The Censors Strike Back: Italy’s Crusade Against the Open Internet

Reclaim the Net ^ | 01/10/26 | Cindy Harper

[Adder]

Italy’s communications regulator, AGCOM, has fined Cloudflare €14.2 million after the company declined to apply government-ordered blocks on its public DNS resolver.

The case has become one of the clearest examples in Europe of how national censorship mandates can collide with global internet infrastructure.

Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 service, widely used for privacy and fast DNS resolution, was ordered to participate in Italy’s anti-piracy system known as Piracy Shield.

The program, launched in 2024, was designed to cut off access to live sports streams and other copyrighted material in near real time. The program has been a disaster.

The company refused. Cloudflare argued, rightly, that filtering its DNS traffic would be “impossible” without causing harm to the entire service.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: censorship; internet; italy

[Adder]

Cloudflare should tell them to pound sand.

Matthew Prince says Cloudflare will appeal. He also notes that: “No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency.”

So I am not sure to whom they will appeal.

[Vision]

Bm

[trebb]

Cloudflare is a service that different businesses use and pay for - if Italy doesn’t lie their customers, they need to go after them - not the company that they use for their own site security.

[hoosierham]

All internet provider should block all govrrnments attempting these restrictions.