If Flock truly believed that the domain name infringes on their trademark, they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint instead of Cloudflare and Hetzner abuse reports.

But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.

I wonder if Flock + Cyble can be sued for fraud. There are 5 elements in a fraud:

  Misrepresentation of Fact
  Knowledge of Falsity
  Intent to Induce Reliance 
  Justifiable Reliance 
  Resulting Damages

Knowingly filing false DMCA claims will also perjure them.

However, ICANN has a whole procedure they follow where complaints are fact-checked, whereas DMCA takedowns put an unreasonable burden on hosting providers that requires immediate action, and many hosting providers will take such action automatically to protect themselves.

I doubt they care about perjury. They care about results, and the DMCA gets them exactly that.

The phishing reports are interesting, providers aren't necessarily required to act as fast on those. Although, I suspect companies like Cloudflare who get used by countless phishers will probably also set up some kind of automated anti phishing system.

Cloudfare and Hetzner should see this vulnerability of their own making and DO SOMETHING about it.

Cloudflare is becoming the great firewall of America more and more every day

>they would file an ICANN UDRP complaint

Those take on the order of months to go through. Even if they did so, you wouldn't notice until much later. Meanwhile cloudflare and hetzner are faster. If you want to reduce harm by taking down a site you can't just let it stay up for weeks while the ICANN process plays out.

> But they don't, because the former would require them to perjure themselves, and the latter just requires them to lie to a hosting company.

Doesn't stop anyone with DMCA... DMCA is coming up on almost three decades of being a law, and requires statements made under penalty of perjury.

However many millions (likely billions) of DMCA takedowns issued, who knows how many false/bad faith... I wonder how many have led to prosecutions for perjury, even when filing tens of thousands, en masse...

No need to wonder, the answer is simple. Starts with a "Z" and ends in "ero".