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Parody Site ClownStrike Refused To Bow To CrowdStrike's Bogus DMCA Takedown (arstechnica.com) 96
Parody site creator David Senk has rebuffed CrowdStrike's attempt to shut down his "ClownStrike" website, which lampoons the cybersecurity firm's role in a recent global IT outage. Senk swiftly contested the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, asserting fair use for parody. When hosting provider Cloudflare failed to acknowledge his counter-notice, Senk defiantly relocated the site to a Finnish server beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The IT consultant decried the takedown as "corporate cyberbullying," accusing CrowdStrike of exploiting copyright law to silence criticism. Despite CrowdStrike's subsequent admission that parody sites were not intended targets, Senk is remaining resolute, demanding a public apology and refusing to return to Cloudflare's services.
Hurt corporations (Score:2)
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This corporation's reputation has been hurt far beyond Senk's power to add or detract. Hurt by the corporation's own incompetence.
However the joke I was looking for was something about Streisand effects.
The "Hurt corporations hurt people" joke could have worked, though the moderators disagreed. But it has me wondering if ClownStrike [I like the rebranding] actually fired anyone for screwing up so badly. Extremely unlikely it would have been anyone near the top, however, even though that's where the roots of
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I was going for further contortion of the grotesquery of corporate personhood, furthering the logical fallacy of anthropomorphization of our business gods. Your inclination was to go Streisand which, cool and apropos, but I personally find silly for the lack of shame of the folks running that corporation. Seems like they actually want you to look. Maybe so you'll feel sorry for it? Give it stuff--Co
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Interesting point. It's really hard to build up a corporate reputation as a computer security firm. If you are doing the work properly, then no one should ever notice you because you should have prevented all the problem.
Now it's really hard to say you've never heard of CrowdStrike. Count me in with the folks who cannot recall having heard of them before this fiasco. Sure, their stock price took a hit, but now they can say "That was just a bad blip and we haven't screwed up lately." (Unless they do screw up
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Cloudstrike's has... Cloudflares has not, And Cloudflare is responsible for Processing a "DMCA" notice that actually is Not a legal
DMCA notice. The Section 512 statute they are citing does Not allow for takedowns based on Trademark law. The DMCA safe harbor applies solely to Copyright issues.
Also, by ignoring the counter notice Clodflare loses their safe harbor and could be sued by the party whose content they have taken down.
Re:Hurt corporations - lawfare (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Barratry (/bærtri/ BARR--tree, from Old French barat ("deceit, trickery")) is a legal term that, at common law, described a criminal offense committed by people who are overly officious in instigating or encouraging prosecution of groundless litigation,[1] or who bring repeated or persistent acts of litigation for the purposes of profit or harassment
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Re: Hurt corporations (Score:1)
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Re: Hurt corporations (Score:2)
This is offensive to clowns! What did they ever do to you except make you laugh? CrowdStrike made you cry! LOL.
DCMA: The Gift that Keeps on Giving (Score:2, Insightful)
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Yup. Those censorious corporations will definitely censor [cnn.com] anything related to dissent or criticism [newsweek.com].
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I got kicked off Twitter for retweeting about Elno's election interference.
Which is itself election interference.
Can't we deport that fuckface yet?
Elno doesn't love you (Score:2)
Elno will never reward your abuse of moderation.
Even if you are Elno, it will never give you the feeling you are missing because you chase your family away.
Elno infamously froze the account of White Dudes for Harris for no reason other than trying to prevent them from fundraising for Kamala while at the same time running a fake voter registration site [newrepublic.com]. The first thing wouldn't be election interference without the other, because he doesn't owe them a platform (although he is obviously a liar when it comes to
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Free speech is an indispensable right.
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>>Free speech is an indispensable right.
IF you can defend it. And lately it seems only the rich can do that.
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Clownstrike (Score:5, Interesting)
The website in question, https:\\clownstrike.lol, isn't much to look at - and isn't in itself all that newsworthy.
However, while trying to find said site, I tried the obvious https:\\www.clownstrike.com, which redirects to cloud strike.
Now that I find very funny.
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Oh no, LOL. Let's see how long they keep the redirect.
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CLOWNSTRIKE.COM was registered in 2012, last updated 2023-10-30, and is held by "CSC Corporate Domains", the same agency named in the article (and the same registrar that holds CROWDSTRIKE.COM itself)
It's pretty common for these agents to register any potential parody names, but with the proliferation of gTLDs many slip through (.lol wasn't a valid TLD in 2012)
Re: Clownstrike (Score:2)
Hi, URLs have the proper slash you should always be using, the forward slash (/) not the weird Bill Gates/Microsoft backslash. (\)
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He's publicly documenting Crowdstrike's proprietary internal management policies and techniques. Take him down - hard!
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any proprietary information on the Clownstrike.lol site.
What did he specifically publish that you think is illegal or immoral?
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Here you go. [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Cloudflare is pretty much a protection racket, exactly because everyone uses them.
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The most concerning thing about this is Cloudflare's action.
Actually it's not concerning, it's literally the required process by law. From Section 512:
(B) upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph (3), promptly provides the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counter notification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days; and
(C) replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 1
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Yes, technically, CloudFlare could have chosen not to take the site down.
Actually they couldn't do that either. The DMCA does not place the burden of judgement on the provider. That's why it's such a shit piece of legislation. Cloudflare needs to take it down, and once it's down Cloudflare needs to put it back up *after 10 days* if a counter claim is filed.
Re: Cloudflare (Score:2)
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The most concerning thing about this is Cloudflare's action. .
Yup. Guess they need a Clownflare website too now.
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Re: Cloudflare (Score:2)
Cloudflare isn't your friend, people, and it never was. It's good that people are starting to understand that.
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The most concerning thing about this is Cloudflare's action.
Yeah, their action was criminal, not merely a civil violation. A snowball has a better chance in hell than this does towards getting prosecuted, or even looked at.
That is why society is breaking: laws are not being enforced on businesses.
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There might be a typo there maybe you mean clownflare?
Access to the Legal System (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawyers involved know they have no real case, but they also know the other side can't afford $1200-an-hour lawyers to respond to their DMCA notices, and potentially later a lawsuit, motions, discovery requests, etc. So, they accomplish their goal of getting negative content taken down despite the law not being really on their side.
A number of states do have Anti-SLAPP statutes, but I think we need to go a step further and make sure it is a black mark for all the attorneys involved. Make it like an attorney DUI -- you file a frivolous DMCA, nasty demand letter or lawsuit in the context of stopping public participation with legal bullying, you get an automatic suspension from the practice of law.
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he's 100% accurate
he also said theres no money in restaurants, so i wouldnt trust everything he says
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There's already laws and rules against filing frivolous and bad faith claims. They tend only to be enforced against poor people (and their lawyers).
The bigger problem is a culture-wide capitulation to the inequitable distribution of privilege.
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They tend only to be enforced against poor people (and their lawyers).
Also, Trump's lawyers. Granted, many of his legal actions go beyond frivolous and bad faith and are actively abusive of the legal system, which tends to piss off judges.
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My biggest problem with the entire way DMCA works is that there seems to be no real review when one is issued. It's issued, the content is done. Period. If the content wasn't actually supposed to be taken down, the onus is on the person/entity who posted the content to figure out how to deal with it. I get that our corporations wrote this law, oh, sorry, I mean "advised our congress how to write this law," so that it would be easy for them to take down any media they weren't getting a direct cut from, like
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Hahahaha, oh you were serious? I present you one Kevin Clinesmith [justice.gov]. Plead guilty to false statement on a FISA warrant. 12 months probation and 400 hours of community service, That act didn't meet the standard for "moral turpitude," Didn't get disbarred, instead suspended his law license. So I d
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"just so you guys all know that me simply quoting him doesn't mean I actually like this guy"
Couch your post more firmly in social-medial virtue-signaling context, +1.
Re: Access to the Legal System (Score:2)
DMCA is not the problem. It gives you a chance to get out of the situation for free, without getting sued. But the company could have sued him anyway without DMCA.
I Can See the Future (Score:5, Funny)
I can see a Clownflare web site in our future!
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Why? Cloudflare are doing what is exactly required of them by law.
(B) upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph (3), promptly provides the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counter notification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days; and
(C) replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days followin
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I wrote my notes on a Kleenex. Xerox fifty copies (Score:2)
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Murphy's Law.
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Re: Well they have to protect their copyright (Score:5, Informative)
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I knew that copyright was the primary focus of the DMCA, but I had assumed that it also covered trademark. Based on what I've read it does not.
That's right. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act is only about copyright. It is not relevant to trademarks, patents or trade secrets (the other three categories of intellectual property).
You probably got that in your reading, but I thought it was worth making explicit for others.
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IANAL, but... This is trademark rather than copyright. Copyright doesn't have to be in active use to be protected. Trademarks do.
Re: Well they have to protect their copyright (Score:2)
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On top of what others have already said, you cannot lose either a copyright *or* a trademark through a parody of it.
Re: Well they have to protect their copyright (Score:1)
Biggest whoosh in Slashdot history. Touch grass, creep.
Re: Well they have to protect their copyright (Score:2)
I've slowly accepted that he's gone. I miss the guy and the hilarious drama he engendered.
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Yeah it sure does sound silly when you leave the important bit out.
Working as Designed (Score:3)
The DMCA was written to make it easy and low risk for corporations to abuse people, and difficult and expensive for people to fight back.
Re: Working as Designed (Score:1)
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The DMCA lets corporations censor people without having to bother with going to court, and I've yet to see any penalty for abusing the process.
It's a law for corporations, against regular citizens.
Not much content : ( (Score:2)
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The content is behind the logo, right here [clownstrike.lol].
Time Managment (Score:2)
Don't Crowdstrike's lawyers have more important things to be doing right now?
DMCA (Score:2)
As in, Don't Crowdstrike My A--; it's been done already.
Global Cyber Fuckup (Score:2)
I had a coworker (UNIX nerd) ask me yesterday, "what's that company called, the Global Cyber Fuckup one?"
We decided that would be sufficient and to refer to it by the ticker $GCF.
'Clownstrike' is tame.
Clownstrike.com (Score:2)
Cloudflare never received... (Score:2)
"...Cloudflare never received either of Senk's counter notices, which is a problem..."
Yeah a problem, Cloudflare must be using the cloudy struck software in its servers. And CloudFlare customer support is like the Maytag repairman. Both companies have their heads in the cloud...or someplace where the sun don't shine.
JoshK.
Obligatory Elvis Costello reference (Score:2)
"There was a clown strike, and the clowns threw down their tools."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0zbZDn7juc
Time to spare I guess (Score:2)
Shouldn't they be focusing on fixing their problems than controlling publications?
Wasn't it Adderall that was incredibly honest when there was a manufacturing supply issue with tampering, but through being honest with the news they earned trust.
Taking sites down that spread awareness isn't ideal, it just makes the company look dishonest like they're trying to silence the customers. At this stage they should look more like they're working with the users to resolve issues, not protect their name.
Horses ran, barn and it's door reduced to rubble (Score:2)
The Streisand Effect (Score:2)
The site in question (Score:2)
desperation (Score:1)
... of a death spiral
That's what it is. This POS company needs to go down. In fact the whole cybersec industry needs to take a lesson in accountability from this.