"Cloudflare shows it wants to stop piracy"
Agcom Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio: 'Others, like Google, have decided to work with the Authority'
It is not retaliation, nor is it an act of censorship. Agcom commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio rejects point by point the accusations raised by Matthew Prince, ceo of Cloudflare, who in an interview with the Sole 24 Ore - contesting the 14.2 million euro fine imposed by the Authority for non-compliance with orders on anti-piracy regulations - questioned the Italian regulations and the role of the Authority. "There is no punitive intent here," Capitanio clarified, "but the application of a fully legitimate law designed to counter criminal phenomena that thrive online.
According to the commissioner of the Communications Guarantee Authority, many of Prince's claims stem from 'partial or incorrect information. The idea that Agcom 'turns off the Internet' or indiscriminately hits services and users is simply false. The measures are targeted and proportionate'.
The numbers on Piracy Shield's activity - the technology platform currently in use to monitor, block and target pirated content in 30 minutes at the most - speak for themselves: 'We have taken about 60,000 blocking orders and there have only been two complaints. One rejected, the other concluded with a sanction against a person involved in piracy. If we were really turning off "the light to the whole block of flats" as Cloudflare says, there would be thousands of complaints'.
Capitanio insists on the point: 'Nothing is censored here. We are intervening against criminal networks that exploit digital infrastructures to disseminate illegal content. This is a huge difference, which those who work in the sector should be well aware of'. Specifically, for Cloudflare, 'there is a whole casuistry around the world to take into account. The Premier League,' Capitanio points out, 'had to go to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to force the company to provide data to identify the operators of pirate sites. In Germany, Universal sued Cloudflare in the Cologne District Court as a hosting service that enables the dissemination of pirated music works. In Japan, a recent ruling found that the company does not have a policy of verifying customers' identities. The same ruling also found that, because of the way illicit content is disseminated, the company can easily find out which sites are using its infrastructure to engage in illicit activity, yet it does not intervene to stop this conduct. In Spain, La Liga had to involve the Barcelona court in order to have pirate sites channelled through Cloudflare blocked, winning the case. Agcom also had to take action against Cloudflare, as the company had failed to act on requests to block 23 pirate sites in February 2025'.
Hence the criticism of the words of Cloudflare's CEO: 'With the company there have been meetings, hearings, moments of confrontation, but in the face of a constant contestation of the law, no alternative operational proposals have ever arrived'. An attitude that the Agcom commissioner compares with that of other major operators: 'Google, for example, actively collaborates to remove criminal actors from the network. Even the ceo of Akamai has publicly acknowledged that infrastructures such as hosting and Cdn can make a concrete contribution to combating piracy'.
