Overview
- Italy’s regulator AGCOM fined Cloudflare €14 million for noncompliance with the Piracy Shield anti-piracy regime, the first major enforcement of a 2023 law.
- Piracy Shield requires providers to disable reported content within 30 minutes, which Cloudflare argues lacks court orders, appeals, and transparency.
- CEO Matthew Prince said Cloudflare will challenge the penalty and will meet U.S. officials and the IOC as it considers ending pro bono protection for Milano-Cortina 2026.
- He also raised the possibility of discontinuing free services in Italy, removing servers from Italian cities, and halting planned investments in the country.
- AGCOM says the system has disabled at least 65,000 domain names and about 14,000 IP addresses since February 2024, as the jurisdictional dispute remains unresolved.