The French Are Going After Enablers: Other Countries May Follow
April 16, 2025
Another post by the dinobaby. Judging by the number of machine-generated images of young female “entities” I receive, this 80-year-old must be quite fetching to some scammers with AI. Who knew?
Enervated by the French judiciary’s ability to reason with Pavel Durov, the Paris Judicial Tribunal is going after what I call “enablers.” The term applies to the legitimate companies which make their online services available to customers. With the popularity of self-managed virtual machines, the online services firms receive an online order, collect a credit card, validate it, and let the remote customer set up and manage a computing resource.
Hey, the approach is popular and does not require expensive online service technical staff to do the handholding. Just collect the money and move forward. I am not sure the Paris Judicial Tribunal is interested in virtual anything. According to “French Court Orders Cloudflare to ‘Dynamically’ Block MotoGP Streaming Piracy”:
In the seemingly endless game of online piracy whack-a-mole, a French court has ordered Cloudflare to block several sites illegally streaming MotoGP. The ruling is an escalation of French blocking measures that began increasing their scope beyond traditional ISPs in the last few months of 2024. Obtained by MotoGP rightsholder Canal+, the order applies to all Cloudflare services, including DNS, and can be updated with ‘future’ domains.
The write up explains:
The reasoning behind the blocking request is similar to a previous blocking order, which also targeted OpenDNS and Google DNS. It is grounded in Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, which empowers rightsholders to seek court orders against any outfit that can help to stop ‘serious and repeated’ sports piracy. This time, SECP’s demands are broader than DNS blocking alone. The rightsholder also requested blocking measures across Cloudflare’s other services, including its CDN and proxy services.
The approach taken by the French provides a framework which other countries can use to crack down on what seem to be legal online services. Many of these outfits expose one face to the public and regulators. Like the fictional Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, these online service firms make it possible for bad actors to perform a number of services to a special clientele; for example:
- Providing outlets for hate speech
- Hosting all or part of a Dark Web eCommerce site
- Allowing “roulette wheel” DNS changes for streaming sites distributing sports events
- Enabling services used by encrypted messaging companies whose clientele engages in illegal activity
- Hosting images of a controversial nature.
How can this be? Today’s technology makes it possible for an individual to do a search for a DMCA ignored advertisement for a service provider. Then one locates the provider’s Web site. Using a stolen credit card and the card owner’s identity, the bad actor signs up for a service from these providers:
This is a partial list of Dark Web hosting services compiled by SporeStack. Do you recognize the vendors Digital Ocean or Vultr? I recognized one.
These providers offer virtual machines and an API for interaction. With a bit of effort, the online providers have set up a vendor-customer experience that allows the online provider to say, “We don’t know what customer X is doing.” A cyber investigator has to poke around hunting for the “service” identified in the warrant in the hopes that the “service” will not be “gone.”
My view is that the French court may be ready to make life a bit less comfortable for some online service providers. The cited article asserts:
… the blockades may not stop at the 14 domain names mentioned in the original complaint. The ‘dynamic’ order allows SECP to request additional blockades from Cloudflare, if future pirate sites are flagged by French media regulator, ARCOM. Refusal to comply could see Cloudflare incur a €5,000 daily fine per site. “[Cloudflare is ordered to implement] all measures likely to prevent, until the date of the last race in the MotoGP season 2025, currently set for November 16, 2025, access to the sites identified above, as well as to sites not yet identified at the date of the present decision,” the order reads.
The US has a proposed site blocking bill as well.
But the French may continue to push forward using the “Pavel Durov action” as evidence that sitting on one’s hands and worrying about international repercussions is a waste of time. If companies like Amazon and Google operate in France, the French could begin tire kicking in the hopes of finding a bad wheel.
Mr. Durov believed he was not going to have a problem in France. He is a French citizen. He had the big time Kaminski firm represent him. He has lots of money. He has 114 children. What could go wrong? For starters, the French experience convinced him to begin cooperating with law enforcement requests.
Now France is getting some first hand experience with the enablers. Those who dismiss France as a land with too many different types of cheese may want to spend a few moments reading about French methods. Only one nation has some special French judicial savoir faire.
Stephen E Arnold, April 16, 2025
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