Mar 7, 2019
When a CDN suspends a pirate site, is that a takedown?
A site going dark for a day is not the same as its copies being gone.
In short: a CDN or reverse proxy such as Cloudflare passes traffic to a site's real server and caches some of it. Ending that service can take a site offline for a while, but the content usually still sits on the origin server, and the site can move to another provider.
Suspensions also happen for reasons that have nothing to do with copyright, so they say little about whether the copies were dealt with.
What a CDN does
A CDN sits between visitors and the site. It hides the address of the origin server, absorbs traffic and speeds up delivery. For a pirate site, that also makes it harder to see who actually hosts the files.
How copyright complaints are handled
Because a CDN is usually not the host, copyright complaints sent to it are generally passed on to the site's hosting provider, and the complainant may be told who that provider is. The removal itself still has to come from the host or the site.
What to do instead
- Report the content to the site and to its hosting provider.
- Follow the site if it moves to a new provider or domain.
- Use search delisting so the pages are harder to find while notices are processed.
Related service: DMCA & takedowns.