Cloudflare Blocks Abusive Content On Its Ethereum Gateway

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloudflare is a content-neutral Internet infrastructure service. The company aims not to interfere with the traffic of its clients and users but, in some cases, it has to take action. This means responding to DMCA subpoenas and takedown requests for hosted content, for example. In addition, Cloudflare now reports it has blocked access to 'abusive' content on its Ethereum gateway. In its most recent transparency report, Cloudflare further notes that it has implemented access restrictions on its public Ethereum gateway. The company doesn't store any content on the Ethereum network, nor can it remove any. However, it can block access through its service.

If Cloudflare receives valid abuse reports or copyright infringement complaints, it will take appropriate action. The same applies to the gateway for the decentralized IPFS network. In its previous transparency report, Cloudflare already mentioned more than 1,000 IPFS actions a figure that increased slightly in the second half of last year. At the same time, Cloudflare also restricted access to 99 'items' on the Ethereum network. Since these are 'gateway' related restrictions there's no impact on the content hosted on IPFS or Ethereum. Instead, it will only make it impossible to access content through Cloudflare's service.

It's not clear how many of these restrictions are abuse or copyright-related, as not much context is provided. The Ethereum actions are, at least in part, a response to the U.S. Department of Treasury's sanctions against the cryptocurrency tumbler Tornado Cash. 'Those sanctions raise significant legal questions about the extent to which particular computer software, rather than individuals or entities that use that software, can be subject to sanctions,' Cloudflare writes. 'Nonetheless, to comply with legal requirements, Cloudflare has taken steps to disable access through the Cloudflare-operated Ethereum Gateway to the digital currency addresses identified in the designation.' The report notes that the volume of valid DMCA notices Cloudflare received has increased, 'up from 18 to 972 in the span of a year.' Meanwhile, the number of civil subpoenas it's received, including those issued under the DMCA, has decreased. 'In the second half of last year, the company received 20 civil subpoenas which targeted 57 domain names,' reports TorrentFreak. 'That's the lowest number since Cloudflare first disclosed this statistic five years ago, signaling a downward trend.'

Cloudflare's latest Transparency Report is available here (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.