Standing up for the open Internet- why we appealed Italy’s Piracy Shield fine
Cloudflare argues that Italy’s “Piracy Shield” undermines the open Internet by allowing private media companies to order broad website and IP-address blocks without judicial oversight, transparency, or due process. After refusing to register with the system, Cloudflare was fined €14 million by Italy’s communications regulator, AGCOM, and appealed the penalty on March 8. The company is also challenging Piracy Shield’s legality under EU law. ### What Piracy Shield Does - Piracy Shield requires registered service providers to block websites and IP addresses within 30 minutes of a submission. - Blocking decisions are made through an electronic portal by an unidentified group of private Italian media companies. - The system provides: - No judicial oversight. - Little or no transparency about who requested a block or why. - No opportunity for website owners to challenge blocks beforehand. - No effective redress for wrongful blocking. - Cloudflare says the system’s design favors major rightsholders, including Italy’s Serie A soccer league. - The system was reportedly donated to the government by SP Tech, an arm of a law firm representing major beneficiaries. ### Problems with IP Blocking - Shared IP addresses can host thousands of unrelated websites, making accidental overblocking unavoidable. - Piracy Shield has caused outages affecting: - Ukrainian government, education, and research websites. - European small businesses and NGOs supporting women and children. - Google Drive, which was inaccessible to many Italian users for more than 12 hours. - A September 2025 University of Twente study found that legitimate sites were routinely blocked for months. - Despite these failures, AGCOM expanded the scheme to global DNS providers and VPNs, services closely linked to privacy and free expression. ### Cloudflare’s Legal Challenge - Cloudflare warned AGCOM in 2024 that Piracy Shield threatened the Internet’s technical architecture and proposed alternative approaches. - It later challenged AGCOM’s attempt to force Cloudflare to register with the system in Italian administrative courts. - Cloudflare and the CCIA also complained to the European Commission, arguing that Piracy Shield conflicts with the EU Digital Services Act. - The DSA requires content restrictions to be proportionate and governed by meaningful procedural safeguards. - The European Commission criticized Piracy Shield’s lack of oversight in a June 2025 letter. - In December 2025, an Italian administrative court ordered AGCOM to provide Cloudflare with records supporting its blocking orders, though Cloudflare says it has not yet received them. ### The €14 Million Fine - AGCOM issued the fine on December 29, 2025, shortly after being ordered to disclose Piracy Shield records. - Cloudflare argues that the penalty’s timing and calculation raise serious concerns. - The article ends while beginning to discuss Italian legal limits on fines and the alleged flaws in AGCOM’s calculation. Cloudflare’s position is that copyright enforcement cannot justify an opaque, privately operated blocking system with no effective safeguards. It recommends defending the legal and technical principles of an open Internet rather than expanding Piracy Shield.
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