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Comment by CalChris | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Flock + Cyble can be sued for fraud. There are 5 elements in a fraud:

  Misrepresentation of Fact
  Knowledge of Falsity
  Intent to Induce Reliance 
  Justifiable Reliance 
  Resulting Damages

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Cloudflare would have to bring that suit since they were the ones defrauded. The site owners probably can't sue Cloudflare because of their contract. So the site owners probably have to go basic "tortious interference" and be ready to show actual damages.

No, if the site owners have been harmed by Flock + Cyble knowingly filing a false takedown notice then they can sue Flock + Cyble. If Cloudflare's reputation has also been harmed then they could sue Flock + Cyble as well.

> Cloudflare would have to bring that suit

At first that seems pretty unlikely, but I could see them wanting to nip this in the bud so it doesn't become more common.

Tortious interference with contract, cut and dry.

The "resulting damages" is pretty small though, they just had to move off of cloudflare. I'm not sure it would be worth it, especially if the other side doesn't end up paying their legal costs.

They’ve done it twice now.

I’d argue in court that this is a pattern, not a one-off event and the damages need to be large enough to prevent this repeating.

Also, service providers are not identical. They chose Cloudflare because it was the “best” service. So damages include being moved to a worse service.

You would need damages

False accusation of criminal behavior is defamation and in many US states such accusations are assumed to be damaging. No evidence of damage is needed.

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