Cloudflare may pull servers out of Italy over order that it block pirate sites

The CCIA added that “the Piracy Shield raises a significant number of concerns which can inadvertently affect legitimate online services, primarily due to the potential for overblocking.” The letter said that in October 2024, “Google Drive was mistakenly blocked by the Piracy Shield system, causing a three-hour blackout for all Italian users, while 13.5 percent of users were still blocked at the IP level, and 3 percent were blocked at the DNS level after 12 hours.”

The Italian system “aims to automate the blocking process by allowing rights holders to submit IP addresses directly through the platform, following which ISPs have to implement a block,” the CCIA said. “Verification procedures between submission and blocking are not clear, and indeed seem to be lacking. Additionally, there is a total lack of redress mechanisms for affected parties, in case a wrong domain or IP address is submitted and blocked.”

The 30-minute blocking window “leaves extremely limited time for careful verification by ISPs that the submitted destination is indeed being used for piracy purposes,” the CCIA said. The trade group also questioned the piracy-reporting system’s ties to the organization that runs Italy’s top football league.

“Additionally, the fact that the Piracy Shield platform was developed for AGCOM by a company affiliated with Lega Serie A, which is one of the very few entities authorized to report, raises serious questions about the potential conflict of interest exacerbating the lack of transparency issue,” the letter said.

A trade group for Italian ISPs has argued that the law requires “filtering and tasks that collide with individual freedoms,” and is contrary to European legislation that classifies broadband network services as mere conduits that are exempt from liability.

“On the contrary, in Italy criminal liability has been expressly established for ISPs,” Dalia Coffetti, head of regulatory and EU affairs at the Association of Italian Internet Providers, wrote in April 2025. Coffetti argued, “There are better tools to fight piracy, including criminal Law, cooperation between States, and digital solutions that downgrade the quality of the signal broadcast via illegal streaming websites or IPtv. European ISPs are ready to play their part in the battle against piracy, but the solution certainly does not lie in filtering and blocking IP addresses.”