Cloudflare Fights Italian Piracy Shield Fine and Law
▼ Summary
– Cloudflare is appealing a fine from Italy for refusing to block websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service under the country’s Piracy Shield law.
– The company criticizes Piracy Shield as a misguided scheme that protects large rightsholders at the expense of the broader internet.
– The Italian regulator AGCOM issued the €14.2 million fine, stating Cloudflare failed to disable DNS resolution for domains reported by copyright holders.
– Cloudflare argues that complying with blocking orders would require global censorship and negatively impact performance for all users.
– The company contends the fine was improperly calculated based on its global revenue, making it nearly 100 times higher than the legal limit.
Cloudflare has formally appealed a substantial fine levied by Italian authorities, marking a significant escalation in its legal challenge against the country’s controversial Piracy Shield anti-piracy law. The company argues the regulatory framework is fundamentally flawed, prioritizing the interests of major copyright holders while undermining the stability and performance of the global internet. This ongoing dispute centers on Cloudflare’s refusal to block websites through its popular 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver service, a decision the firm says is necessary to protect user privacy and network integrity worldwide.
The appeal, filed on March 8, contests a staggering penalty of 14.2 million euros imposed by Italy’s communications regulator, AGCOM, in January 2026. Regulators claim Cloudflare violated the law by not disabling DNS resolution for domain names and IP addresses flagged by copyright holders. Cloudflare counters that the fine was improperly calculated, asserting it should have been capped at approximately 140,000 euros based on its Italian revenue. Instead, the company states, AGCOM calculated the fine based on our global revenue, resulting in a financial penalty nearly one hundred times higher than what it believes is legally permissible under Italian statute.
At the heart of the conflict is Cloudflare’s principled opposition to the Piracy Shield system itself. Designed to swiftly combat pirated live sports streams, the law mandates that internet service providers and network operators block targeted domains and IP addresses within 30 minutes of a notification. Cloudflare had previously resisted a related blocking order in February 2025, warning that compliance would necessitate installing filters on DNS requests. This technical step, the company argued, would introduce latency and could inadvertently degrade DNS resolution for countless legitimate websites not involved in any piracy dispute.
Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince has been vocal about the broader implications, emphasizing that censoring the 1.1.1.1 resolver would set a dangerous precedent. He contends that such an action would effectively force the company to implement censorship not only within Italy but on a global scale, impacting all users of the service. In a recent blog post, Cloudflare labeled Piracy Shield a misguided Italian regulatory scheme, arguing it sacrifices the open internet to protect specific commercial interests. The firm’s legal strategy now involves a two-pronged approach: appealing the multimillion-euro fine while continuing a separate judicial challenge against the very legality of the Piracy Shield law in Italian courts.
(Source: Ars Technica)
