Italy fines Cloudflare €14M for non compliance with anti piracy order

Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM has fined Cloudflare €14 million for failing to block access to piracy related domains under Italy’s anti piracy framework. The sanction, adopted on 29 December 2025, focuses on Cloudflare’s non compliance with the Piracy Shield system, which is meant to block access to pirated live sports and other copyrighted material. AGCOM said that despite prior notice, Cloudflare did not put in place adequate technical or organizational measures to prevent access to sites hosting illegal content.

Under Italian law, DNS providers must disable routing to IP addresses officially reported for piracy. AGCOM ordered Cloudflare to block DNS resolution for a list of domains through its public 1.1.1.1 resolver, but the company reportedly refused. The regulator also clarified that similar obligations can apply to other intermediaries such as search engines, VPN providers, and public DNS services, regardless of where they are based.

Cloudflare said mandatory DNS level filtering would be unreasonable and could disrupt service for billions of legitimate users worldwide. AGCOM rejected that argument, saying Cloudflare has the technical capacity to comply and that targeted blocking would not harm the 1.1.1.1 resolver. The regulator also noted that the €14 million fine is about 1% of the company’s global turnover, below the 2% maximum allowed under Italian law, and claimed that roughly 70% of the targeted piracy sites are linked to Cloudflare, with its services helping pirate operators bypass conventional blocking. Cloudflare can appeal the decision before the TAR Lazio administrative court.