Cloudflare Says ‘Non C’è Modo’ (No Way) In Defiance of Italy Piracy Shield Law
The Italian authorities have fined internet security company Cloudflare some 14.2 million Euros ($16.3 million approx) this month. The fine comes about as a result of the content delivery network specialist refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service.
As a technology, 1.1.1.1 can be defined as a public domain name server (DNS) resolver that offers a fast and private way to browse the internet. Unlike most DNS resolvers, 1.1.1.1 does not sell user data to advertisers; it has been claimed to be the fastest DNS resolver available.
The Italian operations penalty was levied by the country’s communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni.
“The authority has ordered Cloudflare to disable access to a series of pirated content pursuant to the provisions of Anti-Piracy Law 93/2023. Specifically, the company was required, as an information society service provider involved in the accessibility of illegally distributed content, to disable DNS resolution of domain names and the routing of network traffic to the IP addresses reported by rights holders through the Piracy Shield platform, or in any case to adopt the necessary technological and organizational measures to make the illegally distributed content unavailable to end users,” reads a translation of the original AGCOM press statement.
Cloudflare is reportedly standing its ground and has stated that it will fight the penalty; the company has also threatened to remove all its servers from its deployment sites in various Italian cities.
Overblocking Increases Locking
Italy’s Piracy Shield law is controversial in some circles. Its critics have said that it has the potential to cause “overblocking” issues, with disruptions to services such as Google Drive being impacted.
AGCOM used the law to stipulate that Cloudflare was compelled to disable DNS resolution of domain names and routing of traffic to IP addresses, as reported by copyright holders. Although the law provides a channel to levy fines at 2% of annual turnover, AGCOM says that this fine represents just 1% in this case.
An initial blocking order landed on Cloudflare’s doormat back in February 2025.
The company has not complied with the AGCOM ruling on the basis of arguing that installing a filter applying to the roughly 200 billion daily requests to its DNS system would likely significantly increase the latency of its services. It further argues that it would negatively impact DNS resolution for sites that are not actually subject to any level of piracy dispute.
An Embroiled Argument
Conversely, then and in direct disagreement, AGCOM has said that the level of blocking required would impose no risk to legitimate websites. This is because the targeted IP addresses here were all absolutely and uniquely intended for use in copyright infringement activities.
Writing on X, Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said that “A quasi-judicial body in Italy fined Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with [its] scheme to censor the internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us, within a mere 30 minutes of notification, to fully censor from the internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, meaning it risked blacking out any site on the internet.”
Limbering up for Olympic Safety
Prince underlined his comments by saying that he is headed to Washington DC to discuss the matter with U.S. government officials. He also noted that he will be meeting with the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne soon to outline the risk to the Olympic Games if Cloudflare withdraws its cybersecurity protection. The 2026 Winter Olympiad is scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026 at sites across Lombardy and Northeast Italy.
“In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines. We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders,” concluded Prince.
