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STOP CLOWNING AROUND —


PARODY SITE CLOWNSTRIKE REFUSED TO BOW TO CROWDSTRIKE’S BOGUS DMCA TAKEDOWN


PARODY SITE CLOWNSTRIKE DEFENDED THE "OBVIOUS" FAIR USE.

Ashley Belanger - 8/6/2024, 5:49 PM

Enlarge
MirageC | Moment

READER COMMENTS

76

Doesn't CrowdStrike have more important things to do right now than try to take
down a parody site?

That's what IT consultant David Senk wondered when CrowdStrike sent a Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice targeting his parody site
ClownStrike.

Senk created ClownStrike in the aftermath of the largest IT outage the world has
ever seen—which CrowdStrike blamed on a buggy security update that shut down
systems and incited prolonged chaos in airports, hospitals, and businesses
worldwide.

Although Senk wasn't personally impacted by the outage, he told Ars he is "a
proponent of decentralization." He seized the opportunity to mock "CrowdStrike's
ability to cause literal billions of dollars of damage" because he viewed this
as "collateral from the incredible amount of 'centralization' in the tech
industry."

Setting up the parody site at clownstrike.lol on July 24, Senk's site design is
simple. It shows the CrowdStrike logo fading into a cartoon clown, with circus
music blasting throughout the transition. For the first 48 hours of its
existence, the site used an unaltered version of CrowdStrike's Falcon logo,
which is used for its cybersecurity platform, but Senk later added a rainbow
propeller hat to the falcon's head.

"I put the site up initially just to be silly," Senk told Ars, noting that he's
a bit "old-school" and has "always loved parody sites" (like this one).

It was all fun and games, but on July 31, Senk received a DMCA notice from
Cloudflare's trust and safety team, which was then hosting the parody site. The
notice informed Senk that CSC Digital Brand Services' global anti-fraud team, on
behalf of CrowdStrike, was requesting the immediate removal of the CrowdStrike
logo from the parody site, or else Senk risked Cloudflare taking down the whole
site.


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Senk immediately felt the takedown was bogus. His site was obviously parody,
which he felt should have made his use of the CrowdStrike logos—altered or
not—fair use. He immediately responded to Cloudflare to contest the notice, but
Cloudflare did not respond to or even acknowledge receipt of his counter notice.
Instead, Cloudflare sent a second email warning Senk of the alleged
infringement, but once again, Cloudflare failed to respond to his counter
notice.

This left Senk little choice but to relocate his parody site to "somewhere
less-susceptible to DMCA takedown requests," Senk told Ars, which ended up being
a Hetzner server in Finland.

Currently on the ClownStrike site, when you click a CSC logo altered with a
clown wig, you can find Senk venting about "corporate cyberbullies" taking down
"content that they disagree with" and calling Cloudflare's counter notice system
"hilariously ineffective."

"The DMCA requires service providers to 'act expeditiously to remove or disable
access to the infringing material,' yet it gives those same 'service providers'
14 days to restore access in the event of a counternotice!" Senk complained.
"The DMCA, like much American legislation, is heavily biased towards
corporations instead of the actual living, breathing citizens of the country."

Reached for comment, CrowdStrike declined to comment on ClownStrike's takedown
directly. But it seems like the takedown notice probably never should have been
sent to Senk. His parody site likely got swept up in CrowdStrike's anti-fraud
efforts to stop bad actors attempting to take advantage of the global IT outage
by deceptively using CrowdStrike's logo on malicious sites.

“As part of our proactive fraud management activities, CrowdStrike’s anti-fraud
partners have issued more than 500 takedown notices in the last two weeks to
help prevent bad actors from exploiting current events," CrowdStrike's statement
said. "These actions are taken to help protect customers and the industry from
phishing sites and malicious activity. While parody sites are not the intended
target of these efforts, it’s possible for such sites to be inadvertently
impacted. We will review the process and, where appropriate, evolve ongoing
anti-fraud activities.”

Page: 1 2 3 Next →



READER COMMENTS

76
Ashley Belanger Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated
to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a
Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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