The Alliance for Creativity and Media (ACE) was granted a subpoena to demand that Cloudflare provide information about individuals that ACE alleges are offering copyrighted content illegally, including “the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history.”
ACE provided a list of suspected piracy cases with the subpoena
The subpoena was requested via the US District Court of the Central District of California, case number 2:21-mc-01114-UA.
View ACE demand letter via PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records, US DOJ)
View Subpoena via PACER
Why it matters
This is part of the process of building evidence against pirates before entering a complaint or engaging in legal action against a suspected infringer. Certainly, ACE and its member companies have the technical wherewithal to identify pirate suspects, but pirate content must be carried over a network to consumers. Cloudflare has received similar complaints in the past, as a network service provider that may be lax in proactively identifying and shutting down infringing providers on their network.
