> (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 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.