Comment by mattbee
8 years ago
It's not a game, it's policing your own network and keeping your business activities legal. My network has run an abuse desk for 15 years and there are no feasting piranhas (what does that even mean?).
Cloudflare definitely already runs an abuse desk, and ban accounts, they just choose not to ban network abuse tools. They are making the internet a more dangerous place for hosting, then asking you to buy a solution. They could search Google for "booter" and "ddos tool" and whatever else, and flag sites for banning, it's a project an intern could do. But they don't, and they suck for that.
They could ban booters. But then someone else will say "but you allow <some other type of site>! They're clearly bad, you should ban them too". And so they do, and now someone else complains about some other site. Once you start banning sites for the content they hold, where do you draw the line? I don't fault CloudFlare for drawing it at the legal barrier (e.g. no CP).
CloudFlare should not align itself with the adversaries its mission is to protect its users from. This isn't a slippery slope distinction, this is a binary exclusion.
> Once you start banning sites for the content they hold, where do you draw the line?
I mean, you could always just draw the line at booters. Not everything has such a slippery slope.
You can say that. But I guarantee you if they do that, other people will think they should ban other sites too.
Really the only way to avoid the problem is to not play the game, and so that's what CloudFlare does. It's pretty much the only defensible stance to take.
They can draw the line wherever they like, they are under zero obligation to provide a service to anyone they don't want to.