alt Hacker NewsCloudflare CEO on the Italy fines
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Italian here.
If somebody wants to read the full document about the fine (in italian) it's here: https://www.agcom.it/sites/default/files/provvedimenti/delib...
Part of this doc states:
``` The rights holders also declared, under their own responsibility, providing certified documentary evidence of the current nature of the unlawful conduct, that the reported domain names and IP addresses were unequivocally intended to infringe the copyright and related rights of the audiovisual works relating to live broadcast sporting events and similar events covered by the reports. ```
So, I'm not sure anybody verified that what the right holders claimed was actually true. While I understand what AGCOM (the italian FCC, more-or-less) is trying to do, it seems that, as usual, a law was created without verifying how the implementation of such law would work in practice (something very common in Italy), and this is the result.
Cloudflare CEO seems irate, and some of his references are not great, but I'd be inclined at thinking he's got at least _some_ reason on his side.
Regardless of whether the law is absurd or not (I honestly have no idea, but we've seen some crazy stuff lately in the EU), its kinda precious that a CEO only complains about it when his company is fined.
I'm certain it is also quite reassuring for any paying Cloudflare customer that the company strategy is driven by the CEO Twitter rants; That if by some reason doesn't want to play ball with local laws (as draconian as they may be) and the company is fined, his public reaction is threatening to leave the country. Its not the first time he does this, and certainly it won't be the last. This communication style gets old fast, and IMO this actually hurts the company - I'm a free tier user and would never subscribe any paid products. I think their tech is amazing, they surely have great engineers, but I don't feel comfortable financing a company that thinks it is above the law.
The icing on the cake is the plea for a free internet; You know what a free internet looks like? A network that doesn't make half its content inaccessible because someone in a major company did a mistake on a SQL query. Or a network that isn't controlled by a company that basically just said "we're tight with the US government, so f** your laws".
The appeal to JD Vance is properly craven and validates the view that their business model is effectively a protection racket.
Recall the unsavoury episode with taviso, when they lobbied the FTC to investigate him after he helped clean up their mess during Cloudbleed. They always pivot to aggression when challenged.
Not a good look on that guy to list his "pro-bono" services and threaten to pull them while asking JD Vance for his help.
How is he expecting the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics to influence some representative of media right holders who have fined Cloudflare? Is he assuming that just because all of the listed things are Italian they can just make the fine go away?
I think maybe I should seek out AI art for awhile. I know this is where everything is going and I'm tired of cringing so hard every time one of these AI gen'd images is used in a serious way. But that image at the bottom of the tweet makes the entire post seem less serious to me.
A person praising Vance and Musk obviously doesn't value due process, judicial oversight and ultimately decency.
His tone and sucking up to his authoritarian government will probably only serve to negatively polarize Europe against Cloudflare, even if he might have a point of the substance itself.
Cloudflare CEO threatens to pull out of Italy and to stop offering free "cybersecurity" to its residents
Would this mean Italian websites would be free from Cloudflare "bot protection" or whatever marketing name is used for those annoying "Checking your internet connection..." interstitials
You may have a point but you lost me citing Vance and Musk.
I agree with the CEO, while also feeling a bit nauseous at the MAGA Musk suck-up at the end - I suppose this is the game you have to play with this current administration.
This is great news! Who would have expected Cloudflare to truly contribute to EU digital sovereignty.
On a more serious note, I'm surprised Cloudflare wants to pull out of Italy. Being a company which terminates TLS connections for Italy must be a gold mine for the NSA.
The appeal to an open internet from Cloudflare to Elon and Peter Thiel's stuffed toy is evidence this is not about freedom of speech but a political game. The AGCOM requests are inane and the so-called "Piracy Shield" sponsored by sports team corporations currently eyeing VPNs needs to go and those responsible for it must pay, but this doesn't make this right, either. And the current USA "cabal" isn't shadowy, rather right up your face, mocking you every day.
Started reading the post on Cloudflare's side, but halfway through I ended up against it.
It's a little bit scary that guy is the CEO, his post sounds crazy and unprofessional.
The fact he's posting on X to begin with is a warning in itself.
So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining. Heraled by Matthew as "this is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with".
However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?
Matthew Prince’s framing of Italy’s action as a “free speech assault by a shadowy cabal” is rhetorically exaggerated, but his underlying concerns about due process have legitimate basis—confirmed by EU Commission criticism of the same system.
The reality is more nuanced than either party presents: Italy is enforcing an aggressive copyright protection regime with documented implementation flaws, while Prince is strategically reframing an anti-piracy dispute as a censorship issue and overstating US administration support for his position.
The americans get here a dose of their own medicine. An IT related law with global reach. One of the first of this kind was actually created by the US itself with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act Now they complain that other countries do the same to them. Somehow I can't feel sorry for them.
This follows 23—again, 23—violations reported to Cloudflare. There is nothing more to add. Given how slowly Italian law typically moves, Cloudflare had more than enough time to take corrective action. The tone would likely have been far more accommodating had Cloudflare attempted to contact the authorities and negotiate its position. Instead, it appears that, in all likelihood, nothing was done after 23 violations. What exactly was the CEO expecting?
Is this, like in Spain and some other countries, all basically focused on blocking illegal sports streaming? Especially soccer. I have a friend who runs a fairly large forum (aka a lot of user content including links to illegal things) in Spain who gets letters about 'Illegal streaming links to movies, TV shows and sports' with a list of links; he knows he only has to remove the sports, they do not give a crap about illegal US show streams locally and US requests go to /dev/null as they cannot enforce anyway. So I assume this is only about streaming sports as well?
note that this is all about football streaming, which is so funny
as far as i can tell, it's really not about politics or surveillance... it's really just about football streaming, and they push the 30 minute thing because it's important for them to stop it during the match.
it's stupid; but it's even more stupid to do draconian censorship for... football streaming.
Rhetoric is somewhat off, but I have to use 1.1.1.1 to access Anna's Archive from Germany, so he has a point.
Cloudflare is a haven for abuse.
Most large scam groups now have their own ASNs and IP registrations, so CF just forwards them the report and tells you to contact fiberscam.co.za or whatever fake company the scam group has created. They are not cut out for this workaround and yet the largest scam groups have been using it since 2023.
I don't think they are currently doing any statistical analysis, one provider has just 3 /24s and hosts thousands of scam shops, hundreds of reports to CF and nothing done, they won't consider blocking the ASNs even when you show them a report that 98% of the IPs they own serve scam shops.
At this point I consider CF willfully negligent.
I am just translating this from https://www.agcom.it/sites/default/files/provvedimenti/delib....
"In its memoirs, Cloudflare also states that its services: “do not give rise to the transmission of content on the websites of service users; [...] do not allow Cloudflare to know, control, or modify in any way the content of the websites, which always remains available on a third-party web server regardless of its services.”"
:)))
> In addition, we are considering the following actions: > ... > discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users
Wow! That's an appalling image to finish with. How could you possibly think that was good?
does he not understand that countries are...countries? "quasi-judicial" is so childish of a thing to say, of all people by a CEO.
I don't even care about the details of the law, what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government as a foreigner and accusing them of "censorship". Makes wish they'd fine him just for that tweet alone. You do what a country tells you to do as a foreigner, or you leave.
These people want immigrants in their own country who obey their own laws to be treated like animals and deported to countries they've never even heard of before, yet they don't think they're obliged to follow the laws of other countries.
Isn't this guy an HN user too @eastdakota (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota), or am I mistaken? I'd love to hear his response to this thread, just as a fly-on-the-wall.
I should probably make sure my usage of Cloudflare is ready to be migrated off at a moments notice if it's this easy for Cloudflare to consider getting rid of it for a whole country. Funny enough, after a month in Italy and using my tailscale node at home out of habit, most online services assumed my home IP wanted the Italian version of every website (including Cloudflare). I wonder if that would have also included blocking me from access (if this ends up going through).
I'm dead against Privacy Shield, but if it gets Cloudflare out of Europe then maybe it was worth it?
BTW, before I read this Xweet I was a Cloudflare fan.
some good takes in this response but complementing jd and elon was absolutely not necessary
What has Cloudflare done to fight piracy enabled by their services and help solve the root cause of the issue? Anybody know?
This seems like an issue that could have been solved when it was smaller.
Lawyers and politicians are not who you want to find solutions to this kind of issues.
Did Cloudflare provide solutions that were refused by the other party?
I want just to step in by telling that Cloudflare also has networks in China. Probably not the best company to talk about freedom of speech when they collaborate with these goverments actively...
https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/chi...
If american corps do not want to play according to European rules: go ahead, just stop doing business in Europe. Europe will be fine! Understand that there are other things than the US‘s commercial interests even though it seems ATM that’s everything the US is: commercial interests. On the east, on the west: Wake up!
How is it a bad thing to have cloudflare out of your country? No single entity should have the power to do this kind of thing even if they choose not to. Don't threaten italy with a good time
Related: EU commission has also criticized AGCOM for Privacy Shield [0].
> The Commission would also like to emphasize that the effective tackling of illegal content must also take into due account the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU
[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-shield-concerns-prompt-eu-co...
I'm Italian, and as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist, I find hard to empathize with Cloudflare, especially after this tweet.
First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing. I believe he knows he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law, so gathering the sympathy of the "freedom fighters" of the web is all he can do. But the funniest part about this tweet are the "threats" he makes towards Italy.
> In addition, we are considering the following actions: > ... > discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users
He phrases it to be as if the free tier is a favor Cloudflare does to the world, as if it's not obviously a loss-leader designed to get more people into the Cloudflare ecosystem.
> Removing all servers from Italian cities
This is my favorite by far. Does he think that this will start a popular uprising? My take is that when Italian customers notice their ping going up by 10x because all their traffic is now routed through France, they will switch to BunnyCDN, Fastly or any of the dozens of CDNs that do have servers in Italy.
In this political climate, Cloudflare siding with the current administration's general line of "we're Americans, our economy is strong so we're above international law" sends a message I don't think they fully understand. I hope this ends up as being a push for independent European cloud.
I'm not sure I have ever seen such an unprofessional communication from the CEO of Cloudflare, irrespective of a poorly written Italian law.
The fine was also peanuts for a company the size of Cloudflare.
Given the current political climate I think the tone he is using will turn a lot of Europeans off: Open threats against citizens of an EU country (turning off free cyber protections) and general 'American Exceptionalism' attitude and brown nosing of the current administration.
He is within his rights to pull out of a market, but this is an example of the now-becoming-classic Trumpism of smugly shouting pretty extreme open threats to bully your way into getting what you want (and screw everyone else who isn't America).
It honestly makes me want to add it to the list of American tech companies willing to sabotage Europe for disproportionate reasons. (Currently X, Microsoft) and start planning strategies to decouple from them, if not outright replace.
Perhaps this is a knee-jerk reaction, but I was not expecting this from Cloudflare.
Cringey and childish appeals to US government and billionaires aside, it’s funny how this is framed as “Magnanimous Free Speech Technology Company” vs “Evil European Bureaucratic Shadow Cabal” when the latter is more like “Massive Sports Monopoly Regulatory Capture”.
When corporate entities do something bad, like attempting to maximize profits by capturing regulatory entities and bending them to their will, it’s the government’s fault. It’s laundering agency: the corporation has no agency because it simply seeks to maximize profits, but the bureaucrats have agency and are therefore morally wrong (Cloudflare CEO appealing to morals in his tweet).
Very few comments in this thread decrying the root of the issue, which is that the football media empire has grown large enough that they’re imposing negative outcomes on the pubic hand that feeds them.
That's an epic polemic. If the cost of operating in Italy isn't profitable, exit Italy. If it is, then adhere to the laws of Italy. If Italy makes the cost of business too high they'll dial it back.
Oh, wow. I had no idea the CEO of cloudflare was so unprofessional.
Cloudflare is not for the open internet; they can you kick you out of their service if they don't like you whenever they want, which is fine and legal for that matter or they freaking can have an outage and have your service shut down that way. It's a lose, lose situation. Stay out of Cloudflare, there is nothing good about them.
Given the La Liga situation in Spain with Cloudflare you can't really say he is wrong. But his MAGA comments make me ashamed to be a Cloudflare customer.
> It's impossible for either a government or parliamentary body to tell to an indipendent authority what to do and what not to do
What did Borghi mean by this? Isn't that the equivalent of a US senator publicly stating that the FCC is outside of the US federal government's ability to reign in?
American services leaving the European market would be a blessing for european IT, but alas the europeans are not kicking then out, instead milking for fines.
I WISH cloudflare did all the things they threaten to do, but they won't
AI generated image he attached to his post is cringe.
Italian authorities woke up pissed and decided to block some sites.
Matthew Prince can decide to censor the sites he doesn't like, but god forbid some actual legal authority does the same thing.
CF: 'Cloudflare is not the hosting provider of the reported content. Cloudflare offers network service solutions including pass-through security services, a content distribution network (CDN) and registrar services. Due to the pass-through nature of our services, our IP addresses appear in WHOIS and DNS records for websites using Cloudflare.'
I have a feeling that usually when someone complains about freedom of speech, they are actually complaining about something else.
They should fight it. But why does he have to suck up to JD Vance and Musk I the same post? I kind of lost empathy at that point.
It's a shame that Italy is going down this path. As an Italian, I'm very disappointed and worried that these kind of fines are issued.
The worst part: because this has been issued by Agcom, it is also likely that this is not caused by the current government. Agcom is a bunch of bureaucrats that do not report to anyone other than themselves.
Eastdakota is right in saying that the rule of law is being disregarded. As a lawyer, and as someone that has been studying Italian institutions for decades, the problem is real and is only getting worse.
Let's be a bit more honest here, I think the Italian law is badly defined, but I also think the american perspective is wrong.
We (all tech people everywhere me included) argued for a lot of time for free speech on the internet, but the result currently is that we built a system that is free speech for Russian and Chinese bots and actors. In Europe we are under daily attack from Russian accounts that spread massive amounts of desinformation, deep fakes, just emotional appeals with the goal of destroying liberal democracy. The US government is actively trying to support them by fighting against any kind of European rules and spreading their part of desinformation.
This is not about normal politics, Europe is under siege.