Cloudflare Threatens Olympic Services Over Piracy Fine

US internet company Cloudflare has threatened to pull its services in Italy, including for the Winter Olympics, after being fined 14 million euros ($16 million) for failing to tackle online piracy.

Italy’s independent communications watchdog, Agcom, announced the fine on Thursday for “ongoing violation of the anti-piracy law”, notably failing to disable content flagged under its “Piracy Shield” system.

The system allows rightsholders of live-streamed events to report pirated content through an automated platform, with providers required to block the content within 30 minutes.

In a lengthy post on X late Friday, Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince condemned what he said was a “scheme to censor the internet”.

He said the system had “no judicial oversight”, no appeal process and no transparency, and required services to block content not just in Italy, but globally.

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Cloudflare had already launched legal challenges against the scheme and would now fight the fine, which he called “unjust”.

He also said his company was considering “discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber-security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics”.

Prince said he would be discussing the issue with US officials in Washington, DC, next week and would then head to Lausanne for talks with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is organising the February 6-22 Winter Games in northern Italy.

He also warned his company could discontinue its free cyber-security services for Italy-based users, remove all servers from Italian cities and scrap plans to invest in the country.

Cloudflare is a platform that provides services including security and traffic management and optimisation for websites and applications.

It claims to manage around 20 percent of global internet traffic.

Agcom says that since its adoption in February 2024, Piracy Shield has led to the disabling of over 65,000 fully-qualified domain names (FQDN) and approximately 14,000 IP addresses.

AFP