local residential ISPs to also block access to pirate sites in the UK.
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According to Torrent Freak, close to 200 pirate domains requested by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) were this week added to one of the longest pirate site blocking lists in the world. But the big change this time is the unexpected involvement of Cloudflare and its geo-blocking system, which for some UK users attempting to access the domains added yesterday, now displays the following notice (status code): “Error 451 – Unavailable for Legal Reasons“.
Extract from Cloudflare’s Error 451 Message
In response to a legal order, Cloudflare has taken steps to limit access to this website through Cloudflare’s pass-through security and CDN services within the United Kingdom.
The move won’t make much of a difference to users of the big ISPs, since they’ll hit the broadband provider’s own network-level blocking before getting as far as the Cloudflare one. But the Cloudflare block will also hit users beyond the biggest broadband ISPs and thus may have a potentially much wider impact. This will also hit some users of VPN providers who may be attempting to circumvent the original ISP-level blocking.
Admittedly, this is still very much a game of whack-a-mole for Rights Holders, and no doubt websites that involve some use of Cloudflare will ultimately end up moving on to harness different platforms. In addition, Cloudflare’s blocking does NOT yet extend to all of the websites that have been previously restricted by UK blocking orders, although it’s perhaps not unreasonable to expect that this will happen in the near future.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Seeing this more and more now, even Reddit is about to start requiring age verification for UK based people
I’ve even using a VPN for years so I’m used to bypassing these blocks but …..
How long before the British government make VPNs illegal?
You just know it’s not beneath them
Everyone needs to contact there MP about that.
Considering that VPNs are an essential modern technology that is required by the majority of remote workers.. I don’t think the government would ever consider banning them.
@smoth I wouldn’t be so certain, Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Iran have all banned them plus others
I wouldn’t put anything beyond this nanny state government, the UK is an embarrassment
More and more freedoms whittled away and disposed of every single year
@smoth We’re clearly talking about ‘commercial’ VPNs here. Firms like Spur Intelligence already keep a record of as many VPN server IPs as they can – it’s not hard. I highly doubt the UK government will be blocking VPNs anytime soon, but if people continue to not understand the decentralized nature of the internet then legislation will continue to constrict and consolidate the internet further.
Youfibre block none lol
Smaller ISPs generally never do, it’s always by court order so only the main ISPs are targeted.
You shouldn’t be accessing torrents or torrent sites that host copyright material anyway through your ISP directly
Do any of the smaller providers have their own DNS servers? I know at least one that just use google.
Same with cityfibre
It’s not a UK blocking order – any judgement or order issued by the England and Wales High Court has zero effect in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
If they’re blocking sites that facilitate copyright infringement, how will anyone in the UK access OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, X, etc.?
LOL,
Excellent point, which is that Ai is just puking up things it has harvested and indexed online and is a de facto copyright infringement system.
Aren’t we just forgetting that states want to spy on all, and corporates just want to control everything for proffits?
Between device fingerprints of OSs, windows/Browser, mobiles, 1pix / ‘invisible’ gifs etc, static IPs, (arguably all PII / GDPR data) and authorities ‘free access’ to all digital etc, which is never clearly published or stated, but kept rather ‘dark’ by corporates and governments bordering on secrecy by obscurity. Yet when an individual wants real net privacy or obscurity, fundamentally the individuals can’t have it?
Thats before ‘they’ want our biometric data, faces, fingerprints and voice.. And of course such data never gets hacked…, And when your bio data is out the net, ‘misplaced’ in the ‘cloud’ across ‘governments’, corporates and numerous 3rd party so called security service providers ‘outsourced’ to, by banks etc. etc.
At least with a password A) you’re really responsible for it B) you can change it, try doing that with your bio data..
Tin Hat syndrome or just public corralled/corralling ignorance? It’d be easier if we were implanted with chips at birth and only had access to services or facilities by personal ID chip, arguably we’re only just at the mobile phone stage? No, just try getting a bank account and access with out a dependency for a mobile phone.
Rambling paused…
Torrent Freak once again out front and the only outlet providing excellent background and reporting on the issues.
Silence elsewhere in the national press and other specialist online publications
This isnt just a DNS block either, it seems if the sites are using cloudflare for caching, they are blocking access to UK ip’s on the CDN’s.
I wouldn’t put it past the UK government to only allow websites they approve of. Previous governments have slowly, but surely, strangled access to the internet. The Online Safety Bill is just complete and utter nonsense to excuse bad parenting. GCHQ is just a domestic spy group.
Welcome to China
Where’s your proof for this libellous claim?
The UK is nowhere near as bad as Russia, China, Iran where you can find yourself executed or facing the gulags for standing up to the tyrant rule in those countries.
Least in the UK, you actually have the freedom to say what you want even if it’s a load of nonsense.
“libellous”, how, to who?
Suggest you look up legal definition of this term.
Completely false post, the UK arrests more people for online posts than China and Russia
Banning VPNs will come soon if there’s no regime change
You can trust official statistics on this from autocratic states (if comparable data even exists?) about as much as you can that Nigerian email spammer who says they have $2m to give you.
I did not mention Russia or Iran. I mentioned China and while we may not be there yet, we are heading towards that way. We have more cameras than China spying on us.
The government want to bring out a digital ID, and now they want to build the great firewall of the UK.
While we do have freedom of speech to a certain extent, at the moment, other ways are becoming like China, where they want to keep an eye on everything we do, control our lives, even try to control what we should or should not eat.
So yes, becoming worse than China.
Rubbish, the UK is nowhere near as bad as the PRC when it comes to censorship.
Suggest you go away and come with actual facts to support your claim.
People in China are arrested for whistleblowing, it is a clear rule
People in the UK are arbitrarily arrested on ideological grounds. See Lucy Connollys case, a mother who made a post and deleted it shortly after, jailed 3 years. Wayne Rourke jailed 3 years for accurately describing the Southport murderer. There was a couple a few months ago who mildly criticized their daughters school on private Whatsapp group. Many more examples. Actual violent criminals get far more lenient sentences
John, which of Waynes comments do you consider “accurately describing the Southport murderer.”
Was it when he said it was a Muslim terrorist attack?
Was it when he posted a picture of a Mosque writing “give ’em hell lads”?
By the way, he was prosecuted under a 1986 law – in other words, a law that has been on the books for almost 40 years.
Stop using ISP DNSs, you silly geese.
As for Cloudflare, that’s a pity since they’ve been holding out for so long and arguing that they’re a neutral entity. Sad to see they’re participating in what really just amounts to political games.
I wonder, when our internet access starts emulating the Chinese ‘Great Firewall’, will we even notice?
It’s coming. It was a Liebour government back in the day that caused the Nanny state we have today and start of restricted speech (no, I am not against banning incitement/hate speech, but general freedom of speech that people find themselves too scared to do these days.). I’m sure Yvette Cooper will have a hand in creating a walled garden internet and then speak down to us labelling us if we disagree with her view.
That won’t work, If the site is using Cloudflare to obfuscate it’s IP address and Cloudflare is blocking UK ASN’s. A VPN would work but not always or for the site to use the Onion network – no good for streaming or P2P though.
It’s been in place for years.
It was actually a Conservative Government that started the trend towards a British Internet that resembled China.
This idea was started under David Cameron when we had a “golden age” of trade and cooperation with China. Web Filters were brought in as an option out for adult content on mobile networks, David Cameron openly talked about wanting an internet kill switch (which China had) after the 2010 riots and the first web blocks were brought in for sites like the Pirate Bay.
Talktalk even run the landline isp filter introduced later on Huawei Technology before that was considered to be too close for comfort by the USA.
It was the Conservative Party all of it.
It’s cloudflare blocking UK ASN’s not UK ISP’s blocking the sites.
A VPN might get round them or the sites to the Onion network
I have tried one of the sites listed both on Virgin and EE and they both refuse to load with an error about security. Proton VPN activated and it works just fine via the Netherlands.
This sets a dangerous precedent. Requiring external internet companies to censor the internet for the UK Government’s wants and needs puts the UK on a par with some of the worst enemies of the internet:Iran,China, Russia and other Dictatorships.
The Irony being this is being “demanded” of our government by a trade body of a country deeply against this tyranny the USA and the Motion Picture Association of America.
So it’s tyranny if China blocks the New York Times but we have to block torrent sites even at the external dns provider level because it might “theoretically” damage Hollywood?
It makes sense feom a data protection point of view. Oh wait, the US has no such restrictions despite the demand coming from a US association. Mmmm
People go on about China, Russia etc but every nation does it. Geo-Blocking is rife among nations everywhere and that’s why VPNs are widely used to mitigate the blocking.
Been using a VPN for a few years now, Never ever thought I would need one, but got one for the phone as I was using more public networks, but then started using it on my home network and glad I do.
Now my router have been updated, it can now have a VPN client added to it, which is what I have done.
Cut off one head, several more will take its place…