Standing up for the open Internet: why we appealed Italy’s “Piracy Shield” fine

At Cloudflare, our mission is to help build a better Internet. Usually, that means rolling out new services to our millions of users or defending the web against the world’s largest cyber attacks. But sometimes, building a better Internet requires us to stand up against laws or regulations that threaten its fundamental architecture.

Last week, Cloudflare continued its legal battle against "Piracy Shield,” a misguided Italian regulatory scheme designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader Internet. After Cloudflare resisted registering for Piracy Shield and challenged it in court, the Italian communications regulator, AGCOM, fined Cloudflare a staggering €14 million (~$17 million). We appealed that fine on March 8, and we continue to challenge the legality of Piracy Shield itself. 

While the fine is significant, the principles at stake are even larger. This case isn't just about a single penalty; it’s about whether a handful of private entities can prioritize their own economic interests over those of Internet users by forcing global infrastructure providers to block large swaths of the Internet without oversight, transparency, or due process.

To understand why we are fighting this, it’s necessary to take a step back Continue reading

Latest copyright decision in Germany rejects blocking through global DNS resolvers

This post is also available in Deutsch.

A recent decision from the Higher Regional Court of Cologne in Germany marked important progress for Cloudflare and the Internet in pushing back against misguided attempts to address online copyright infringement through the DNS system. In early November, the Court in Universal v. Cloudflare issued its decision rejecting a request to require public DNS resolvers like Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1. to block websites based on allegations of online copyright infringement. That’s a position we’ve long advocated, because blocking through public resolvers is ineffective and disproportionate, and it does not allow for much-needed transparency as to what is blocked and why.

What is a DNS resolver?

To see why the Universal decision matters, it’s important to understand what a public DNS resolver is, and why it’s not a good place to try to moderate content on the Internet.

The DNS system translates website names to IP addresses, so that Internet requests can be routed to the correct location. At a high-level, the DNS system consists of two parts. On one side sit a series of nameservers (Root, TLD, and Authoritative) that together store information mapping domain names to IP addresses; on the other Continue reading

In a win for the Internet, federal court rejects copyright infringement claim against Cloudflare

Since the founding of the Internet, online copyright infringement has been a real concern for policy makers, copyright holders, and service providers, and there have been considerable efforts to find effective ways to combat it. Many of the most significant legal questions around what is called “intermediary liability” — the extent to which different links in the chain of an Internet transmission can be held liable for problematic online content — have been pressed on lawmakers and regulators, and played out in courts around issues of copyright.

Although section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States provides important protections from liability for intermediaries, copyright and other intellectual property claims are one of the very few areas carved out of that immunity.

A Novel Theory of Liability

Over the years, copyright holders have sometimes sought to hold Cloudflare liable for infringing content on websites using our services. This never made much sense to us. We don’t host the content of the websites at issue, we don’t aggregate or promote the content or in any way help end users find it, and our services are not even necessary for the content’s availability online. Infrastructure service providers like Cloudflare are Continue reading