Online piracy, Agcom fines Cloudflare more than 14 million

Over EUR 14 million. Agcom decided to sanction Cloudflare, with Commissioner Elisa Giomi voting against, for violating the rules for the protection of online copyright. The reason is clear: non-compliance. A prolonged, repeated refusal to comply with the Authority's request for cooperation in combating access to pirated content that continued to circulate thanks to the technological services made available by the US company.

The penalty of more than EUR 14 million, notified on 8 January 2026, Agcom explains, was decided with Commissioner Elisa Giomi voting against and comes at the end of proceedings initiated for 'non-compliance with the order issued in Resolution No. 49/25/CONS of 18 February 2025'.

According to Agcom, Cloudflare did not follow up on the order attached to the Anti-Piracy Law 93/2023, which requires it to make inaccessible a series of contents reported by rights holders through the 'Piracy Shield' platform for reporting abuses. The Authority made it clear that this was not a generic invitation, but a concrete intervention to prevent exploitation: 'Adopt the necessary technological and organisational measures to make the content disseminated in an abusive manner inaccessible to end users'.

In its reconstruction of the proceedings, Agcom states that it found the continuation of the offence even after the notification of the order: Cloudflare, 'even after the notification of the order, continued to fail to take any measures to counter the use of its services for the dissemination of illegal content'. Hence the penalty, amounting to 1% of the company's global turnover.

The point, however, is not just the figure. The measure, recalls the Authority chaired by Giacomo Lasorella, 'in addition to constituting one of the first pecuniary sanctions in the field of copyright, takes on particular relevance in light of the role played by Cloudflare; in fact, a very large percentage of the sites subject to blocking by the Authority in application of the regulation on the protection of copyright online uses the services offered by this company to illegally disseminate protected works'.