Oh No! The Clown Services Company is coming after ClownStrike!
Update August 2, 2024 The Saga Continues! CloudFlare “took down” the site, see below!
Update August 5, 2024 CloudFlare responds! See below!
Update August 7, 2024 Fortinet says we’re phishing! See Below!
Update August 8, 2024 Fortinet fixed the phishing categorization!
Update August 9, 2024 Now CRDF thinks we’re malicious! See Below!
Update August 9, 2024 CRDF Fixed the malicious categorization in 8 minutes! See Below!
The Clown Services Company is a company used by companies like CrowdStrike to submit bogus takedowns and commit cyberbullying.
It seems as though CrowdStrike is not exactly a fan of this site, understandable… it is a parody site after all…
Don’t worry though! They will definitely solve all their problems by sending a baseless takedown notice to CloudFlare! (sarcasm)
Unfortunately for CrowdStrike, I don’t really care about CrowdStrike’s feelings, and how upset this site makes them, or how much they cry at night knowing that there are people out in the world making fun of CrowdStrike for causing the worst IT outage in the world (so far!). Stranding millions of airlines passengers, and causing billions of dollars worth of damage…
We finally know what caused the global tech outage - and how much it cost
What we know about CrowdStrike’s update fail that’s causing global outages and travel chaos
CrowdStrike fixes start at “reboot up to 15 times” and get more complex from there
Major outages at CrowdStrike, Microsoft leave the world with BSODs and confusion
Microsoft says 8.5M systems hit by CrowdStrike BSOD, releases USB recovery tool
How a software update from cyber firm CrowdStrike caused one of the world’s biggest IT blackouts
Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide
Widespread IT Outage Due to CrowdStrike Update
CrowdStrike outage explained: What caused it and what’s next
Of course, I did not want to piss off CloudFlare either, and I’m most definitely not trying to put CloudFlare in the middle on this… so I told CloudFlare that I will take the site off of CloudFlare; however, it is staying on the internet…
CloudFlare (ClownFlare?) apparently didn’t read the above though… because I received the following from CloudFlare:
Of course, I couldn’t just ignore this. I of course replied to CloudFlare:
Unsurprisingly… CloudFlare responds after public pressure increases on them.
It is unfortunately well known that the DMCA is used by corporate cyberbullies to take down content that they disagree with; but, is otherwise legal. The Counternotice system is also hillariously 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! The DMCA, like much American legislation, is heavily biased towards corporations, instead of the actual, living, breathing, citizens of the country.
It’s absolutely asinine and I would love absolutely nothing more than to have a lawsuit “win” against CrowdStrike. That would be absolutely amazing for marketing! Especially given the timing of such events…
Additionally, using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to attempt to takedown a parody site for Trademark Infringement is absolutely hillarious.
There are several ways that anyone is allowed to use a trademark belonging to “others.” This is considered “Fair Use.” Fair Use is an important aspect of trademark and copyright law. It is a right to use trademarks and copyrighted works for parody, criticism, transformative works, news reporting / journalism, education, etc. Corporate cyberbullies don’t like that anyone else has rights. Again, I don’t care, because the only thing that matters is the law, and what a court thinks about it.
Luckily… Parody is a well recognized “right” for “fair use”
TRADEMARK LAW: PARODY and the Fine Line Between Humor and Trademark Infringement
Supreme Court Ruling Confirms Limits on Parody Defenses to Trademark Claims
Satire and Parody in the Recent SCOTUS Decisions
Laugh It Off: A Guide to Parody Under U.S. Trademark Law
Parody Products: When Should Brand Owners “Smile or Laugh” and When Should They Sue?
Additionally, there is a statutory exclusion for “Any noncommercial use of a mark” in 15 U.S. Code § 1125 (c)(3)(c).
Seeing as how this site is an obvious parody, that any “reasonable person” would be able to cleary identify AND there is no commercial use, no product being sold, no money being made in any way, shape, or form…
You can go straight to hell CrowdStrike. This is fair use. Fuck your feelings. Now… Return to Clownin’
P.S. Don’t your lawyers have more important shit to be doing right now anyway?
P.P.S. btw George you look great in a clown suit:
The above image of George Kurtz is by CrowdStrike, Inc., CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. License for this derivative work is also under CC BY-SA 4.0 🤡 😂
P.P.P.S.
P.P.P.P.S Still need help getting your CrowdStrike issues resolved? See Below!
Hey CRDF!
Any reason why you’re calling this malicious? Is there no such thing as humour in France?
I received a message that CRDF considers this site malicious…
Would you look at that…
Good lord, will this ever end?
CRDF has a fairly aggressive “it’s your fault for getting on our list” form as well…
Hopefully, the real people behind CRDF aren’t as overly aggressive as their form implies…
Wait actually, let’s read their Terms of Service that they say we need to accept to submit a report…
WHAT? In order to even submit a report, you have to indemnify CRDF? Fuck you CRDF. That’s seriously bad faith.
Fuck it, let’s just tell them they suck, and submit it anyway…
And now… we wait…
Update: Didn’t need to wait long! Got a response 8 minutes later!
Not sure why it ended up on your list in the first place though…
HEY FORTINET
You’re not going to get let off the hook either for this 💩 either! Please explain how we’re phishing? Did George call you too?
Of course… gotta respond…
Fortinet responds shockingly quickly too! Seems they’re really digging their heels in on this one!
Hmmm… let’s do that then… Let’s take a look at their contact page…
Alright… lets go with… Appeal a blocked Spam IP, URL or Email address
…and I get a… blank page?
Let’s use curl -v and see what’s going on…
…and it doesn’t work, just returns an HTTP 500 error. Lovely.
And here I was thinking I’m the clown…
Trying again some time later… and it does appear to be working again… let’s fill out their form…
And now we wait…
Well, at least it wasn’t a long time waiting… I’ll give them credit, they do respond rather quickly…
Wait… what?
Ok fine, let’s try Submit a change for a web filter incorrectly rated site
Wait… what?? This is just the same form I already used!
Ok fine… how about the Report a problem with Malicious URL classification form?
Well, it’s a different form at least…
I’ll give Fortinet some more credit… approximately 6 hours later they responded…
Not really an explanation as to why they marked it as phishing in the first place, and their appeals process has a lot of friction, but they did at least correct the issue fairly timely.