Italian Court Orders Cloudflare to Automatically Block Piracy Sites Including CDN/DNS Services
Brook.X
Cloudflare, a globally recognized internet service provider, offers services that span global website acceleration (CDN), DNS domain resolution, WARP, and traffic proxy services.
Currently, anti-piracy organizations in Italy have been fighting piracy websites through various legal proceedings. There's an anti-piracy initiative in Italy known as the Piracy Shield. Initially, copyright organizations asked Cloudflare to join this program, but they were refused.
However, recent developments from the Milan court in Italy have mandated Cloudflare to block access to pirated Serie A football match streaming services. The court found that Cloudflare's services facilitated access to pirated live broadcasts.
This ruling is applicable only within Italy and affects many of Cloudflare’s products, including CDN and web protection, DNS domain resolution, and traffic proxy services. The goal of the court is to prevent pirates from hiding behind Cloudflare.
Cloudflare has long maintained that it is merely a service provider and should remain neutral, rather than helping anti-piracy organizations block domain names through the DNS system or severing services to piracy sites.
The court and anti-piracy organizations, however, disagree. Piracy sites using Cloudflare become harder to trace, and now, forcing Cloudflare to join the anti-piracy program also means requiring Cloudflare to identify and disclose individuals using its services for pirated streaming, aiding copyright organizations like Serie A officials in tracking down responsible parties.
This disclosure requirement theoretically extends to users of Cloudflare's WARP traffic proxy and Cloudflare Public DNS, possibly necessitating Cloudflare to provide traffic and connection logs, such as IP addresses and timestamps, to anti-piracy organizations.
As of now, Cloudflare has not officially responded to this ruling. According to the court's decision, Cloudflare must bear the legal costs of this case and may face an additional fine of 10,000 euros per day if it fails to comply promptly with the court's orders.
