After 15 years of pirate site blocking by ISPs including BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet, last month a new player quietly entered the UK site blocking arena.
Cloudflare’s blocking measures in the UK were confirmed when attempts to access pirate streaming sites returned Error 451, indicating a site unavailable for legal reasons. To help visitors understand why access had been blocked, Cloudflare provided a link on its error page to legal documents referencing blocking injunctions previously obtained by Hollywood; most were several years old and none were directed at Cloudflare.
A Clearer, Much Bigger Picture
We now have a better idea of the potential scale of Cloudflare’s blocking in the UK. Our initial estimate of 200 sites/domains was based on more recent blocking instructions and was aimed deliberately low. New information suggests that the injunctions in question may have already expanded to cover more than 1,000 domains.
The real figure could even be double that; the truth is we can’t rule anything in or out. Transparency starts and ends with the initial process, and once a blocking order has been signed, down comes the curtain. Cloudflare recently commissioned a report on the perils of mass site blocking, but our questions on the same topic remain unanswered. We didn’t ask for one, but a live list of domains requested for blocking, by whom, where, and why, isn’t expected any time soon, at least not officially.
Meanwhile, Cloudflare has submitted some relevant information to the Lumen Database. It still falls short on detail and transparency, which requires us to make a couple of assumptions we’d rather not. Nevertheless, some information is better than the alternative; if tech companies including Cloudflare, Google, GitHub, and others didn’t contribute as they currently do, the ramifications would be significant.
Cloudflare Blocking Concerns Previously Obtained Injunctions
The notice below is one of several published on the Lumen Database during the past few days. Reportedly received by Cloudflare, each notice refers to a court order issued by the High Court on August 8, 2025, followed by a reference number, in this example IL-2021-000073.
The entities responsible for sending the notice to Cloudflare are listed on the left.
The supporting PDF contains details of a successful application for a dynamic injunction obtained by Columbia Pictures, Disney, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios, and Warner Bros. It requires the UK’s leading ISPs to block domain names linked to streaming sites with familiar brands, including 123movies, fmovies, sflix, and watchserieshd.
In total, the injunction requires the ISPs to block 17 domains, with broadly similar numbers requested in the other injunctions submitted by Cloudflare in the same batch.
The original orders were obtained in July 2021, December 2021, March 2023, and February 2024 respectively, but since they’re dynamic injunctions to which additional domains can be added as required, we assume they’re currently live and ongoing.
IL-2021-000073 – One of Four Injunctions Recently Submitted By Cloudflare
Like the example above, none of the four original orders mention Cloudflare, so we turn to the title of the notification sent to Lumen (first image above, white text on blue). Citing a High Court order issued on August 8, it seems to imply that the High Court added Cloudflare to the existing order on that date, and it’s now required to block the same domains as the ISPs.
While it’s tempting to make that assumption, no official paperwork has been made available to support it. The difference between being compelled to block and blocking voluntarily is significant anywhere; in the UK, voluntary site blocking would be a first, for an intermediary like Cloudflare, close to groundbreaking. Until we see evidence one way or another, that question remains open.
Domains Listed For Blocking in the Remaining Injunctions
Since the remaining orders are broadly the same, with the same applicants and the same ISP respondents, we now turn to the list of domains for blocking by ISPs (plus Cloudflare, of course) attached to each of the orders.
Schedule 1 for Each Order Containing Domains For Blocking
Adding up the domains in each schedule and concluding that Cloudflare only has to block around 50 domains would be a mistake. These domains are the same as those present in the original orders so years later, many are lying dormant, seemingly doing very little, parked, or completely dead.
The important domains – the ones added AFTER the injunctions are issued – don’t appear in any public paperwork in connection with any injunction, yet by volume they are by far the greatest contributors to ISP blocking lists worldwide.
The classic ‘iceberg’ analogy doesn’t even come close. Over 60 domains/subdomains have been blocked in the UK containing the word ‘bflix’, over 150 domains that contain ‘Putlocker’, and a mind-boggling 700+ with the term ‘123movie’ somewhere in its domain/subdomain, with fmovies accounting for at least another 400.
Yet Another New Batch
On or around August 11, ISPs in the UK began blocking yet another batch of domains for copyright infringement. This added more than 100 new domains/subdomains to an already stacked list.
Once again, the new list is dominated by pirate brands, including gomovies, couchtuner, 123movies, fmovies, and worthmovie, but something wasn’t performing as it should.
When attempting to access maxflip.top, a clear blocking target for the MPA, Cloudflare’s Error HTTP 451 ‘legal reasons’ page linked to a takedown notice that has nothing to do with blocking. Similar errors persist on other recently blocked domains, all from the most recently submitted batch.
Given the sheer number of blocked domains/subdomains and the endless combinations of branding options when new domains appear online, arriving at a precise number of domains blocked by Cloudflare is both difficult and time-consuming.
Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle has always been a complete lack of transparency after initial blocking orders are issued, at a time when volume of domains blocked immediately increases. Everything happens in complete darkness so when there’s an incident, there’s very little the individual can do.
High Court orders issued in the UK have a clause stating that anyone affected by overblocking has the right to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the order. For the average user it’s almost impossible to determine that an access failure was caused by erroneous blocking. The prospect of finding out who was responsible in order to file a complaint, is only marginally more comical than obtaining the evidence likely to be requested to show what happened.
As blocking escalates all over the world and the associated risks to the wider internet continue to increase (see a recent report commissioned by Cloudflare itself), vast sums are being spent on blocking systems and legislation in support of blocking systems that benefit relatively few companies.
Against that backdrop of time and expense, consider this; changing a single browser setting immediately restores access to every site currently blocked by Cloudflare in the UK.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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