We will respect copyrights and our obligations under the DMCA and other laws outside the United States.

Can you be more specific? I'm not invested in this, but if I were, I would want to know:

- will Cloudfare require a legal DMCA takedown notice in order to take down content, or will they allow 'trusted' partners such as large companies to simply assert a violation?

- will Cloudfare employ any sort of automated copyright screening algorithms, like ContentID, that automatically prevent sharing of some content?

- when served with a DMCA takedown, will Cloudfare immediately take down the content (presumption of guilt) or will they allow the content-provider time to respond, either to contest the takedown or take responsibility?

- will Cloudfare push back against or provide consequences for filing fradulent DMCA takedowns?

Disclaimer: As far as I understand it. May not be completely accurate, not a lawyer much less a lawyer in the USA.

On receiving a DMCA takedown notice they have to remove access to the content. Them's the rules of the DMCA. You can then file a counter claim if the notice is mistaken or fraudulent or you have the required permissions. The next step for the claimant is then to either remove their claim and allow your content to be restored or sue you. The DMCA also requires repeat infringers be banned from the service. In this case I imagine that means your account, not singular website, gets banned.

If they don't do that then Cloudflare loses their safe harbor status and would be liable for the content you upload.

While possibly controversial to say, the way YouTube handles copyright claims is actually far easier and much safer (legally) on the end user.

You should always seriously consider the repercussions if you're going to have a site that handles user-uploaded content. Primarily make it as easy as possible for your service to receive the initial DMCA takedown notice rather than force the claimant to go to Cloudflare directly.

For a similar process check out how GitHub handles DMCA claims: https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy/

As I understand youtube allows large companies to automatically delete videos, without sending a DMCA? They have some kind of API where they can delete videos they think violate their rights so that Google has less administrative costs. This has backfired in the past as many videos were deleted that didn't actually violate any rights.

Correct: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3045545

the only acceptable DMCA obligation for cloudflare is to forward the DMCA takedown notice to the customer who uploaded the video, and let them choose to handle the notice the way they decide! Any other method is game-able by large media companies to enforce their copyright on fair use that they arent allowed to enforce.

How is YT different in this regard? Why are they the end user for the DMCA request but CF wouldn't be?

I think "the only acceptable" in the GP should be read as "the only thing we should accept", as the rest of the comment is really pointing out how Youtube's system is gamed by the large media companies.

There are penalties for false DMCA claims, so allowing companies to bypass a real DMCA claim lets them shirk a lot of work (and responsibility) for making sure those claims are correct, lest they incur legal or financial penalties.

Because YT chose to insert themselves in front of the DMCA.

When someone copyright claims your video, they're not actually sending a DMCA, they're doing a YT-specific process that just happens to look sorta like the DMCA notice/counternotice process without involving the legal system.

I think the commenter was specifically looking for an answer to this question, not an overall statement that you’ll comply with the law:

>So, will Cloudflare have the same kind of DMCA and/or ContentID controls that YouTube has? How will they police the content they stream for their clients/partners?