CloudFlare on censorship: 'A website is speech. It is not a bomb'

Internet firm CloudFlare has hit back at a technology news site over suggestions that by providing its content delivery network (CDN) services to Chechen news site Kavkaz Center, it is supporting terrorism.

CloudFlare was contacted with questions about its policies by journalist James Cook from The Kernel, and chief executive Matthew Prince chose to reply with a sharply-worded blog post on its own site declaring its commitment to free speech.

"One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred. A website, of course, is nothing but speech," wrote Prince, who returned to the theme later in his post.

"A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain."

Cook's piece is due to be published today as part of The Kernel's relaunch after folding earlier in the year, but as its US rival PandoDaily has noticed, the text is already available by viewing the source code of its "Coming Soon" page.

The article – titled CloudFlare, Terrorists' Little Helper? – makes allegations about the operators and members of the Kavkaz Center site, and claims that it is "kept online" by CloudFlare in part through its use of the company's services "to protect against the frequent DDoS attacks it receives".

That's something Prince accepted in his blog post: "Removing this, or any other site, from our network wouldn't remove the content from the Internet: it would simply slow its performance and make it more vulnerable to attack," he wrote.

"As we have blogged about before, we often find ourselves on opposite sides of political conflicts. Fundamentally, we are consistent in the fact that our political beliefs will not color who we allow to be fast and safe on the web."

His comments have in turn been incorporated into the article – "Obviously his squeamishness about poking his nose where he shouldn't doesn't apply to journalism about CloudFlare," retorts Cook – providing a timely row to fuel the website's relaunch.

The issue is completely separate to the privacy debate fuelled by the recent NSA revelations, but both highlight the fact that companies like CloudFlare are likely to face growing scrutiny about their policies relating to customers and the data flowing through their networks.

In his blog post, Prince maintained that CDNs like CloudFlare should not be expected to take responsibility for cutting customers off until ordered to by a court.

"If we were to receive a valid court order that compelled us to not provide service to a customer then we would comply with that court order," he wrote.

"We have never received a request to terminate the site in question from any law enforcement authority, let alone a valid order from a court."