Comment by mschuster91

> Are their margins so slim that they can't afford less than ~$50 per domain?

It's not (just) about driving up the financial cost, that works out decently to combat "normal" spam. The thing is, it drives up the organizational effort - you need to acquire and maintain a constant fresh stream of fake identities, payment credentials and the likes.

> Let's set aside for a moment that I think this suggestion is completely absurd. Are these sites using some prepackaged streaming solution? Do you not realize that I can stream video from any machine using software I control?

At the moment, the pirates are streaming through Cloudflare, which is why CF is being targeted with the mass bans in the first place.

And yes, Cloudflare could go and say "we block everything looking like m3u8 HLS, DASH or other forms of video streaming for young accounts". Cloudflare has enough AI to dynamically detect and ban abusive clients - you can't seriously assume they could not detect someone running video streams on the server side.

> Since when have you needed a license or verification to publish? You're acting as though a global impressum requirement is the natural state of affairs. Your demand is an affront to free society.

One man's freedom ends where another man's freedom begins, society cannot survive without an "immune system" to ward off abuse, and Cloudflare are an accomplice to a whole lot of abusive behavior that is worthy to call out and confront.

> That seems like an entirely separate matter, if it's even true at all.

Have you ever heard about the term "bullet-proof hosting"?