Standing up for the open Internet – why we appealed Italy’s Piracy Shield fine

Cloudflare is challenging Italy’s Piracy Shield anti-piracy regime and has appealed a €14 million AGCOM fine for refusing to register.

The company says the system lets rightsholders trigger rapid blocking of websites and IP addresses with little oversight, transparency, or appeal.

Cloudflare argues Piracy Shield has already caused accidental outages and overblocking of legitimate sites and services.

The case could determine whether governments can force infrastructure providers to block internet resources at scale without judicial review or due process.