3 Count: xQc Shutdown

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1: Court: Cloudflare is Liable for Pirate Site, But Not as a DNS Provider

First off today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that, in Germany, the Cologne Higher Regional Court has handed down a split decision against the content delivery network (CDN) provider Cloudflare, holding the service liable for providing CDN service to a pirate site, but not extending that liability to their Domain Name Service (DNS) product.

The case involved the now-defunct website DDL-Music, which used Cloudflare’s CDN to stay online despite repeated action from rightsholders. The company strongly resisted attempts to order them to stop serving the site but, in early 2020, rightsholders got a judgement against Cloudflare that forced them to stop serving the site, bringing it down.

Cloudflare continued to fight the case with rightsholders arguing that Cloudflare should be liable for copyright infringement for both serving a clear pirate site with its CDN network and providing access to it through its user-facing DNS service. The court has agreed about Cloudflare’s responsibility when it comes to its CDN, but said that its public DNS service has no obligation to block that, or any other, pirate site.

2: ACE Shuts Down CimaClub Piracy Site

Next up today, Advanced Television reports that the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has shuttered an Egyptian site names CimaClub, which was estimated to be one of the largest pirate sites in the Middle East.

ACE is a global anti-piracy group that is made up of a consortium of rightsholders and other players in digital media. They claim that CimaClub was a site with over 29 million monthly visits across 65 domains, with traffic coming from all over the world.

However, thanks to their efforts and the “swift action” by Egyptian authorities, the site has now been shuttered, along with its library of 50,000 movies and TV series.

3: xQc’s YouTube Channel Terminated for Copyright Claims

Finally today, James Hale at Tubefilter reports that popular YouTuber xQc has had his main YouTube channel shuttered following a series of copyright claims against him.

xQc is commonly known as a reaction streamer, meaning that he routinely shows content created by others and showcases his “reaction” to it. Though this type of content is popular, it’s also very controversial with rightsholders, who often view it as copyright infringement.

During a Kick stream, xQc learned that his YouTube channel had been removed. He acknowledged that he had several strikes on his channel but claimed that it was a timing issue where some that he had protested and filed counternotices for had not gone through. It is unclear if he will be able to get his channel back.

However, he may also not care particularly much if it doesn’t because he has moved primarily to livestreaming, including a $100 million streaming deal he signed with Kick back in June.

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