Court Orders Cloudflare’s DNS Resolver 1.1.1.1 to Block Pirate Sites in Italy

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https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-cloudflares-dns-resolver-1-1-1-1-to-block-pirate-sites-in-italy-220719/

An Italian court has ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1. The anti-piracy measures were requested by local music industry group FIMI and anti-piracy group FPM. This is the first time that Cloudflare DNS must block pirate sites and, with this injunction in hand, Google and OpenDNS could be next.

Popular Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has come under a lot of pressure from copyright holders in recent years.

The company offers its services to millions of sites, including multinationals, and governments, but also some of the world’s leading pirate sites.

Rightsholders are unhappy with the latter and some have even accused Cloudflare of facilitating copyright infringement by continuing to provide access to illicit platforms. In Italy, these complaints have been followed by legal action from key music industry players, resulting in injunctions that require Cloudflare to block several pirate sites operated by its customers.

Cloudflare fiercely protests these and other blocking demands. The company sees itself as a neutral third-party service that merely caches or passes on content. Even when Cloudflare blocks sites or customers, the associated sites remain operational.

In theory, similar injunctions could follow against other DNS providers as well, including Google and OpenDNS. “The ruling opens the door to others that offer similar services, such as Google,” Mazza told local media.

While this type of order is new in Italy, we have seen a similar injunction in Germany last year. A local court ordered DNS provider Quad9 to block a pirate site but the decision is still under appeal.

Cloudflare is also expected to appeal the Italian injunction, which is only a preliminary ruling. For the time being, however, it is required to block the three torrent sites on its DNS resolver within 30 days. This also applies to any future domain names the sites may use.

In response to earlier orders targeted at pirate sites operated by customers, Cloudflare has chosen to implement measures that are limited to Italy. The company hasn’t commented publicly on the recent DNS blocking order, but we expect that this will only be enforced locally as well.

Court Orders Cloudflare's DNS Resolver 1.1.1.1 to Block Pirate Sites in Italy * TorrentFreak

With a landmark injunction, an Italian court ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1.

torrentfreak.com