>They replied within a few hours. The response was straightforward: the illegal content would be removed (and we verified that it was), and they had never received any previous notifications about those URLs.

They never notified archive.today of the illegal material, instead they chose to demand blocking actions of archive.today from a DNS provider. I would be interested to know whether any other DNS service providers have received similar such demands.

I would assume (like any normal individual), that you would notify the service first (archive.today) and if they've proven to be a non-responder to CSAM material then escalate to legal action.

If archive.today is honest about never receiving a prior notification, then the way in which they've decided to go about removing the illegal material is very suspicious.

One might even go so far to insinuate that they were the party responsible for the CSAM being there to begin with. Wouldn't be the first time someone weaponized such content. I remember at least one case were a steamer was "digitally" swatted using a Dropbox upload link.