Cloudflare can decide whom they want to do business with. But a plain text file is in my opinion sort of HTML. At least it is not "non-html" content. A .pdf file would be non-HTML content.
What else is important to note that the client is being abused and not the client abusing the service. That should be taken into consideration, when deciding if someone is breaking the ToS.
I'd agree that's weird. Seems like if it were simply renamed to .html with no content changes, then it would be okay.
> What else is important to note that the client is being abused and not the client abusing the service. That should be taken into consideration, when deciding if someone is breaking the ToS.
My understanding has this as moot. The issue from Cloudflare's perspective is only that the content is non-HTML and doesn't have anything to do with the rate of traffic (the abuse).
> (i) serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other functionally equivalent applications, including rendering Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other functional equivalents, and (ii) serving web APIs subject to the restrictions set forth in this Section 2.8.
The key is "as viewed through a web browser" imo, this is not really an API and it's not a webpage; it's a datafile and would fall into R2 or similar things.
Why do people keep talking like you can't just navigate to a txt file in your browser and have it serve as any old web content? Which is something I have actually done many years ago to search for a domain in these types of lists.
Cloudflare is balancing on a razer for this TOS technicality.
The TOS aren’t referring to content-type headers, magic bytes, TCP headers, browser support of file formats, or any technical implementation.
To oversimplify, they’re saying Cloudflare’s service is to be used for serving websites to browsers.
Serving a static text file that is primarily used by applications is not in line with their terms of service.
Cloudflare provides a significant service to the free and open web by subsidizing the hosting costs of static content for websites. They give that away for free under what appears to be reasonable terms. I’m not sure why you’re trying to “gotcha” through their ToS.
It would be great if Cloudflare would donate resources to EasyList - it would do a lot to help the free and open internet by giving users more power over what gets delivered to their browser. But call that what it is: a donation.
> I’m not sure why you’re trying to “gotcha” through their ToS.
People are doing the opposite, pointing out the hole and asking them to get a better rule. Surely they don't just want the list merely converted into html.
> They give that away for free [...]
So they should specify things that influence cost such as total bytes served, number of files, etc. Currently all you can do it bypass the rule because you don't know how to cooperate.
The minimal spec valid HTML5 document is currently:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>a</title>
Practically, browsers will accept omitting both of these, and the spec even allows for omitting the title "if it is provided by a higher level protocol"
So it's not that crazy an argument that a plain text file is a html document
They serve websites to browsers for people to view. This file (be it properly formatted .html or .txt) is not a website people go to in their browser - its used internally by an application. This is the key point.
You're looking at it backwards though. CF doesn't _actually_ care about what the content is, only that they can apply their DDoS protections to it. If you're serving a text file that's much more difficult as they can't replace it with their own content.
What else is important to note that the client is being abused and not the client abusing the service. That should be taken into consideration, when deciding if someone is breaking the ToS.