```
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.
Also another Italian here. For context, the "Piracy Shield" mentioned in the order is basically a legislative hacksaw authorized by the regulator (AGCOM) primarily to protect Serie A football rights. Soccer rules Italy more than the Vatican..
It’s a mess technically: it mandates ISPs and DNS providers to block IPs/domains within 30 minutes of a report, with zero judicial oversight. It’s infamous locally for false positives—it has previously taken down Google Drive nodes and random legitimate CDNs just because they shared an IP with a pirate stream.
The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
My personal take idea likely outcome: Cloudflare wins.
EU Law: The order almost certainly violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding general monitoring obligations and country-of-origin principles.
Realpolitik: The Italian government can't risk the Olympics infrastructure getting DDoS'd into oblivion because AGCOM picked a fight they can't win. They will likely settle for a standard, court-ordered geo-block down the road, but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.
> The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
Kind of wild that a private company has that kind of power, both in terms of being one of the few that can offer this service and they can make threats at this level.
I have to say I'm curious over whether that's actually leverage or a massively miscalculated threat that is just going to push the Italian population and politicians firmly against cloudflare.
I'm pretty sure if you tried that here (Canada) it would do the latter.
Would a regulating body in Canada do this, though? And if so, hopefully Cloudflare would say fuck you just the same as they did Italy. It's nice to see someone actually taking a principled stand for once.
If our politicians were stupid enough to pass a law telling them to - I sure hope so - we live in a place with the rule of law not the rule of whatever Joe at the CRTC thinks should happen. Regulators exist to enforce the will of parliament...
Would our politicians pass a law this unfortunate... I hope not... but I don't really have that much faith in them. The current government probably wouldn't, but governments change.
Referencing the Trump administration - the people going around threatening, deporting, arresting, taking money from, etc people as a consequence for speech they don't like - as the standard for free speech makes this far from a principled stand by cloudflare. They took their moral high ground and sunk it. This isn't about speech for them, just money.
You're free to believe all that. "Rule of Law" loses all meaning when corruption takes root. We don't like that "for my friends, everything, for everyone else, the law" shit.
Things can be morally wrong and still legal, and the law itself can intentionally enforce immorality. It's your civic duty to determine when upholding the law degrades you and every else more than following it does.
Also I feel like threatening to take your toys and go home when they don't play fair is a totally valid response.
> It's your civic duty to determine when upholding the law degrades you and every else more than following it does.
That’s a lot more complicated. What happens if a foreign power takes over Canada and changes the law? What is the state law goes against the laws stated by your religion?
If a foreign power takes over your country and changes the laws in ways that conflict with the previous constitution, there’s a break in sovereignty continuity so your options are: 1. Pledge to the new authority and move on
2. Keep your word on your previous pledge and resist
"for my friends, everything, for everyone else, the law" is a weird description, when that's not the problem with this law at all. There's no question of selective enforcement going on here. The problem is lack of due process, not that.
It's a great description of one of the main tactics the administration he is asking for help uses though. Which again goes to Cloudflare entirely abandoning the moral high ground here.
Threatening to leave is "totally valid" in that it's their right to leave, but it's also not something that a sovereign country that cares about staying sovereign should give any respect to. The only response to a foreign corporation saying that that maintains your independence is "you can't quit, you're fired." Otherwise you just become beholden to the corporation providing you "charity".
Pretty sure, speaking as a Canadian, that the Canadian government would not be able to implement that kind of legislation. And that if they did, I would 100% back Cloudflare.
I have to doubt that it would push the populace against the company when the company is actually both providing good (free protection, DDOS mitigation, CyberSec) and supporting appropriate judicial process to make decisions.
Political threats of withdrawing from an event in an explicit attempt to pressure the country is the opposite of supporting appropriate judicial process.
The services aren't pro bono if they're only offered in exchange for getting a law modified.
And if you offer people free stuff and then turn around and demand something in return, they're going to get upset and like you less than if you had never offered the free stuff in the first place.
This is one of the consequences of outsourcing this (and other capabilities) to the private sector.
Many governments simply don’t have the skill and political will to invest in these kinds of capabilities, which puts them at the mercy of private actors that do. Not saying this is good or bad, just trying to describe it as I see it.
Governments just can't come to grips with how much money software engineers make.
Paying a contractor $x million? Yeah no problem, projects are projects, they cost what they cost. Does that $x million pay for 5x fewer people than it would in construction or road repair? We don't know, we don't care, this is the best bid we got for the requirements, and in line with what similar IT projects cost us before.
Paying a junior employee $100k? "We can't do that, the agency director has worked here for 40 years, and he doesn't make that much."
Variants of this story exist in practically every single country. You can make it work with lower salaries through patriotism, but software engineers in general are one of the less patriotic professions out there, so this isn't too easy to do.
> Kind of wild that a private company has that kind of power
Also kind of wild that it’s a private US company pushing their current political views on another sovereign state. Cloudflare as a political tool of leverage is a level of dystopia we really should try not to unlock.
They're threatening to take their ball and go home. If they move all of their operations out of Italy, under what principle does Italy demand they block content globally? Should Wikipedia remove their page on Tiananmen Square because the Chinese government demands it (which they would, if they thought it would work)?
a private US company pushing their current political views on another sovereign state
This has always been the case in the western world, even before America itself existed. Some use the US govt (CIA) as leverage but often will just do it themselves.
BunnyCDN don't run their own network, most of their servers are hosted at DataPacket(.com), but they use some other hosting companies too.
DataPacket has a very large network though and is kind of, sort of EU-based. AFAIK most operations are in Czechia, but the company is registered in UK. And there's also the Luxembourg-based Gcore.
I just want to point out that AGCOM once decided to put out an "Economically Relevant Instagram Influencers Register".
They're not really... let's say, 'on the ball' for understanding how the internet works. It's a bit of a running joke in Italy that their decisions are often anachronistic or completely misunderstanding of the actual technology behind the scenes.
And for the most part they just deliberate, they have no direct judicial authority. They ask an administrative judge to operate on their decisions, which brings us to some of the favourite sentences for any italian lawyer: the... "Ricorso al TAR". ("appeal to the Regional Administrative Court", which is a polite way to say "You messed up, badly and repeatedly, and now we have to spend an eternity trying to sort this out in a court room").
If we truly want to point out the ridiculousness of Italian tech regulations, the influencers' registry, the temporary ChatGPT ban from a few years back or even the new AI regulations cannot hold a candle to the 22-year-old war on... arcade games.
A poorly written regulation from 2003 basically lumped together all gaming machines in a public setting with gambling, resulting in extremely onerous source code and server auditing requirements for any arcade cabinet connected to the internet (the law even goes as far as to specify that the code shall be delivered on CD-ROMs and compile on specific outdated Windows versions) as well as other certification burdens for new offline games and conversions of existing machines. Every Italian arcade has remained more or less frozen in time ever since, with the occasional addition of games modded to state on the title screen that they are a completely different cabinet (such as the infamous "Dance Dance Revolution NAOMI Universal") in an attempt to get around the certification requirements.
I guess they were inspired by a very similar law in Greece from 2002[0] where in an attempt to outlaw illegal gambling done in arcades a poorly written law outlawed all games (the article mentions it was in was in public places but IIRC the law was for both public and private and the government pinky promised that they'll only act on public places). I remember reading that some internet cafes were raided by the police too :-P.
Not the OP, but I tried it when it came out. VR headset technology wasn't good enough for screens within screens and it was nauseating more than anything.
There's also impedance mismatch between using the headset controllers and the physical ones in the game. Ideally, I should be able to use my own fightstick in an augmented reality configuration.
The quest 3 is good enough and the Galaxy XR is incredibly high resolution. But it isn't a really ideal way to play arcade ROMs for long term but just to enjoy the nostalgia.
Wait, so is this about censorship, or about copyright?
If the latter, I don't see why CloudFlare is complaining about "global" censorship. The US would simply seize the domains (which they have done so many times before), but I guess Italy doesn't have that power...
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the 2. In this case it sounds like copyright in name but the implementation is such that it's a big hammer that can also be used for censorship if followed.
What is it with Southern Europe and the football overlords? Spain is blocking half the internet, Italy is fighting Cloudflare. What's up? Are football leagues big political donors?
Football is extremely popular, and football clubs (and their owners) are quite influential (socially and politically). But it's a little bigger than that.
EU is pushing for measures against live-event piracy[1], because they frame this as a systemic threat to cultural/economic systems, giving national regulators broad cover to act aggressively.
While football is quite huge in Europe at large, the impact to GDP of these broadcasting rights is sub-1%; however, lobbyists have a disproportionate impact: you have the leagues themselves (LaLiga and Serie A for Spain and Italy respectively), you have the football clubs, and you've got broadcasters. Combined, they swing quite high, even if the actual capital in play is much lower than the total they represent.
Add to this politicians who can frame these measures as "protecting our culture", get kickbacks in the form of free tickets to high profile games, see rapid action because blocks are immediately felt and very visible, and incentives for increased funding from regulatory agencies because "we need the budget to create the systems to coordinate this", and you can see how the whole system can push this way, even if it is a largely blunt instrument with massive collateral damage.
Yeah, in Europe, there tends to be an association between football fans and organized crime, just as there's one between unions and organized crime in the US.
The kind of hooligans who love beating up the hooligans from the other team are also perfect from beating up the hooligans from the opposing drug cartel.
In Spain's case Telefonica (largest telecom, used to be state owned) is private but has a large State participation and the government literally appointed the latest CEO.
Guess who sells the largest football games as part of their expensive TV package?
Guess who asked a judge to order the other telecoms to also block Cloudflare IPs?
No usually the political figures are football league owners.
Jokes aside, I don't know, the obsession with soccer is extreme in Italy. For people who don't care about soccer like I did, there is so much you have to endure just "because of soccer"
Spain especially but southern europe in general has a really crappy economy. Soccer teams are some of the wealthiest organizations in these countries, which means theyre the ones who are able to fund politicians which means they can get laws passed.
There's no accountability or due process. According to this brilliant law, if some crony with write-privilege adds your website to a list, the whole world has to ban your website within 30 minutes no questions asked.
> To some extent, judges are subordinated to a cabinet minister, and in most instances this is a
minister of justice of either the federation or of one of the states. In Germany, the administration of
justice, including the personnel matters of judges, is viewed as a function of the executive branch of
government, even though it is carried out at the court level by the president of a court, and for the lower
courts, there is an intermediate level of supervision through the president of a higher court. Ultimately,
a cabinet minister is the top of this administrative structure. The supervision of judges includes
appointment, promotion and discipline. Despite this involvement of the executive branch in the
administration of justice, it appears that the independence of the German judiciary in making decisions
from the bench is guaranteed through constitutional principles, statutory remedies, and institutional
traditions that have been observed in the past fifty years. At times, however, the tensions inherent in this
organizational framework become noticeable and allegations of undue executive influence are made.
You're completely on the wrong track here. The discussion is not about who does or doesn't control the courts, it's about the question if someone who's rights have been violated can go to court or not with regard to that specific matter. If a court rules that blocking an IP address is illegal, the access provider has to stop blocking it. Period.
Judicial oversight took a while in Germany, but it is there now (but I guess you will always find an incompetent judge if you really want). I wonder if cloudflare would implement the German blocklist now that we have judicial oversight. Currently it is as nice registry for pirating sites for anyone using 1.1.1.1 [1]
Challenging the IP bans in Italy is stupidly hard. Your VM gets an IP address that was used a few months ago for soccer piracy? Too bad, you won't be able to access it from Italy.
2. parent comment is wrong, CCUI is requiring court action by their members before they act.
3. I rather have companies competing under market pressure to find solutions to topics like copyright infringement than the German state (once again) creating massive surveillance laws and technical infrastructure for their enforcement in -house.
Read the post, they never blocked the activist. They just changed what they replied to a DNS query of an already blocked site to make it harder to detect.
yes, it's quite similar.
They blocked some lawful services too such as google drive (yes, really) and a TON of sites behind cloudflare by blocking some of its IPs (it happened a while ago, it's not directly related to this).
Most Italian authorities like this one are chock full of incompetents, and I'm almost sure they're just caving in to some soccer broadcaster or some crap like that. He might very well be fully correct on the fact of the matter.
Still, the rhetoric of the post is frankly disgusting. No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much. No, I don't think that might makes right and it's unsurprising that those who believe otherwise are so eager to transparently suck up to this administration.
Making public threats in this way is just vice signaling, nice bait.
This is the Stephen Miller caveman view of the world, but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. It's a very straightforward consequence of refusing to ever admit you are wrong. "If I did it, then I must have had the right to do it."
It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights. The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader, it's just that the leader benevolently decided to let you vote against them. You don't have the right to life, it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now. Laws don't actually exist. Any right that appeared to be established against the wishes of the men with guns (i.e. all of them) was actually fake or an inexplicable accident. You can imagine a world that works like this, but it certainly isn't our world. No historical period or even any fictional story I can think of operates like this.
Refusing to accept the philosophical concept of rights is just correct. You are born with fuck all unless people have decided you are entitled to something by existing. Plenty of people were born without anything remotely resembling rights. If rights were inherent and not simple enforced by people, that wouldn't be the case, would it? Life isn't a fairy tail.
Civilization is literally built on what you're saying being wrong.
It's not wrong because of physics or biology, but because civilization made it so.
Like so many cultural achievements, it's true when you can count on the person next to you expecting it to be true. (1)
Which in turn means you can make that culture collapse if you impress enough people with your edgelord attitude.
Cooperative culture is fragile and must be preserved by preserving shared values such as these. On the other hand, in the long run, the cultures that do this successfully prevail because cooperation is stronger than the law of the jungle.
Unfortunately that 'long run' may take a while.
(1) That's basically the definition of a cultural value. They're emergent phenomena based on Keynesian beauty contests.
> The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader,
I would say you're wrong. The right to vote does exist because men rose up together and fought leaders that wouldn't let them vote. And, when leaders rise up that take our right to vote and we don't stop them they will prevail.
> it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now.
Correct. Start up a big disaster where food goes away for some reason and it comes back.
We have a stable world where we don't kill each other at the moment because in general we all have food, water, shelter, and I would say enough entertainment that fighting each other isn't worth the risk. There is no rule that says this will last forever. Quite often in history there have been stable times, that then fell apart because of greed and malice of leaders.
I am not saying it's impossible for rights to be taken away, I am arguing against this statement:
> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
I do not own a gun and I have no fighting skills, so I cannot defend myself against men with guns. Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?
I think that you and the original poster are seeing the situation "you are vulnerable to potentially losing rights in the future", which is true, but conflating that with "you have no rights". It's like telling a rich person "you actually don't have any money" because it's possible they might be robbed someday.
You have the right to vote, if you lose that right, and you don't have a gun after that you have whatever 'rights' that are provided to you by a dictator.
One of the things you're missing here is the idea of herd immunity. While you won't fight for your rights, theoretically someone else will making taking your rights dangerous. Once enough people won't fight for their rights, or enough of the population gathers together to take your rights, you lose your rights.
I believe that in this conversation one party is saying that people have intrinsic rights (see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and the other party might agree on that but they say that those rights can be enforced only if they can be defended. Example: both parties probably agree that people have a right to free speech but nevertheless people end up in jail if they attempt free speech on the wrong subject in the wrong country.
> it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. [...] It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights.
Or it's an attempt to reconcile the philosophical concept of rights with global politics and observed reality.
Does an Afghan girl have a right to education? A Uyghur Muslim a right to freedom of religion? A Palestinian a right to food? A Hong Kong resident a right to freedom of expression?
It would appear that in these cases, the politicians commanding the loyalty of the men with guns do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
Of course, that's not the only reasonable line of thinking. Just because people in distant lands don't have certain rights in practice, I have those rights because I live in a great country with strong institutions and the rule of law.
> Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.
Plenty folks of didn't / don't change their minds about what rights they thought they had/have, even in the face of guns. Just look at what's currently going in Iran.
If you're in the US, and believe in your own Constitution, then people have "unalienable Rights" that are "endowed by their Creator", regardless of whether they are recognized by the government or not:
You're conflating rights with freedoms, which is the same category error as confusing legality with morality.
Your rights are, by their nature inalienable. They are recognized (or not) by individual power structures, granting you freedoms.
Under an authoritarian regime, your freedoms maybe be limited, for example, your right to free speech may be curtailed by men with guns. Killing those men is illegal, but not unethical, exactly because they are infringing your rights.
This all may seem academic to the person with a boot on their throat, but it dictates how outsiders view one's actions.
Ok. So a man with a gun has the right to shoot you and kill you.
Then a policeman comes with a bigger gun and he has the right to kidnap the murderer.
Then comes a judge with an even bigger gun (the law) and has the right to lock him up in a prison.
But then the murderer gets hold of a weapon and he has the right to escape from prison.
Etc.
> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
My sister is wheelchair bound with MS. Half the time she can barely see. You can give her all the guns you want and she isn't going be to able to defend herself. I reject your nonsense assertion that because of this she has no rights.
this kind of logic will always lead to everyone losing in the long run. always. there will always be a more powerful bully that steps up to take over. history is very clear on this one.
You might be conflating description with prescription.
Descriptively, powerful people have all the rights and weak people have none. This is what we observe in the world. No amount of philosophical thought outweighs actual observations. For example, Donald Trump has (retroactively!) the right to r**e ch*ldren. We know this because he is not suffering consequences for doing that. But Renee Good did not have a right to free speech. We know this because she was executed because of her speech.
You can prescribe whatever fancy academia language you want, but the facts in the real world don't seem to currently support any of it beyond "might makes rights".
What does make them? Children apparently don't have them, and many races in many countries didn't have them for a long time either. How do you account for that? Are we now distinguishing between "having" rights and uh... being allow to use them?
> No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much
You are falling into a trap where you can not recognize a true point because it is made by someone you disagree with. I don't condone Vance or the Trump admin. He is right about European governemnt's attacks on free speech.
And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.
We're not discussing Pol Pot's views on cooking either, even though he might have had some valuable insight. Bringing up Vance and Musk in polite conversation to bolster your argument is - especially in the context of Europe, which both men seem to have declared to be enemy #1 before Russia and China - a little tone deaf.
To be fair, he's not bringing them up as intellectual support for his argumentative base – he's bringing them up as support for acts of retaliation. This is mostly about power and we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.
I absolutely and 100% agree! But it's the stick that others will use to force their world view down your throat. So if you want to be not only righteous, but also hold others accountable according to your standards, you need the economic power to do so.
Most of our power loss is from electing a belligerent dumb fuck twice and allowing him to sabotage our international relationships and destroying our remaining credibility.
> And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.
No. I'm identifying this one statement as factual, regardless of the person saying it. Surely then, you would not deny the color of the sun to be yellow just because Pot might have observed it to be that way?
That's besides the point: JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.
> JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.
People focus on Vance in this issue because they hate him and hate is easy to come by. They ignore that popular Democrats and progressives said the same thing. Hell, even the Atlantic posted a piece about the issue.
It has been very clear that the Trump adminstrations definition of freedom of speech, including JD Vance's, is that you should be free to say whatever the Trump administration wants and nothing else.
They have consistently prosecuted, threatened, deported, withheld money from, and so on people who say things they do not like.
And the answer to that is to point out the hypocrisy (what you're doing), not to take the opposite view, that censorship is important (what so many others are doing when Trump takes a position on anything).
you are falling into the trap of ignoring the pandering. cloudflare bro is clearly pandering here and showing that, in the moment, he will say/do whatever to whomever to get what he wants. cloudflare kind of has a history of doing this.
there was zero reason to name drop vance and elon besides appealing to their rabid fans to bolster support.
What other option do they have? It’s either comply with unjust rulings that undermine the free internet (and their business) or make a deal with the devil. Either one is bad but only complying has an immediate negative impact.
If there was any sense that this ruling was just a temporary mistake that will be corrected by pending regulation/legislation, then a third option would be on the table: temporarily comply and wait it out. But all indications are that the EU is hell-bent on making things worse, not better, for the open internet.
Cloudflare, the company that regularly blocks me from legitimately visiting websites because their bot detection software absolutely sucks probably is the biggest effective censor on the planet.
The AI generated art is also disgusting. Makes the CEO look like an angry kid because his multi-billion dolar industry got a 1% income fine, which is nothing for them, for a service they provide that keeps having outages because they have bad coders who thought moving their shit code to Rust was a good idea.
I would like to see a similar rant about the DMCA from US CEOs, which amounts to similar global effect. Not a great law but all this censorship stuff is bullshit.
To replicate the rant: Cloudflare on the otherhand blocks me regularly from using the Internet using a privacy aware browser because I fail to pass their bot checks so that I can enter their CDN based replica of a real internet.
To be fair big tech did do a full court press to stop site blocking when such a law (SOPA/PIPA) was proposed in the US, and they continue to oppose the MPA's attempts to get site blocking via the courts. DMCA on the other hand seems very broken, don't give the MPA the "3 strikes" regime they want and you get sued into the ground like Cox. I suspect tech CEOs don't complain about this because they don't want the same treatment.
AFAIK, the DMCA doesn't require infrastructure providers (ISPs, DNS resolvers, "relay" services like Cloudflare) to block entire websites. It's just for surgical removals of content (and blocking of ISP / hosting provider customers who are notorious infringers).
The US doesn't have the kind of website blocking laws that many European countries have.
>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.
This is everywhere.
The reason is you DONT want a law to be too detailed with tech mumbo jombo. If too detailed, it will get outdated. See that USA crypto wars ban in the 90s.
I recently learned that Poland literally has a law on the books[1] (from the executive, not the legislative), mandating our use of SOAP and WSDL. You're definitely right on that score. As far as I know, it's supported by some EU directive or other, no less.
I also wonder why he felt emboldened to escalate like this. Maybe he thinks Italy is so small it can be slapped around by a rage post on Twitter?
There's a DNS blocklist from media industry applied by German ISPs and I assume Cloudflare was also asked to block these websites, so why didn't I read a story about Cloudflare making a big stir about the German DNS blocking?
Posting it a hundred times doesn't make your claim more correct. If your rights are infringed, you can always go to court. If you think you being blocked from accessing certain information is an infringement of Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG ("Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality [...]"), you can drag this to The Federal Constitutional Court.
No I can't, since I lack the monetary funds. My claim stands correct, going to the federal constitutional court is expensive enough that many people are barred from that option. My claim stands correct - no judicial verdict is needed for the CUII to censor websites. Don't believe me. Believe the activists [1].
new comment: you're so wrong that not even the opposite of your statement would be true. CUII is a private body, but it forces its members to go to court before they ask CUII to initiate a block:
Jede DNS-Sperre einer strukturell urheberrechtsverletzenden Webseite (SUW) wird im Rahmen der CUII gerichtlich überprüft.
Das ist freiwillige Selbstverpflichtung der CUII-Mitglieder. Denn eigentlich besteht kein Richtervorbehalt für die Sperransprüche nach § 8 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG). Aus diesem Grund sind auch die DNS-Sperren nach dem alten Verhaltenskodex mit behördlicher Beteiligung zulässig gewesen (Siehe Fragen: “Was verändert sich durch den neuen Verhaltenskodex der CUII?” und “Warum gab es zum Juli 2025 - nach jahrelanger Arbeit - einen Systemwechsel in der CUII?”).
old comment: CUII is not a governmental body so what the hell should they need a court order for when doing the thing that their members pay them to do? If your not happy with your internet access provider being a member of CUII, switch your internet access provider. I agree that CUII should publish a list of blocked domains as part of transparent communication and proving that they are doing a good job.
the filters the Italian authorities complain about also only apply in italy.
It's likely a process thing, Italy has had website bans since forever, but the new regulation applies _without going through a judge_. Some copyright holders can say "this website is infringing" and ISPs, CDNs etc.. are required to shut them down immediately.
A similar system was introduced in Spain, with the same problems, for the same reason (football $$$).
EDIT: to be clear, CF argues that they need to block the DNS globally, and that's unreasonable. The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block and are just being uncooperative.
> EDIT: to be clear, CF argues that they need to block the DNS globally, and that's unreasonable. The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block and are just being uncooperative.
Similar to the UK's attempt to try and get noncompliant sites like Imgur and 4chan to block themselves from serving content to UK locations, I think the responsibility for country-wide blocks lies with the country attempting to regulate the space, not CDNs or websites.
I don't doubt that Italy is correct that CF has the technical ability do a local block like they're asking for, but I also don't see how CF is in any way (legally) compelled to do so. Whether or not Italy (or any country) is capable of doing so, or paying contractors for an appropriate solution, isn't CF's problem either.
The difference is that Imgur/4chan have no presence in the UK but Cloudflare has servers and probably a sales office in Italy. Cloudflare does have to follow Italian law within Italy.
Either Cloudflare can block pirate sites or ISPs will completely block Cloudflare (as seen in Spain). Which way do you prefer?
Do you think the Italian bureaucrats really want to ban something in France or Germany?
The Cloudflare CEO is clearly misinterpreting something that was lost in translation, which is the bureaucrats stating "Cloudflare must prevent access to XY from everywhere". For bureaucrats "everywhere" means "in my jurisdiction". I cannot believe that the Cloudflare CEO is trying to nitpick around a single word that he so clearly misinterprets.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare is an ISP according to German law ("Diensteanbieter" according to DDG). You might confuse "ISP" with the terminology of "Access Provider" according to the (now defunct) §8 TMG.
What is the escalation? Cloudflare or any company is free to stop doing business in any country which mistreats them or doesn't align with their interest. How can you interpret this in some way as Cloudflare being the aggressor? They don't owe the nation of Italy anything.
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".
He did mention that they were fighting the law before they were fined and they plan to challenge the fine in court.
He has also been vocal about other similar legislation before they were enacted or the company got fined (not sure about this specific one though).
So I don't think it's fair to characterize it as he "only complains about it when his company is fined".
He's giving Italy and Italians fair warning that he will abandon the Italian market to avoid being subject to their laws, and I think it will go that way. I guess it's up to the Italians to find a replacement.
> financing a company that thinks it is above the law
I've never liked arguments like this, because laws are often complex, unreasonable, and unjust, and all of us (both individuals and companies) routinely use our best judgment to decide which laws to flout and which to follow, and when, where, and why to do so.
I share that perspective. Being an international company is a challenging thing regards law. You have to operate in best intent, and judges respect that.
And sure, some laws and most likely this one, are stupid. I always take GDPR as an example. Annoying as fuck, but a good regulation. Well written, well executed and hits its goal.
However, disrespecting and being tone deaf in communication is wrong, ignoring the intent (Italian based legal control of IP violations) is wrong and treating the Internet as a legal free space (or only accept US perspective) is wrong. Italy is a sovereign state and the Internet is operating there and on its citizens. It has all right and duty to do so. We have to respect that.
For real. Laws likee anti-circumvention laws are a horrible plague on humanity. There's all kinds of nonsense & so often businesses have far too much sway or outright grasp over the legal system.
You can't be a hacker without having any Question Authority backbone or will. You don't have to be full onboard but very few nations seem capable of behaving at all reasonably when it comes to technology. And few even have the chance to do right: American corporate empire has insisted countries adopt particularly brutal ip laws for decades, and made trade contingent upon it.
Style aside, what do you think he should do? Faced with a law that not only imposes disproportionate fines (more than revenue from the country), but on the surface also requires blocking globally, there are really only a few things to do:
The government complains everyday about the judges and it's trying to make a referendum to make judges angry, so I wouldn't say courts do what govt says
how ever did you reach that conclusion? For 1, his tweet literally says "That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme." 2 is something that happens behind the doors, and it's rather uncharitable to just assume he skipped it.
Crying free speech and attempting to rile up the tech bros is just what companies do these days.
It doesn't matter if, like this issue, it has absolutely nothing to do with free speech; if you position yourself as a defender of the "open internet", "open source", "free thinking" or "innovation" you get every dingleberry that hangs off Musk to come and defend you.
> I don't feel comfortable financing a company that thinks it is above the law
Of all the companies to make that claim about in 2026, Cloudflare would not be very high on the list I would think... Also, hopefully you're not paying for any genAI services and making that statement?
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.
I mean I dislike JD Vance as much as the next guy, but I don't see how it's unreasonable to appeal to the federal government for assistance in dealing with international legal issues. That's very much in the government's remit.
You do when the fine is more than double your annual revenue in the foreign nation, has international and geopolitical implications, impacts many other US businesses, could harm foreign relations, and will harm regular US citizens.
That's exactly the type of thing the Executive Branch is supposed to deal with.
Executive branch is supposed to deal with other countries' laws and courts? Does it also hold for European executive branches and American laws? I don't want to even imagine a world that works like this.
Thank they should act like it and respect the laws of the countries.
If you run to the US executive to assert US understanding of law onto other countries you are geopolitical important, however, as a tool for the US national interest not as a true international company. A true international company would serve their customers in their legal systems. Fight the laws there, try to make them better, but don't strongarm them with other country forces. They are a sovereign country.
When a country is trying to impose extra-territorial laws, then it goes beyond enforcing their sovereignty, and it is completely reasonable for the affected to request diplomatic intervention.
Why would Italy pick Cloudflare over Bunny.net or even CDNetworks if Cloudflare can't follow their laws? Today US tech products sell well in Europe because of the past 80 years of positive relationships. So Cloudflare is the obvious choice over CDNetworks, but for how long will it be like that?
When the risks are too high, then exit the market. When you do business in a market, adhere to the laws there.
It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets. But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon. They do not want globalization anymore but American first. Reactions of other countries will be higher fines, more regulation and higher entry barriers.
> When the risks are too high, then exit the market. When you do business in a market, adhere to the laws there.
And when you want help to improve your terms of trade, you can petition your government to assist.
> It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets.
It is the business of governments to further the interests and wishes of their people.
> But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon.
Is Italy's actions here fostering "harmonized (globalized) markets", I wonder?
> They do not want globalization anymore but American first.
If globalization is what Americans want, then that is what their government should be accommodating. If it's not, then the government should not.
Even if "the experts" think something is right or wrong, even if some economic factor or other might objectively improve with a particular policy, it should be up to the people to decide. Self-determination is one of the most fundamental human rights there is, too often ignored by the ruling class.
I’m not sure whose business model you’re referring to, Cloudflare or Trump/Vance? Or sounds like the former, but I’m not sure how that appeal “validates the view…”.
while the spirit of your statement is clear , i dont think its 'properly craven' to recognise both an individual's faults and their strengths - in this case the author goes to lengths to state he does not necessarily agree with either musk or vance. has anybody successfully recieved protection from this US administration while acknowledging fault of said administration ? from outside this doesnt seem likely as US politics is currently operating like team sports (ie. no tolerance of toeing party lines, 'youre either with us or against us')
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?
This is taking place in a larger geopolitical context. He is applying whatever pressure that Cloudflare can apply on its own (not much), and he mentions Vance as a way to call for US administration help at a time when the US is entering an open economic conflict with Europe. Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict.
IMHO this is a time when there are no good players. I support CF’s fight to keep the internet open against encroaching EU regulation while also acknowledging that the US has been a recurring bad actor here. I am not as anti-Cloudflare as some (I have no problem with their pro free speech policies) but I do think centralization of infrastructure is a bad thing, and CF encourages that.
Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
100% support whatever Cloudflare has to do to win this fight. IMO the timing of something like this in the middle of the Elon + X vs UK censorship fight with the current administration providing support is probably the best case scenario.
People aren't going to want to hear that, but in this case it's probably true.
> Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
No, it was explicitly created to receive and study the stream of "garbage traffic" being sent to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, which were previously held by APNIC and donated to Cloudflare on this basis. https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/
> APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. While the addresses were valid, so many people had entered them into various random systems that they were continuously overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic. APNIC wanted to study this garbage traffic but any time they'd tried to announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any conventional network.
> We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system. They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered Cloudflare's network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that, 1.1.1.1 was born.
By these quotes, it was created to serve "a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system", and the service of help in studying the garbage traffic was offered in exchange for gaining controll of the address(es).
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I think this clearly shows the hubris of Cloudflare CEO. Cloudflare is simply not important enough in Europe, and he unnecessarily provided a scapegoat "evil US tech company" for European media and politicians to slaughter. In terms of corporate politics it's not clever for him to attach his name to this issue, why not let legal handle this through EU lobby channels the same way other US tech companies do it in Europe.
"Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict"
The only conflict is that Europeans don't want Russian Misinformation and Manipulation from foreign powers onto them. It's no accident that Musks X serves preferentially content from European Far-Right Parties.
The US used the same argument for their TikTok-Ban/Forced Takeover. They also don't make a secret out of their plan to push the far-right to end the EU. They even wrote about this in their new National Security Strategy
There is a big difference between right to free speech by citizens of a certain country vs. someone working in the military propaganda unit of a foreign country who artificially amplifies their opinion thousandfold while masquerading as a citizen of the victim country with ultimate goal to harm the victim country.
You are focusing on identity and intent, e.g you are defending the restriction of speech based on who is speaking and why. Knowing the difference between an opinion of an origin you consider valid and one you consider invalid is difficult enough that one can abuse that justification to censor "real" speech by citizens.
Ivan from St. Petersburg calls himself "Heinz Müller" and creates a Telegram group that reports about immigrant crime in my neighborhood, trying to fool elderly citizens with lack of social media experience into believing his fake news stories. It's a proven approach and Ivan's main job. If Ivan would've been born in another country, he simply would've tried to scam elderly citizens, but because he was born in russia he works for the propaganda unit so he doesn't get sent to a meat assault on the frontlines.
In his free time Ivan comes to HN and poses as a free speech absolutist.
Well you see, <my side>'s swarm intelligence is organic and honest and people from <other side> are bots.
Jokes aside, the Harris campaign openly manipulated Reddit to get their opinions on the top [1]. I was there on election night. The entire site slowed to a crawl. Opinions of people you normally never read gained hundreds to thousands of upvotes. It felt organic for exactly one day.
If the plan is to sow division, it would be really weird to always only try to play one side. If I was trying to stir division, I would make sure to play all sides for maximum effect. But apparently other commentators here think only one side is being played and its always the same one.
So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try. By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud because it's sometimes hard to distinguish from aggressive marketing, or couldn't have espionage laws because it's hard to distinguish from journalism.
The distinction isn't about "valid" vs "invalid" opinions, as you framed it, it's just about authenticity and coordination. A Russian citizen genuinely expressing pro Kremlin views on their personal account is exercising speech. A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare.
And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage.
Every democracy already makes this distinction in other domains. Foreign governments can't donate to political campaigns. Foreign agents must register when lobbying. Do you call them violations of free speech? They're just acknowledgments that coordinated foreign influence is fundamentally different from citizen discourse.
The difficulty of drawing lines doesn't mean no lines exist.
> So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try
No, I said because it's hard to distinguish, therefore we can not use it as an excuse to enact censorship.
> By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud
Fraud is illegal.
> couldn't have espionage laws
Espionage is illegal.
No matter what you do or what you write, enacting "desinformation laws" would require a ministry of truth to decide what is fact and what isn't, a task governments are famously incredibly bad at because they always have vested interests in not telling the truth.
> A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare
And yet it is still speech and not distinguishable from genuine Russians sharing their opinions. It is easy to refute the opinions of many a people by discrediting them to be of the origin of a manufactured propaganda machine. Once you start doing this for foreign people, the next logical step is to continue this strategy for local activists or political opponents.
> And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage
I know this to be factual. I'm not denying it's existence at all. I'm making a point here. I don't want the government to hold these tools you propose. Any law enacted and every power given will not only be wielded by a government of parties you support, but also at one point by factions you disagree with entirely.
You are all over this thread in god knows how many comments arguing about Germany and world wide censorship whereas this thread - and the fine - is about copyright and Italy. The second they use it for anything else I'll be happy to jump the line but until then they are - for once - using this law as it is intended and it doesn't really matter that there are other unrelated wrongs that you could commit using the same mechanism.
I am hurt when I think I am hearing words from a fellow citizen that are their own opinion, when instead it is a foreign actor pushing a narrative for their state.
I am all for free speech, but I am not for anonymous speech which is choking the internet. If I am in person speaking with you, I can be fairly certain that you aren't actually a completely different person underneath a rubber mask. I want to at least know that an account I am speaking to is a _person_ and not a robot, although Id probably want country of origin too.
I do not have a good answer for how to achieve that without having a chilling effect on speech, but maybe that's a good thing? I go back and forth on if its better or not to require you to say who you are if you want to say something in public.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating inaction as neutral. It isn't. Choosing not to act against coordinated foreign influence operations is itself a choice with consequences. If a hostile state can freely run thousands of fake accounts to inflame divisions, amplify extremism, and erode trust in institutions (and we deliberately tie our hands) then we're not preserving some pristine free speech environment. I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
The "marketplace of ideas" doesn't function when one participant is a state apparatus with unlimited resources pretending to be thousands of organic voices.
Your slippery slope argument applies to laws we already have and accept. Lets take US as an example, the Foreign Agents Registration Act has existed since 1938. Foreign campaign contributions are illegal. These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they? Imperfect enforcement, sure. But "the government of a faction I disagree with might someday abuse this" hasn't been a reason to repeal FARA.
Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do? I mean if your answer is "nothing, because any tool could theoretically be abused" then you are not offering any policy, right? but basically you are arguing for resignation.
> The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating inaction as neutral.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating action as a necessary evil enacted by a well meaning government. It isn't.
> I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
I am well aware that this is a difficult thing to solve. What is it then, that you propose we do?
> These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they?
Yes. YES. The FARA has sometimes been applied asymmetrically, especially against individuals or organizations connected to political opponents, lobbyists and think tanks. It is the perfect example for what I mean. The FARA is broadly defined and with a DOJ under an administration, it is prone to misuse. The DOJ under Trump considered to use it to charge Hunter Biden. The identification of "hostile agents" that you argue is necessary is exactly what I mean when I point to government misuse, as the Trump admin is currently using these exact laws to identify activists and nonprofits as domestic terrorists [1]. We have people in this thread decry the Trump administration for their actions and stances on selectively applying free speech while they at the same time argue for more government power even while it is being abused in this very moment. I am aghast at how this is happening.
> Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do?
Do what democracy's are already doing. Issue sanctions that hurt. A large amount of LNG and gas imports in Europe are still traceable to Russia. Invest into digital thinking and digital literacy. But that would require putting your money where your mouth is, instead of arguing for those sweet tools of citizen control. Germany spends below average on education and our pupils suffer. The same is true for US education.
Sorry, but I won't argue for controlling a stupid populace when we fail at teaching at the same time. I will give you an example. The censorship tools already exist, at least in Germany, and they are justified and enacted by politicians that cite "studies" from NGOs like Amadeu Antonio, HateAid, Demokratie leben! or NETTZ. All organizations that receive massive funds from the govt that exist only to deliver "proof" and "reasons" for censorship because of "hate" and "misinformation". Of course, these studies [2] are then cited massively [3] by the media aparatus and ultimately the same politicians that paid to have this information produced [4]. Sometime after, the truth may be reveiled [5], the falsified data exposed, but the damage is done and laws are proposed [6] that enable the government to break and enter into journalist offices and media companies and shutting them down without a court order. All in the name of fighting misinformation and saving democracy.
Sanctions haven't stopped Russian influence operations, they've continued under the heaviest sanctions regime in history.
I agree that digital literacy is genuinely important, but lets not kid ourselves that we can suddenly make it work tomorrow, it's basically a generational project. Meanwhile, influence operations are happening now, at scale, with measurable effects. So what I mean is that "invest in education" approach is correct but insufficient as a response to an active, ongoing campaign. It's like responding to a house fire by saying we should invest in fire safety education. Your home will burn down while you do this.
So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power, they should unilaterally disarm against adversaries who face no such constraints. Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within.That is an endgame of your approach, and I just can't agree with this.
So doing nothing because our tools might be misused feels like it guarantees we lose.
I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution. Transparency requirements (forcing platforms to label state affiliated accounts), requiring disclosure of foreign funding for political ads and influencers, holding platforms accountable for coordinated inauthentic behavior etc etc, these don't require the government to decide what's true. They require disclosure of who is speaking and who is paying. Think of the US influencers paid unknowingly by Russia, or the "patriotic" X accounts that turned out to be foreign run. Those are just the obvious cases already happening. This needs to stop or at least the public needs clear disclosure of funding and origin.
We have homomorphic encryption now. Let's use it in a way that protects privacy but still helps flag foreign influence and helps distinguish between foreign speech and protected domestic speech.
Ha! What sanctions? We are not sanctioning like we truly mean it.
> So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power,
No, my point is that because democracies are abusing power, right now, we should be against giving them more tools. The US democracy is in an active state of being dismantled because they have lots of shiny legal tools to do it. These very same beginnings can be seen in Europe too, when the EU tries again and again to pass privacy invading internet tracking laws. We are not in favour of Iran building nukes for "defense", and I would wager you won't defend their efforts in the face of critics when they say "hey, we're pretty sure they will abuse it" because it might not happen, even though abuse is clearly already happening.
> Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within
If democracy is so weak that it needs to be protected from uncomfortable truths and the opinions of its people (read: opinions you or I may not share), then maybe it's not saveable.
> I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution.
Dead on. The only true weapon to combat misinformation is transparency. But transparency efforts are not what I'm seeing, and they are certainly not what Ursula von der Leyen means when she talks about the Digital Services Act.
I don't think transparency alone will be enough. We may need to treat foreign speech differently from domestic speech (my last sentence from previous comment), with different protections (prioritizing domestic speech) because you simply cannot control the firehose of propaganda coming from the rest of the world. And don't get me wrong, this isn't about silencing foreign opinions. What I mean is we need to recognize that a citizen expressing a view and a state apparatus manufacturing thousands of fake citizens expressing that view are fundamentally different things, deserving different treatment. We already make this distinction in campaign finance, lobbying, broadcasting etc. So I think extending it to the information space isn't a radical departure, it's basically catching up to the modern world.
I want to circle back to something, because I think there's an irony in your argument that's worth examining.
The administration you're worried about abusing power is itself a product of the influence operations. We have documented evidence (not speculation) of Russian operations boosting Trump's candidacy in 2016 and 2024. We have confirmed payments to influencers like Tim Pool and others through Tenet Media, amplification networks on social platforms, coordinated campaigns targeting swing state voters. The Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the recent DOJ indictments etc all showing the same thing.
So when you say "look at how Trump is abusing power, this is why we shouldn't give governments these tools", I'd ask: how do you think he got there? The foreign influence you're arguing we should mostly tolerate helped install the government you're now citing as proof we can't trust government.
You're using the consequences of the problem as an argument against addressing the problem.
On your "if democracy can't survive this, maybe it's not saveable" point, I find this fatalistic in a way that doesn't match how you argue about everything else. You clearly do think democracy is worth protecting (that's why you're worried about government overreach, civil liberties etc) So I think yu're not a nihilist.
So why adopt an all or nothing frame specifically here? Democracies have always required defensive mechanisms. We have treason laws, foreign agent registration, campaign finance rules etc. So it wasn't about "pure openness vs. authoritarianism", but basically it always been about where to draw lines. Drawing them poorly is a risk. But as I said before refusing to draw them at all isn't principled neutrality, it's just losing by default.
I may have missed something but Akamai seem to be living proof that it's possible to operate that kind of business at scale from the US without vice signalling or publicly sucking up to fascist authoritarians.
The good players are the US on this front. I say this as a European. Europe at large is in a dark place in terms of freedom of speech, the press, and other issues like immigration. And the US might eventually have to be the ones to apply force to hold our leaders accountable, ironic as that is given history.
Don't be fooled. People like Elon aren't pro-free speech. They only want their speech. For example on Elon's X you can call people all kinds of things but calling someone "CIS gendered" is a ban-able offense [1]. Linking to other platforms was also forbidden for a while and in the H1B discussion X shadow banned a bunch of people [2] and I could go on for a while.
CF is a US company, the EU has the right to make their own - misguided - laws. And CF has the option to simply stop doing business with Italy, or comply with the law. This stupid grandstanding is just a thinly veiled attempt at blackmail which I'm sure will very much impress the legislators and the judges of the country to which it is addressed. /s
I'm a team lead in an American organization that relies heavily on Cloudflare's Project Galileo[1], and I read that post with growing dread. My first thought was that this guy doesn't sound very much like a CEO. Let me rephrase that: He sounds like the kind of unhinged CEO of orgs I try to stay away from (X, for instance).
Then I read what you're talking about:
> [...] we are considering the following actions: [...] 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; [...]
That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power (Project Galileo is free for journalists). If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
I was complacent and we need to re-think our relationship with them. It's true what they say: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.
I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down.
But as a middle manager of a small nonprofit who makes decisions for my org's web infrastructure I have to make sure our organization's infra doesn't become part of a bargaining chip in a future conflict between a giant company and our government.
The act of threatening unrelated customers just because they are in the same country is extremely stupid.
Businesses might not care whether he tweets at JD Vance or Taylor Swift, but the risk of having your website shut down because the CEO of your firewall vendor has a psychological breakdown on Twitter is unacceptable.
It is Friday evening in Europe and the fact that Cloudflare leadership and Cloudflare legal team couldn't put out a statement to mitigate this situation within the last 5 hours shows that this guys could run the company into the ground within blink of an eye.
Remember, some weeks ago Cloudflare had an outage because of an extremely stupid engineering mishap, today it is an extremely stupid leadership mishap. How many more strikes should they be granted?
Cloudflare has very limited leverage here. Punishing the entire country for the actions of their elected government in hope of protest is about as good as they can do other than hoping Trump does something crazy. Every italian citizen has some say over their governments actions, even if they dont support them.
When you fine a company more than the entire revenue they get from your nation, they will pull out. It is not retributive. What is hard to understand about that?
> If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
Absolutely. And if any of their competitors claims they can guarantee that they won't ever (have to) pull out somewhere for political reasons, they're lying or ignorant. You cannot escape politics. One election or new law can redraw the landscape overnight.
Also I doubt you "depend" on any single SaaS product where you're completely at the mercy of another company. There's probably nothing that you couldn't swap out in a pinch.
It is not unrealistic at all. The Olympics are run by politicians, essentially, since they appoint the committees, make the investments, build the infrastructure.
And the ones pushing for these bans are the sport media tycoons: this fight isn't about Anna's Archive, it is about people watching soccer illegally. Because that is where the real money is.
Yeah correct. I hate this so much in this topic. I hate the disrespect for the law in this topic here but he is right here. The Olympics, soccer and all the other sports (but also other billionaires businesses) have to be put back in their place. How is FIFA able to prevent me from drinking my favourite beer in the city center of my favourite town just because world cup is on town.
> 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.
I think it's worth noting the quotes around the pro-bono. As outlined by Matthew Prince (Co-founder & CEO, CloudFlare):
> Bandwidth Chicken & Egg: in order to get the unit economics around bandwidth to offer competitive pricing at acceptable margins you need to have scale, but in order to get scale from paying users you need competitive pricing. Free customers early on helped us solve this chicken & egg problem. Today we continue to see that benefit in regions where our diversity of customers helps convince regional telecoms to peer with us locally, continuing to drive down our unit costs of bandwidth.
> It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them.
Of course it benefits them, it's a private enterprise, not a local government providing trash service.
No one also can force them to provide such a service, try to control their global operations which is outside of Italy's jurisdiction, and if they're not making any more they can pack their stuff and leave.
The panel is backed by a law. Respect the law. Italy has a judicial system and in cases like this, probably some EU court could be also called. US politicians can reach out to EU/Italian politics to harmonize trade... But wait, do not we kill trade deals. They are so unfair (aka. compromises)
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably. Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
On one hand, I agree with you, it's problematic to threaten collective punishment. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to "divest" from a country trying to fine you for behavior outside of said country. It's also important to communicate that clearly, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?
I think it is a big strategic mistake for him to personally take ownership of this topic and to elevate it on a political level. He openly aligned himself with two people who are extremely unpopular in Europe, while threatening an important EU member state.
I think his hubris makes him overestimate Cloudflare's importance for Europe. Cloudflare is simply not important enough. If it was Microsoft or Apple threatening, then maybe - but those companies are clever enough to leverage lobbying for this.
Now the Cloudflare CEO has set himself up to be at the whims of JD Vance/Trump, while providing a perfect "arrogant US tech company" scapegoat that can be slaugthered by European politics and the media conglomerate that he is threatening.
Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
Anyways, it is like Facebook CEO and Amazon CEO applauding the Trump inauguration; it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. It takes people's illusion that Cloudflare is a neutral tech company and replaces it with this guy's twitter ramblings, who is obviously an Elon Musk and JD Vance fanboy.
> it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare.
My take was, If you need help from the current State Department, or the current administration, (and I assume they do) it absolutely is a necessary statement. And then, this is them trying very hard to suck up, as is required, without pissing off everyone.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and this is actually a form of honesty, instead of performative theater. In which case I would probably agree with you. It's unfortunate. But I default to the assumption that people aren't children by choice.
He took a risk in ignoring a law instead of exiting the market. They did not escalate, they applied the law.
What we need is an international legal framework for the Internet. And that includes compromises on all sides. China, EU, Russia, US and others have very different understanding on what is right. But hey, I think US politics is America first and cancel all international treaties. Sounds like more problems like this are incoming.
> Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
When you say "for USA", what do you mean by "USA"?
Are you talking about the general US population? US corporations? Or the person who decides foreign policy direction (i.e., Trump)?
Because Trump recently ordered the snatching of a foreign head of state because he didn't like how the guy danced and allegedly didn't take him seriously.
I was trying to say that even though the US administration is actively escalating with Europe, I don't think the point in time has been reached where they want to go full berserk and cut Europe off from services by US tech companies. Cloudflare CEO tries to trigger such an escalation right now, but I'm not sure the US administration wants this kind of escalation right now, because it would also accelerate migration away from Microsoft and other US tech companies, hurting their revenue. For FAANG $7M is peanuts, and they won't leave billions on the table just because Cloudflare CEO has a big ego.
Was with him in the first part, then wtf. Vance and the others dont stand for free speech either, it's only their own speech that matters and they'll proudly ban anything else.
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.
Yes I thought the same. I thought the post was making a good point, but the image just undermined the seriousness of the post, as it characterized Italian politicians as zombies. It made me think less of the author.
Rejecting the system, everyone in it, and everyone that's willing to interact with it, is not a way to get good outcomes. No don't "just take it" but encouraging one of the good opinions of the vice president is fine.
I disagree, some systems are so bad they need to be rejected outright. As a European, I find asking for the help of Vance and Musk as hostile, even if the person asking is in the right.
You are right. But there is a point here that international harmonization and compromise is a solution here. Which is not exactly a strength of an America First policy.
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
HN does not use a "Just one moment..." Cloudlfare interstitial
It seems to do just fine without it
HN does not require Javascript or use of a particular client to request and read its HTML. I use an HTML reader (offline) with no suupport for auto-loading resources, images, JS, CSS or DNS "prefetch" nonsense
The Cloudflare "protection" against so-called "abuse" forces www users to enable Javascript and use a client that exposes them to increased risks, including risks to their privacy and quiet enjoyment of the web
It cannot tell the difference between (a) a single reguest from a single IP address by a www user who prefers a client that is not distributed by an online advertising company or an online advertising company's business partner and (b) so-called "abuse" such as an excessive number of requests, sometimes from many IP addresses
For the purposes of "protection", it considers (a) and (b) the same
CF's "solution" is to force the www user to choose a particular client that puts the www user at risk and exposes them to surveillance and advertising, and surreptitious data collection
"Solve" a problem by creating a new, additional problem
One thing it should mean is that anyone using Cloudflare is doing so while risking that its CEO suddenly pulls the rug and closes down the service; not a dependency you want in your stack, and not a great look for a service that's supposed to be usable as a stable high-availability one.
The alternative to the "checking your internet connection" page for many websites is either "508 Resource Limit Is Reached", "Please click all the boxes with traffic lights", or no website at all. They're not there to bully you, they're there to protect websites from abuse.
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.
Yeah, it's weird. I don't like the law in Italy, Cloudflare, or the current US administration, but I'm fairly anti-censorship, so I feel compelled to side with Cloudflare unless more info comes to light.
It really doesn’t matter what administration is in charge, at a certain level you have to curry favor with whatever administration is in power and hold your true motives close to your chest. People seem to think what people say in public is perfect knowledge of their true intentions. No. What they say is what they want someone to hear them say. There is nothing to gain by saying what you really feel, no one can prove it’s what you really feel anyway.
Plenty of activists on the other side of the spectrum note of "greenwashing" and "pinkwashing", nice words about the environment or LGBT+ rights without any noticeable action beyond adding a temporary pride badge to social media accounts in pride month or a picture of a wind turbine on their website.
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.
Cloudflare and other US tech companies base business decisions on revenue (and apparently on emotion), not allegiance to government agencies that have fallen out of fashion.
Yes, it is good for Europe that US tech leadership comes out in the open and share their twitter ramblings, so nobody can deny that their interests are not aligned with us.
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?
Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?
They are a conglomerate and per Matthews words "an internet infrastructure provider". Why does the local revenue matter when they are serving a global market?
EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
They're threatening to remove servers from Italy. They're explicitly NOT threatening to block Italians from being able to access sites through Cloudflare.
I have my fair share of problems with CF, but I assume here that they're threatening higher latency (i.e. requests from Italian users would have to go to a neighboring country to be routed) rather than blocking.
How freaking expensive do you think infrastructure is? It's not that expensive, and certainly not anywhere close to the point where it would make a noticeable impact on GDP.
If they do not want to comply with introducing censorship, then withdrawing from Italy is the only other option.
Italian citizens and residents are unfortunately collateral damage.
It absolutely is. Why should people receive a free service while their democratically elected officials enact laws that enable them to target global revenue in their fines?
What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play". They owe Italy nothing.
Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
> What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play".
They can just not threaten the population of Italy? They are a 2 billion dollar company that has apparently scheduled a meeting with the vice president of the US on short notice? This is going to be resolved politically.
> Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
You have not given "free services" to 20% of the world wide web that you are now using as leverage.
Politic is not separate from the population though. Pressure from the population (hopefully) sways political decisions. This is why google news pulling out of countries were public.
> EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:
> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
He isn't threatening to block Italy, just to remove cloudflare's business from there. Anyone living and surfing from Italy would not be blocked by cloudflare from accessing any service provided by cloudflare.
Yeah that makes sense to me. If you come up to me and say “you have to arrest that guy; he’s stealing from me” I have to do a lot of research to make sure that everything is correct.
On the other hand, if I see you steal from me, I don’t have to do a lot of research. I am a first party to the thing. I can be sure.
It’s the difference between a policeman arriving on the scene of an assault and someone actually assaulting the policeman.
The acting party being the affected party simplifies things because you know you’re not a “confused deputy”.
> So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining.
Kiwifarms isn't a pirate site. It's just another site that you think is legitimate to censor.
> However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?
What's going to be next weeks fine? Of course they should block the entire country. Even if they pay the fine (I could imagine there's some way that the EU could force that on pain of forcing them out of Europe), they should block the country.
I'm not sure why would you want to remind the world about that episode. those men lied, stalked, harassed, and threatened a lot of people to get that perfectly legal website exposed to very illegal DDoS attacks.
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.
I read the tweet twice and I don’t see any mention of free speech. What he’s describing, when you look past the rhetoric, sounds ridiculous: a single medium sized country is demanding power to institute global blocks of content on the internet? If that’s an accurate description, that’s deeply concerning for the long term viability of the internet.
"While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration" and "in this case @ElonMusk is right" are not how you talk about beacons.
He is likely referring to the Trump admin's efforts to prevent the UK from globally censoring the internet according to UK morality/laws, of which would indicate the admin's free speech defense (unlike the prior admin which pressured social media sites to censor opinions they did not like, a 1A issue).
Yes, the Administration who is famously so pro Free-Speech, that they intimidate and prosecute senators, when they make a video about "PSA: You can refuse illegal orders"
I cannot believe this is the first time that Cloudflare has been confronted by a local government which asked to perform "global" filtering of content. It is clear for anyone who has worked with bureaucrats that their "global" means "within our jurisdiction". It is extremely weird that he feels emboldened to publicly lash out like this and pull in people who are extremely unpopular in Europe.
You keep saying this, but 'global' has never meant 'in my jurisdiction' in any conversation or document I've ever read. What additional information can you provide the confirms your interpretation is correct?
He actually praised Vance role as a defender of democratic values, but Vance is known to deny Greenlands souvereignity, ready to capitulate to a russian dictator, indifference to police killing a protester recently, etc.
His idea of free speech does not include critical reporting. The wider US government is trying to shut down the BBC with a lawsuit or has public officials threaten individual journalists to their face, basically nothing is too large or too small.
> He actually praised Vance role as a defender of democratic values, but Vance is known to deny Greenlands souvereignity, ready to capitulate to a russian dictator, indifference to police killing a protester recently, etc.
Horrible stuff. I agree. His statement about free speech in the EU, when removed from him as a person, is still true. Progressive media sources agree [1]. If both aisles, as well as European free speech activists, think something is going horribly wrong in Europe, we should listen.
Oof, Cloudflare has been one of the most interesting tech companies for me, and one I would have worked for in a heartbeat. But the MAGA pandering in this tweet is quite disappointing. I get it, running a large business in the US these days requires a certain amount of bootlicking, but still. And I say this while generally agreeing with Matthew's stance.
The "haters" who long ago have warned about the risk of Cloudflare MITM'ing global website traffic have been proven right. In the end, Cloudflare is another mass surveillance tool next to Meta/Google/Apple which will be weaponized in the interests of the current US administration.
I hope people go take a look at previous statements by MP/JGC (to be fair, no longer affiliated) with this in mind - I have always found them to be just as degrading and whiny as this announcement reads.
In Spain the LaLiga CEO, Tebas (Soccer association, they are legally fighting against Cloudflare and doing MITM's everwhere) isn't very different in that case (Francoist far right supporter).
Every time any of these CEOs see even the mildest of pushback, the mask just fully falls off and you see them immediately run to the worst people on the planet.
I feel for his chief legal counsel who must be crying in their office right now. In the US, courts have been deactivated for MAGA-aligned rich people, but Cloudflare CEO is so stupid to assume that the same has happened in Italy. The arrogance and ignorance is astounding.
Nobody gets to these positions unless they're a complete sociopath who've long lost touch with reality. Just listen to anything thiel, musk, altman, vance and other degenerates have to say, some animals display more humanity than these golems
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.
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?
It's all a racket to extract money from Italians, not enforcing IP rights.
Just like it's mentioned in Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu, some organizations are designed to extract resources from masses. Italian loves soccer and some big shots managed to get the TV rights for a per-pay service, and that's why they're pushing for so hard. Otherwise I don't think Italian courts would go after people selling pirated DVDs on the streets of Milan.
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?
We don't know what the law is. The rules were created with an administrative procedure backed by a very generic statute which is likely unconstitutional. Neither the Supreme court (Cassazione) nor the Constitutional court have ruled on the matter yet.
Getting a fine is the first step towards further judicial review, probably.
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.
Not sure you can call it censorship if it's the author of the book who doesn't want you to access it for free. I know there are a few levels of indirection here, but with a few notable exceptions authors are normally against their books being pirated.
I personally sure want Anna's Archive staying up, but comparing it to nazis burning books is a bit too much IMO
This isn't banning books, it's akin to banning a book store. If a book store chain isn't paying their taxes and gets shut down, the books have not been banned or censored.
Back in the day it was US media companies which started the big war against piracy and for the use of DRM. It was pushed by US media companies and the US government upon Europe. Same as with software patents. It's weird that now US companies complain about local media rights holders doing their censorship thing when the whole thing was started by the US.
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.
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.
> You do what a country tells you to do as a foreigner, or you leave.
I suppose you're right. You're still allowed to criticize the government's decisions though! This is certainly true in Italy, which has quite reasonable laws with regards to freedom of speech.
> what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government
Western government instituitions are hardly sacred. Again, people are allowed to criticize them, or disrespect them event if they so desire. What he's trying to achieve is a more just and reasonable application of the law, as it's quite clear if you'll care to carefully read the tweet instead of raging at his supposed disrespect for the Italian government.
The people in italy are allowed to do whatever they want with their own government. Even foreigners in other countries, who cares. But if you're a guest, you don't disrespect your host, certainly not about the rules they have.
Imagine if I were to complain about HN rules and how the moderators are tyrants. That's what @eastdakota is doing. It's one thing to say that when you're posting else where, but not here. he's not having to following italian laws because he's an italian, he's having to do so, so that he can be afforded the privileges of doing business there.
> BTW, before I read this Xweet I was a Cloudflare fan.
The CEO of a US tech company asking the Vice President for help with censorship caused you to immediately flip you opinion? And not only flip your opinion, but practically embrace complete censorship of the internet if that means Cloudflare leaving Europe?
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).
"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
One must be thankful to him for removing the illusion that Cloudflare is some benevolent, neutral US company fighting for a more secure internet.
My risk acceptance is not big enough to have all Cloudflare-secured websites in my country to go offline just because someone from my country has a Twitter fight with a member of the US administration or with the Cloudflare leadership.
It was necessary to get them to take action. The only thing the current administration cares about is public image so publicly fellating them is what you need to do to get them to go to bat on your behalf.
He runs a private company, not a government institution and I'm sure they can pay a lawyer to sue the Italian entity if it displeases him so much. Like everybody else would.
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
If the Italian law is equivalent to the Great Firewall, why is Cloudflare upset about it? They have servers in 35 different locations around mainland China and I don't remember reading about their plans to pull out.
True.
CCP does not attempt to impose their censorship on other countries, while EU have asked Cloudflare to DNS block their wish list for the entire world.
I'm buying it. Look up the number of people prosecuted in China for internet speech versus the UK (not even EU). The UK prosecutes more even though it has a much smaller population.
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!
Doing business is different in the EU as it is different in China or Russia. If you want it to be not different, work in globalization not America first.
Europe was fine until it got disrupted by Russia and the US. But that has nothing to do with this topic here. This is just a company not following a local law. Nothing special in the law (it is shitty like any IP law) or the case here.
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.
> 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.
It can be both. I run many open source websites behind cloudflare.
It's the same as github. All the free hosting and free CIs and free issues/discussion forums, and free code review for open source repos (90% of all open source projects?) happens to be a a loss leader as well.
Both are still a huge free contribution to the world. They don't have to do it. They could just have zero free anything.
What market share would they have without offering the free tier?
Much lower than what they have now, and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet
> and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet
The only people that say that haven't run a site on the open internet in the last decade plus. It's such an ignorant takes it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
I’m not advocating for having no protections at all. Without Cloudflare giving away protection for free it’s entirely possible that we would have multiple smaller provider offering protection at a fair price so maybe only a smaller fraction of the internet goes offline next time Cloudflare pushes a bad configuration
Im sorry but your epistemics are very wrong. Providing a free service with no strings attached to nearly every website in the world adds a ton of value, possibly more than Cloudflare’s market cap. And the fact that a free product can lead to profits, when other companies make the choice to pay more, does not remove that worldly contribution.
Another italian here; while this whole situation is bad and piracy shield is definitely not the solution, having the cloudflare CEO that threatens to remove free-tier service makes me wonder. They offer a free pill, just to be the "powerful" guys that threaten people when they are paying some million euros.
Well done my friend. :-) I'm already moving websites off cloudflare. bye!
P.S: I believe piracy shield is a s*t idea naturally.
Cloudflare is clearly in the right. Global censorship from an unaccountable cabal is a moral wrong. There's no sense in which Italy somehow 'wins' here, because even if they win, they lose.
Presumably AGCOM are accountable to the Italian government and therefore ultimately the Italian people. Or do you just mean 'unaccountable' in the sense that Americans should be able to do whatever they please, wherever they please, and they don't appreciate being hindered by trivial things like other country's laws.
I am very pro-piracy, but calling to Trumpist elite reads like he thinks that European instututions have no right to censor Internet, because they are European, while controlling the Internet is an exlusive American right.
I really think Europe should adopt a Chinese approach to copyright, but I don't expect US to like it at all - they started it all after all with DMCA etc.
> 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.
While that is true, the datacenters hosting those servers are going to lose a massive amount of monthly income by not having those servers colocated anymore.
And just out of curiosity, how many small/medium websites would have the in house know-how to switch to a different CDN? Cloudflare fronts your site, giving you an 'automatic' CDN, where most others require changes to your site to work with.
> I suspect they'll follow the law and do what the court says
Which, to me, seems like a clearly worse outcome? I hate the feudal masters more than most on HN, if that somehow matters for the credibility of my own opinion.
The free offerings are not a loss-leader in the conventional sense of anticipating future upsell. They are a traffic generator used to drive up Cloudflare’s leverage when negotiating peering with carriers & service providers, in order to drive down the marginal cost of bandwidth for Cloudflare’s actual product, the enterprise DDoS protection, with the criticality of traffic interchange expenses being evident in the vehemence with which Cloudflare discuss peering matters, such as via the astroturf’d “bandwidth alliance” grouping they sponsor.
In which vein, anyone familiar with The Peering Playbook will recognise the kind of annoying hardball Prince thinks he is playing, but I doubt it works on nation states.
> 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.
This isn't international law though. It's an authoritarian move by the Italian government. "Technically" and "legally", you're correct that Cloudflare is wrong for not building infrastructure to help Italy censor the web from Italians, but sometimes you should break the law if you disagree with it strongly enough.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I find it interesting that no where in your comment did you try to justify the behaviour other than to say "it's the law". But that is the problem. Why is it the law? Do you think the law is justified?
> 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.
Completely agree with you there. Seems like a pretty stupid move to be honest. If I were CEO of Cloudflare I'd probably just shut my mouth and censor the internet.
My conspiracy theory is that the EU is actively trying to create their own cloud through regulation after seeing the economic success from china's internet companies after the great firewall.
Unfortunately, the EU is not nearly coordinated for such a thing. And even if they were, regulation is not what will make it happen. EU is in a crisis of financial (VISA, AmEx) and software services (AWS, MS, Google) being almost entirely provided by USA. They are not going to dig themselves out of the hole by regulation.
For contrast, USA is (largely) dependent on China, Korea, and Taiwan for chips. But they decided to attack the problem by investing several hundred billion dollars to develop their domestic microchip manufacturing infrastructure [1]. This appears to be paying dividends already as TSMC is already producing chips in Arizona, and estimated 30% of all production of 2nm and better to be produced in USA by 2030.
It seems to me that this is the way nations take control of their problems. Unfortunately EU seems incapable.
This is called "digital sovereignty", and it has been a major topic for OpenInfra foundation and other open source cloud foundations. Open source, and open cloud software, is the way to ensure your data can stay inside your own borders and be governed by your local laws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvz2PcHq0yY is one example of folks talking about this, but realistically you can find talks from OpenStack/OpenInfra going back 4/5 years on this topic.
That's definitely happening. The US does this through massive government spending on American solutions. The EU is only starting to go that route as well.
>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
International law??
Italian law you mean.
Why should 1.1.1.1 block a site because some Italian wanted it blocked? Sod off.
Also I am Swedish, so EU here too. Sick of this whiny victim attitude.
Note the "general line". You know, bombing boats in international waters, abducting awful dictators and "running" the country sidelining the opposition, threatening to take over an autonomous territory of Denmark, meddling with German and British politics and generally behaving very much like fascists and a wannabe dictator.
First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing.
It's a very unhinged, very Trumpy response. The repeated use of "cabal" and hyperbole is, as you say, embarrassing.
It's useful to know this is the official voice, tone, and attitude of CloudFlare. Now I know not to recommend it to my company. The owners would not be happy to do business with an organization that has its politics and alignment so close to the surface.
A group of people who were elected by nobody, should, without any accountability or due process, be able to ban any website they don't like from the internet? And not just for Italians but globally?
Even if you think this is a great thing for Italians (I have no idea why anyone would think that), you expect the whole world to surrender to this absurd demand? Categorical imperative???
Piracy Shield only works within Italy. No provider has ever been expected to take down sites globally in response to a Piracy Shield trigger, or has ever done so.
Also read the start of the comment. See this?
> as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist
unfortunately this preamble doesn’t add the weight you assume it should. what has being italian got to do with having an opinion on this? this and all the other “italian here” takes below. fwiw unless eastdakota is being intentionally malicious, he, with the cloudflare legal team, understands the situation and its implications for cloudflare better than any random italian.
Cloudflare is talking about Italian law and Italian policy and making comments about his actions they will take in Italy with Italian users specifically.
“Italian here” as in “I am not a random person with no skin in the game / I live in the country and presumably am more well informed on the policy he is talking about.
If there was a post about a law in nyc, I think it would be helpful to hear takes from New Yorkers.
I also didn't enjoy the bit where, after saying the EU was against what Italy is doing, then blames the whole continent of Europe for this policy...and then inflicting it on the UK, which despite brexit, is still in Europe
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.
Since when Cloudflare started to fight for Open Internet? Thanks to them last year we weren’t able to visit many websites. If that’s how they perceive openness, they have to think twice.
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.'
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.
(in details: the action was carried out by the Central Directorate for Scientific Police and Cybersecurity within the Department of Public Security, Ministry of the Interior).
The domain resolves (by many DNS, 1.1.1.1 included) to Cloudflare IPs :)
Surly this post must have the opposite effect of what he intended. Even if you side with Cloudflare on the core issue this post is so cringy my butthole collapsed into itself.
Are Americans not embarrassed by the way these tech bros operate? As a European it’s obvious that the US gone from an allied to an enemy. I would feel like a traitor if I picked US tech these days.
Just by looking at the profile picture my douchebag detecting spidey-senses were tingling. And reading further down the text with people he brings up as he cries for mommy... ding ding ding!
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.
Which MAGA comment, specifically? Are you referring to this?
> While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue [...]
You may or may not agree, it hardly seems MAGA though.
The Italian 'piracy shield' is indeed reprehensible, but the tweet is very far out there as well. For all I care Cloudflare blocks the entirety of Europe for a week or so in protest, but aligning yourself with the bunch of fascists now in charge of the US government and prefacing that with "while there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration" is pretty insane as Cloudflare will be at the complete mercy of their lawlessness, if not now, then in the future.
“any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests”
Does anyone else find it difficult to discern truth in this era where everyone seems to want to pray in your emotions. My gut is that he’s angry for the right reasons, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone who tries to use the words “shadowy cabal” in a serious context.
It is banal to observe that an agency of a government can act orthogonally to another, and also the citizens of the country.
I have noticed a trend post-2020 of a higher level of emotionality and impulsive thinking among government and business leaders in the United States. Hopefully thermostatic opinion engages and this trend reverses.
>Using global revenue is further example of the extra-judicial overreach
Thank companies that transferred their national revenue via shady tax evation tricks into other countries so that their national revenue was nearly zero.
Why do people go out of their way to criticize Trump like this?
Attacking other countries without declaring war is a staple of pretty much every US president since WW2, republican or democrat. Carter is the only one who stands out (ironically, despite the fact that he had a good cause to invade Iran).
Yep. It sounds like “shadowy cabal” is just an emotive term for “deputised decision-makers doing something that is inconvenient for my organisation”. There’s nothing shadowy about it. It’s just not American.
If there were an EU shadow cabal who exactly would you run to help for?
When Bonasera’s daughter is assaulted and the perpetrators released, he goes to Don Corleone. That makes sense. It’s not funny or ironic that he turns to criminals to help with criminals.
What an absurd twisting of reality this is. There is no EU shadow cabal, as opposed to the very real not-so-shadowy cabal currently running the USA. Where the EU is concerned with a rule-based order, justice, and fair conditions, the US administration engages in open corruption, cronyism, and outright rule by force.
The CEO of an American company complaining about the unfair treatment in Europe is more than ridiculous.
Probably because the admin has been vocal and proactive about extraterritorial overreach by European countries hellbent on global censorship programs.
The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media, as has Germany. Both of those countries also attempt to censor speech OUTSIDE of their own countries too.
[2] "Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
[3] "A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
> Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM imposed a record-breaking €14.2 million fine on Cloudflare after the company failed to implement the required piracy blocking measures. Cloudflare argued that filtering its global 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would be "impossible" without hurting overall performance. AGCOM disagreed, noting that Cloudflare is not necessarily a neutral intermediary either. [...]
That's a pretty bad take. This whole situation came into existence because CF has positioned itself as a convenient choke point. The Italian government is dumb, but 'eastdakota' is being dumber here. JD Vance and Musk are about as poisonous to international relations as it gets and bringing them up in relation with Europe making and enforcing its own laws - no matter how misguided - makes me think you should probably focus on the beam in your own eye first.
As for the rest of the threats: please do. Europe needs less, not more dependencies on USD and US companies. We'll figure it out, or not.
If a company choses Cloudflare they would have great service everywhere except Italy. If they chose a service with lower quality / reach, they will suffer degraded service across the board. If they try to use more than one CDN that’s a lot of hassle.
It’s not clear which way the decisions will go in reality. Past experience suggests that tech companies eventually accommodate local laws, trading complexity of explaining this to customers for complexity of implementing targeted blocking tools.
A lot depends on the next couple of months and the US's continued belligerence against - former? - allies. If that isn't toned down, and drastically so then I expect there to be many more consequences than just for CDN providers.
They're at 82% or so of all websites using CDNs, other providers are extremely small in comparison. CF is this large because of a feedback loop with respect to being able to deal with large denial of service attacks. They are - for most serious players - the only game in town now.
As a non-American (and non-European) I got the foul stench of ‘American upset that other legal jurisdictions exist’ before I even finished the first sentence. The absolute slathering on of such emotive language feels very disingenuous. It’s immediately obvious that I’m being taken for some sort of ride. I can picture Kyle’s dad from South Park, at his computer, with his glass of red, writing his Yelp reviews. I genuinely don’t know how anyone can write like this and think that it’s a good look.
His whole #freespeech theater would be slightly more convincing if they did not praise America's neo fascists in the same tweet and also if cloudflare did not work in, for example, China (where I guess they comply with local censorship).
It's fine to defend your profits but don't pretend you defend anything else.
In case people can’t/don’t want to read something on X, here is the statement:
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver meaning it risked blacking out any site on the Internet. And it required us not just to censor the content in Italy but globally. In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme. We, of course, will now fight the unjust fine. Not just because it’s wrong for us but because it is wrong for democratic values.
In addition, we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials and I’ll be meeting with the IOC in Lausanne shortly after to outline the risk to the Olympic Games if @Cloudflare withdraws our cyber security protection.
In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines. We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
It's not "quasi-judicial". They have no judicial authority, at all, despite how they present themselves.
They can only show them their supposed findings to a ministerial judge and tell them "Weeeh weeh, Cloudflare is being mean".
Then the judge will look at the AGCOM analysis, listen to Cloudflare or an EU representative or whoever may raise an objection to those findings, and then, after a loooooong time, enforce or not the fine.
I think the fine is wrong, but the attempt to weaponise JD Vance and Elon Musk doesn’t look well at all.
The next time they see something they don’t like hosted/protected by Cloudflare they will only have to ask more or less nicely and there is a good chance Cloudflare will handle it for them
The interesting part is that neither the AGCOM nor Cloudflare quite understand how each other really work. Also they both believe they got more leeway than they truly have.
AGCOM is an institutional apparatus, they operate separately, but not independently, from whatever leftwing or rightwing government in charge for the most part (past Berlusconian interests aside) and everything they do is entirely subject to not getting out of the guidelines imposed by the EU, no matter what they want anyone else to believe.
Frankly the best course of action for Cloudflare would be getting in touch with the Board of European Regulation pointing them out that AGCOM is, probably for the hundreth time I guess, overstepping their authority. And they should stop right there, otherwise they're the ones that will be actually fined.
Well put. Several nuances are most likely lost in translation. Nevertheless the Cloudflare CEO took it as an opportunity to out himself as a buffoon and harming Cloudflare's international reputation.
Of course it's about football/calcio. I love Italy and almost everything related to Italy (I'm a Juventus fan to boot), but in this the Italian officials are way out of their element and behind the times.
censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal
of European media elites deemed against their interests
Has he recently gone full conspiracy theorist? (Also what's that cringy chatgpt picture supposed to tell us?) Who is the shadowy cabal of EU elites? If anything EU is purely politicians obedient to USA interests. I'm guessing this is what happens in tech when the tide starts to shift, because tech doesn't have morals, it's all just about money. Start praising the new administration no matter what they do, until they're not popular and start praising the next thing. Looking forward to his back-to-woke pivot in 2 years.
It might not be a conspiracy theory. Europeans have serious media skeletons in there closet.
Consider La Liga in Spain. When football matches are on they have a blank check to block whatever they want wherever they want. Genuinely they take down all of cloudflare and all kinds of shit. I think they were even DNS banning everyone on .tv TLD. Its wild how much legal power they have.
This was brought up on hacker news often.
They also have their apps spy on users microphones and gps to detect where someone might be watching their streams to make sure you aren't doing it in bars. [1]
Italian media is trying to do similar stuff with their piracy shield stuff. [2]
AtomicDig219303 on Reddit when Italy blocked all of google drive.
> Wait, I don't think that your post describes how fucking idiotic this whole thing is. Piracy shield is a system implemented by AGCOM (which as OP said is a governing agency) and basically "gifted" to the fucking mafia that is Serie A (yes, the football/soccer league) to block access to pirated streams of football matches.
He contradicts himself in the span of a single sentence. How is it possible that this was done solely by Italy (with concerns from the rest of the EU) and yet this is the work of a cabal of European media elites? If this were true, why isn't the entire EU involved?
That's not really a self-contradiction; if we pretend the USA's copyright lobby had made California pass a similar law… well, that might not work, I have no idea if that would be unconstitutional inter-state trade restriction or something in the USA, but for the sake of showing why it's not a self-contradiction can we pretend?
If the US media elites had convinced California to do that, they'd be a "shadowy cabal of [US] media elites", even if there was opposition from the rest of the USA.
Again, don't read too much into if this would actually work in the USA, the EU is not the USA, this isn't that kind of comment.
US media elites got DMCA and YouTubes copyright strike introduced, I suppose they were powerful enough to sidestep the states and go after Congress instead.
He is partially right. The Atlanticist faction in both the US and Europe has been working to get the internet under control since 2016. This project started as a backlash to the Trump election and moved into high gear with COVID and Ukraine. This faction has a sincere belief that the prior openness of the internet is a threat to the international order, as it prevents authorities from shaping civilian perceptions and behavior.
The battlefield has become more complex since 2016, as the old international order is pretty much dead now, so you have competing factions of Atlanticists (US rump admin/UK/FR/DE/Brussels) versus nationalists (US/Israel/Eastern Europe) who both want control of the internet, but through different means and for different reasons. You could also tack on BRICS nations who decided that the best path is to wall themselves off from the open internet.
Go ahead and downvote, you know I’m right which is why you won’t offer even a single comment in response.
Each of these factions trying to kill the open internet is doing it for selfish reasons and all are in the wrong for doing so. You’re strangling an international commons for your geopolitical games. Shame on all of you!
I'm sure there are popular Italian websites behind CloudFlare. Say, train tickets. Probably not, but just for the sake of the argument.
1. Order comes to block address 69.69.69.69 within 30 minutes
2. Quickly switch Trenitalia to 69.69.69.69. Which is fine, because CloudFlare probably doesn't promise you any specific IP address, so they can assign them from the pool as they please.
3. Block 69.69.69.69.
4. In the whole country everyone who tries to buy a train ticket or check the schedule sees "train service doesn't work because football, please try again after the match", effectively paralyzing public transport.
5. Average Giuseppe learns about the ridiculousness of the situation and gets upset.
6. The government suddenly has to explain to the people what happened. They cannot pin the blame on CloudFlare (as per current fine), so the only remaining scapegoat is the football association.
Another reason to dump an american big tech firm and switch to Bunny.net for example. Better a democratic based error than an american greed based CEO.
Damn, that’s a pretty disappointing statement. Some parts are correct but then he goes completely overboard. After everything that has been happening the past year with the new administration it’s hard to keep supporting this as a European.
While he has a point and Italians are kinda embarrassing in their politics, can't help the feeling that he comes off as a bit of cry-baby. Trying to win points with the JD/Musk mafia that hard seems weird and icky. Seems like signaling to other billionaire bros that they belong to their faction, which in my books isn't that great either. That last uppercase line a cherry on top of shattering my image of CF as respectable tech-vendors.
He event went as far as personally canceling a Tesla customer's order for criticizing him. That's how petty he is. He has no interest in freedom of speech whatsoever, it's merely a talking point.
Freedom of Speech guarantees the right to speak. Not the right to have no repercussions.
Elon has GREAT interest in Freedom of Speech, it enables him to have far more power than regulating the type of "speech" he showed in cancelling that customer's order.
Besides attempting to get him murdered by a crazy person seeing a chance to be famous, what possible reason does someone have to constantly broadcast the location of his transportation? What difference does knowing where it or he is make in the daily lives of anyone? What long term planning does the information give to people?
Musk is a contrarian. He, however, is not a government body (nor does he represent one, u can choose to include the dubious Doge efforts into the discussion but that will devolve into semantics that do not negate the point). As a private citizen with a platform for which he overpaid - he can do as he pleases within the confines of said platform. Musk, however, cannot enforce fines on other providers and request stuff from them. This is what the post is about.
Again, apples and oranges. Private citizens vs government. Musk has no power given to him by someone, the government does, using that power in a way that might be considered abusive/authoritarian might yield (deserved) backlash.
I'm not sure if I'm not getting something. It's a for-profit organization vs a government entity. It's not even remotely similar.
If they publicly state that the house is a "town square" (he has said that of twitter), and they say that they are a "free speech absolutist" (he has said this of himself in the context of this house/town square/website), and state that "By 'free speech,' I simply mean that which matches the law.", then yes, if they don't let you spray-paint (tweet) whatever you want that's not strictly unlawful (like, ah, calling for civil disorder in the UK?), they are indeed a hypocrite.
When the house is digital (twitter is), why even use spray paint as the analogy?
the tweet starts off pretty strong, which I didn't care for but I understand. this phrase however feels wrong. i guess i don't understand Italy, but isn't this like saying the SEC or FCC is quasi-judicial?
> In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
ah, unlike when CF themselves decides unilaterally, not even as part of a cabal, what should and should not be allowed online. got it.
As a side note: just today Polish president veto'ed a law that would allow similar government power.
The government coalition instantly turned on "think of the children" rhetoric in response. I think they are misreading the public sentiment on this one though.
>Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online. That, of course, is DISGUSTING
What's equally disgusting is that one corporation has managed to put itself in the position to dictate these things instead. Cloudflare has literally been running a denial of service on congress.gov (any many other important domains) for at least 3 years if you aren't running latest chrome or latest firefox or similar.
Like a broken clock, he's not wrong. But it's the pot calling the kettle black.
This tweet is unhinged and disappointing. Another techbro billionaire. I've sold what little stock I had in Cloudflare and will be moving off their services.
Threatens retaliation against the individuals in Italy directly on top of the government, and I notice he specified "based in Italy" not "Italian citizen".
Then goes on to thank JD Vance, and crow about Elon "I censor anyone who offends my ego" Musk as being right on Free Speech being in danger.
Also the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." which sounds synonymous with FAFO which this admin is using to mean "if you resist us, we will hurt you"
If he had just said that Cloudflare is unwilling to comply with these terms and is leaving the Italian market as such, that would be one thing, but this reads like he just ordered his MAGA hat and is going to suck up to the current admin to get them to pressure another country.
Lets add the hypocrisy here too, since he says that countries shouldn't regulate outside their borders, and is then running to Uncle Same for support
> "I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials...
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
> I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
Pretending to take a principled stand against censorship but then randomly throwing flowers to two of the biggest threats to freedom of expression is deeply hypocritical, and makes it really hard to take his reaction seriously. And let's not forget that really vile AI image that is sure to alienate all Italians against Cloudflare.
At this point, I'm wondering to what extent all this batting is driving the EU calls for digital sovereignty, and to what extent those calls will be turned into actions.
The other night I was thinking about graphene. Not the OS, the material.
‘We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, “We’ve got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?” It’s quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, “We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it’s really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us.” That’s a direct quote.'
So, we absolutely can get stuff done, the Americans just keep buying us up (DeepMind) or stealing it or using initimidation (Graphene) or espionage (of Airbus for benefit of Boeing way back).
Indeed, but that doesn't mean I have to be fine with that. He already had a perfectly good case against that fine, but using the occasion to cozy up to actual fascists completely discredits him to anyone serious.
I don’t know the backstory but Cloudflare arguing for an open internet is super ironic, presumably he means they want the be the one to close it off and are upset that someone else is ruining their monopoly on it.
1.1.1.1 DNS is just querying root DNS servers. And @elon.jet twitter account was just querying ADS data and posting it. Its exactly same, yet this guy praises Elon.
DNS lookups via 1.1.1.1 are also directly fed into the US surveillance state so peter thiel can use his palantir dashboard to see if you are the antichrist or not.
A government agency in Italy which is known nation-wide to complain and fine other institutions for the stupidest and pettiest reasons, fined another institution for a stupid and petty reason. But of course, ignorant people just see this single occurrence and make up conspiracy theories about it. (Really, if you looked at some examples of previous fines and complaints by AGCOM you would laugh your ass off independently of your political stance)
I honestly don't see the irony. I believe Cloudflare tries to argue for an open internet. I use some of their features on the free plan and it's of tremendous help, especially considering the price I pay (ie 0$). I'm actually super glad that Cloudflare exists.
> this means a court order can't block a single cloudflare site without blocking every cloudflare site
Not true. Cloudflare can't block only a single web site _by IP address_ but that's pretty common with IPv4, The same is true of Fastly and AWS and I'd be shocked if there's a mass-market CDN out there that has a unique IPv4 address per customer.
They can absolutely block any site they want at the application layer (SNI or Host header or whatever they use, IDK, I'm a network guy).
So you think it's fine that if some Italian agency orders Cloudflare to block some domain on it's 1.1.1.1 public DNS (or Google on it's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) it should be blocked for everyone on Earth who is using this DNS server, including yourself? And if you think otherwise, you are merely "upset that someone else is ruining their monopoly on it"?
I suspect the "we're an American company and we're going to get the government protection racket to threaten you" gambit isn't going to achieve the results he's hoping for.
I was reading through this and at first I saw Italy as the bad guys, demanding ridiculous asks. The moment the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." nonsense appeared, followed right after by callouts to Vance and Musk, and threats that he's going to stomp his little feet to the administration...good god, this is pathetic. He looks like a clown. A snivelling, whiny, entitled clown.
lol, ban Cloudflare from Europe. Honestly, at this point all American companies should be banned everywhere but the US, as every American oligarch like this guy does this "We're American gosh darnit!" bit while this administration talks about annexing allies. Disgusting, deplorable behaviour.
"you must block things in germany after it goes through a formal government process" versus "you must block things globally even for places not subject to italian law because an italian media company doesn't like it"
There's more than a subtle difference betweeen the two.
I'm in Germany and Cloudflare DNS doesn't Block eg Annas Archive for me, while my ISP does. I also don't reckon Germany tried to fine Cloudflare yet. So what is your point?
The driving force behind this is getting pirated streams of football matches knocked offline. Currently by the time any action is taken the match is over, which is why they want the response-within-30-minutes.
This is about football streaming, the cabal media elites are right holders fighting illegal streams, which 1.1.1.1 bypasses even if filters are put at the ISP level.
Europe's censorious behavior has become completely absurd, and reading the Italian docs (as several people here have already shared) doesn't make me more sympathetic. It's a real shame, and I'm disappointed that the dream of an internet free from censorship and manipulation seems to be forgotten by so many here - in favor of political squabbling.
He lost me when he started thanking fascists (Vance, Musk et al) who are actively attacking speech in the US they don't agree with. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
I do appreciate reading a PR, from a CEO, that's not unsalvageably tone deaf. At the first half, I was wondering what the point of this was, given if Italy thinks this is something they're allowed to apply across the globe. That instantly makes this a political issue they probably need to be talking to the State Department about. Then I got to the 2nd half, and was impressed that I wasn't immediately annoyed by the ass kissing.
I assume Cloudflare has a great PR team because this feels like a master class in rhetoric. Given how you're expected to solicit help these days.
Rhetoric aside, it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out. Italy seems to have taken out a hammer, and their d.... well, I'm just gonna hope the Internet wins this one.
No? In a disagreement with Italy, cloudflare is definitely going to need the intervention of the US administration. This (angry Twitter post) is how you're expected to ask for help in this timeline. I was expecting to annoyed with the faux allegiance. But here, I think they communicated their distain over the behavior as best as they could, while still asking for help.
I might not like it, but I understand it.
Equally, I might be wrong; but this feels to me like the post tries to as subtly as possible communicate that they have problems with the administration (my expectations for anyone who is at all ethical) While still also needing their help. And if I'm wildly incorrect; and cloudflare is actually in love with the administration, then it's still a master class in rhetoric, because they tricked me, which was probably the point?
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process.
I really couldn’t care less about your legal philosophy, mate.
I understand that you’re used to corporations setting the rules, and I’m sure that it brought you such great joy to write a little post where you got to flex about being well-connected with your country’s morally corrupt administration. However, your views on whether or not a country had a right to self-regulation, have zero impact on your obligation to comply. You don’t get to parachute in and set your own terms. Do you really think that your childish threats of ‘pulling your free plan’ and ‘not opening an office’ will have the intended effect? I genuinely can’t work out why someone didn’t tap this kid on the shoulder and suggest that he tone his rant down a bit.
The US is a sick, sick country. Nowhere else does anyone have the misplaced confidence to act this insanely stupid.
For the first couple of paragraphs, I almost agreed with this dope. Thought he was a moderate on the wrong side of things after the next couple of paragraphs, and after the AI-generated anime picture, I'm pretty sure the guy is a groyper.
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.
Also another Italian here. For context, the "Piracy Shield" mentioned in the order is basically a legislative hacksaw authorized by the regulator (AGCOM) primarily to protect Serie A football rights. Soccer rules Italy more than the Vatican..
It’s a mess technically: it mandates ISPs and DNS providers to block IPs/domains within 30 minutes of a report, with zero judicial oversight. It’s infamous locally for false positives—it has previously taken down Google Drive nodes and random legitimate CDNs just because they shared an IP with a pirate stream.
The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
My personal take idea likely outcome: Cloudflare wins.
EU Law: The order almost certainly violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding general monitoring obligations and country-of-origin principles. Realpolitik: The Italian government can't risk the Olympics infrastructure getting DDoS'd into oblivion because AGCOM picked a fight they can't win. They will likely settle for a standard, court-ordered geo-block down the road, but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.
> The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.
Kind of wild that a private company has that kind of power, both in terms of being one of the few that can offer this service and they can make threats at this level.
I have to say I'm curious over whether that's actually leverage or a massively miscalculated threat that is just going to push the Italian population and politicians firmly against cloudflare.
I'm pretty sure if you tried that here (Canada) it would do the latter.
Would a regulating body in Canada do this, though? And if so, hopefully Cloudflare would say fuck you just the same as they did Italy. It's nice to see someone actually taking a principled stand for once.
If our politicians were stupid enough to pass a law telling them to - I sure hope so - we live in a place with the rule of law not the rule of whatever Joe at the CRTC thinks should happen. Regulators exist to enforce the will of parliament...
Would our politicians pass a law this unfortunate... I hope not... but I don't really have that much faith in them. The current government probably wouldn't, but governments change.
Referencing the Trump administration - the people going around threatening, deporting, arresting, taking money from, etc people as a consequence for speech they don't like - as the standard for free speech makes this far from a principled stand by cloudflare. They took their moral high ground and sunk it. This isn't about speech for them, just money.
You're free to believe all that. "Rule of Law" loses all meaning when corruption takes root. We don't like that "for my friends, everything, for everyone else, the law" shit.
Things can be morally wrong and still legal, and the law itself can intentionally enforce immorality. It's your civic duty to determine when upholding the law degrades you and every else more than following it does.
Also I feel like threatening to take your toys and go home when they don't play fair is a totally valid response.
> It's your civic duty to determine when upholding the law degrades you and every else more than following it does.
That’s a lot more complicated. What happens if a foreign power takes over Canada and changes the law? What is the state law goes against the laws stated by your religion?
It’s a thin line, better not deal in absolutes.
If a foreign power takes over your country and changes the laws in ways that conflict with the previous constitution, there’s a break in sovereignty continuity so your options are: 1. Pledge to the new authority and move on 2. Keep your word on your previous pledge and resist
"for my friends, everything, for everyone else, the law" is a weird description, when that's not the problem with this law at all. There's no question of selective enforcement going on here. The problem is lack of due process, not that.
It's a great description of one of the main tactics the administration he is asking for help uses though. Which again goes to Cloudflare entirely abandoning the moral high ground here.
Threatening to leave is "totally valid" in that it's their right to leave, but it's also not something that a sovereign country that cares about staying sovereign should give any respect to. The only response to a foreign corporation saying that that maintains your independence is "you can't quit, you're fired." Otherwise you just become beholden to the corporation providing you "charity".
Pretty sure, speaking as a Canadian, that the Canadian government would not be able to implement that kind of legislation. And that if they did, I would 100% back Cloudflare.
I have to doubt that it would push the populace against the company when the company is actually both providing good (free protection, DDOS mitigation, CyberSec) and supporting appropriate judicial process to make decisions.
Political threats of withdrawing from an event in an explicit attempt to pressure the country is the opposite of supporting appropriate judicial process.
Is this some weird variant of the right-wing claim that freedom of association is “censorship”? Why would a government be entitled to free shit?
so you want cloudflare to pay fines that 2x revenue of italy customer while also demand cloudflare for services it provides ?????
not counting that the fines also outrageous, 2% global revenue and IP+Domain block for global despite it only Italy request it ????
Not a fan of Cloudfare but why should it be responsible for providing pro bono services to the Italian government during the winter olympics?
If one gets drunk at the pub and threatens the staff after being served free drinks, they get thrown out. Why should this be any different?
In Spain they also have similar laws made specifically for UEFA and the broadcasters' mafia.
The services aren't pro bono if they're only offered in exchange for getting a law modified.
And if you offer people free stuff and then turn around and demand something in return, they're going to get upset and like you less than if you had never offered the free stuff in the first place.
This is one of the consequences of outsourcing this (and other capabilities) to the private sector.
Many governments simply don’t have the skill and political will to invest in these kinds of capabilities, which puts them at the mercy of private actors that do. Not saying this is good or bad, just trying to describe it as I see it.
Governments just can't come to grips with how much money software engineers make.
Paying a contractor $x million? Yeah no problem, projects are projects, they cost what they cost. Does that $x million pay for 5x fewer people than it would in construction or road repair? We don't know, we don't care, this is the best bid we got for the requirements, and in line with what similar IT projects cost us before.
Paying a junior employee $100k? "We can't do that, the agency director has worked here for 40 years, and he doesn't make that much."
Variants of this story exist in practically every single country. You can make it work with lower salaries through patriotism, but software engineers in general are one of the less patriotic professions out there, so this isn't too easy to do.
> Kind of wild that a private company has that kind of power
Also kind of wild that it’s a private US company pushing their current political views on another sovereign state. Cloudflare as a political tool of leverage is a level of dystopia we really should try not to unlock.
What are the exact political views the Cloudflare is pushing here?
That it is unreasonable for Italian soccer rights owners to try to use Cloudflare to enforce their broadcast restrictions with 30 minutes notice?
That it is unreasonable not to have a appeal right for these restrictions?
That the technical solution demanded is technically infeasible?
Not sure that these are political views at all.
They're threatening to take their ball and go home. If they move all of their operations out of Italy, under what principle does Italy demand they block content globally? Should Wikipedia remove their page on Tiananmen Square because the Chinese government demands it (which they would, if they thought it would work)?
i think it’s quite normal and always have been normal for companies to leave countries when the regulative environment goes against them.
> but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.
Why? Technically it’s very easy. Wha if JDV asked CloudFlare to implement this on a different occasion? Would it be dead on arrival?
Italy can also buy the bluff and you know, partner with an EU company to provide them the service Cloudflare would offer "for free".
There is no “EU” company with remotely the same network capacity or capability, in general
BunnyCDN is a good contender for the network. They can find another provider for cybersec.
BunnyCDN don't run their own network, most of their servers are hosted at DataPacket(.com), but they use some other hosting companies too.
DataPacket has a very large network though and is kind of, sort of EU-based. AFAIK most operations are in Czechia, but the company is registered in UK. And there's also the Luxembourg-based Gcore.
Can someone report a bunch of government websites and legal streaming services and see what happens?
Only right owners can report websites, the Piracy Shield is essentially a tool in the hands of “Serie A Soccer League” and DAZN.
How is the rights holder verified in 30 minutes?
I'm sure they have a preexisting relationship with AGCOM.
I just want to point out that AGCOM once decided to put out an "Economically Relevant Instagram Influencers Register".
They're not really... let's say, 'on the ball' for understanding how the internet works. It's a bit of a running joke in Italy that their decisions are often anachronistic or completely misunderstanding of the actual technology behind the scenes.
And for the most part they just deliberate, they have no direct judicial authority. They ask an administrative judge to operate on their decisions, which brings us to some of the favourite sentences for any italian lawyer: the... "Ricorso al TAR". ("appeal to the Regional Administrative Court", which is a polite way to say "You messed up, badly and repeatedly, and now we have to spend an eternity trying to sort this out in a court room").
If we truly want to point out the ridiculousness of Italian tech regulations, the influencers' registry, the temporary ChatGPT ban from a few years back or even the new AI regulations cannot hold a candle to the 22-year-old war on... arcade games.
A poorly written regulation from 2003 basically lumped together all gaming machines in a public setting with gambling, resulting in extremely onerous source code and server auditing requirements for any arcade cabinet connected to the internet (the law even goes as far as to specify that the code shall be delivered on CD-ROMs and compile on specific outdated Windows versions) as well as other certification burdens for new offline games and conversions of existing machines. Every Italian arcade has remained more or less frozen in time ever since, with the occasional addition of games modded to state on the title screen that they are a completely different cabinet (such as the infamous "Dance Dance Revolution NAOMI Universal") in an attempt to get around the certification requirements.
I guess they were inspired by a very similar law in Greece from 2002[0] where in an attempt to outlaw illegal gambling done in arcades a poorly written law outlawed all games (the article mentions it was in was in public places but IIRC the law was for both public and private and the government pinky promised that they'll only act on public places). I remember reading that some internet cafes were raided by the police too :-P.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_3037/2002
Reminds me of US Pinball laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball#Relation_to_gambling
An arcade stuck in the early 00s would be my ideal third space though.
Have you seen Arcade Time Capsule? It is very accurate recreation of a classic arcade with games you can actually play if you provide the ROMs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LOtkGN138Q
Not the OP, but I tried it when it came out. VR headset technology wasn't good enough for screens within screens and it was nauseating more than anything.
There's also impedance mismatch between using the headset controllers and the physical ones in the game. Ideally, I should be able to use my own fightstick in an augmented reality configuration.
The quest 3 is good enough and the Galaxy XR is incredibly high resolution. But it isn't a really ideal way to play arcade ROMs for long term but just to enjoy the nostalgia.
How is the Galaxy XR? I want one but I can't justify it if it doesn't connect to my non-Samsung work laptop.
> a law was created without verifying how the implementation of such law would work in practice (something very common in Italy)
To be fair to Italy, this happens everywhere quite frequently. In my country (the US) we do this all too often.
Except that in the common law system of the United States, a judge can throw out the regulation.
That's very much not the difference between common and civil law
If the law is constitutional it can't be thrown out by a judge in common law and if it's not it can be declared so in civil law
The difference between the two is more about what happens in the absence of a law
> So, I'm not sure anybody verified that what the right holders claimed was actually true.
Yup, this will be weaponized by the MPAA/RIAA
So is this similar to the DCMA in the US, where there's a lot of iffyness about abuse and actually knowing that someone is actually a rights holder?
Wait, so is this about censorship, or about copyright?
If the latter, I don't see why CloudFlare is complaining about "global" censorship. The US would simply seize the domains (which they have done so many times before), but I guess Italy doesn't have that power...
Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the 2. In this case it sounds like copyright in name but the implementation is such that it's a big hammer that can also be used for censorship if followed.
It's about copyright. Seizing domain names (registered outside Italy of course) can't be done in 30 minutes which is what the football overlords want.
What is it with Southern Europe and the football overlords? Spain is blocking half the internet, Italy is fighting Cloudflare. What's up? Are football leagues big political donors?
Football is extremely popular, and football clubs (and their owners) are quite influential (socially and politically). But it's a little bigger than that.
EU is pushing for measures against live-event piracy[1], because they frame this as a systemic threat to cultural/economic systems, giving national regulators broad cover to act aggressively.
While football is quite huge in Europe at large, the impact to GDP of these broadcasting rights is sub-1%; however, lobbyists have a disproportionate impact: you have the leagues themselves (LaLiga and Serie A for Spain and Italy respectively), you have the football clubs, and you've got broadcasters. Combined, they swing quite high, even if the actual capital in play is much lower than the total they represent.
Add to this politicians who can frame these measures as "protecting our culture", get kickbacks in the form of free tickets to high profile games, see rapid action because blocks are immediately felt and very visible, and incentives for increased funding from regulatory agencies because "we need the budget to create the systems to coordinate this", and you can see how the whole system can push this way, even if it is a largely blunt instrument with massive collateral damage.
[1] - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=intcom%3...
Football, the clubs, are also major driver of money laundering. Dirty cash buys a lot of politicians.
https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/a-red-card-for-dirty-money...
Yeah, in Europe, there tends to be an association between football fans and organized crime, just as there's one between unions and organized crime in the US.
The kind of hooligans who love beating up the hooligans from the other team are also perfect from beating up the hooligans from the opposing drug cartel.
A company that would profit from more regulations arguing for more regulations. No way !
As usual, cronyism.
In Spain's case Telefonica (largest telecom, used to be state owned) is private but has a large State participation and the government literally appointed the latest CEO.
Guess who sells the largest football games as part of their expensive TV package?
Guess who asked a judge to order the other telecoms to also block Cloudflare IPs?
No usually the political figures are football league owners.
Jokes aside, I don't know, the obsession with soccer is extreme in Italy. For people who don't care about soccer like I did, there is so much you have to endure just "because of soccer"
Spain especially but southern europe in general has a really crappy economy. Soccer teams are some of the wealthiest organizations in these countries, which means theyre the ones who are able to fund politicians which means they can get laws passed.
Those football leagues are run by the literal Mafia
There's no accountability or due process. According to this brilliant law, if some crony with write-privilege adds your website to a list, the whole world has to ban your website within 30 minutes no questions asked.
Germany has an equivalent within the CUII, which is also a censorship branch of the government with no judicial oversight.
There is no such thing as "no judicial oversight" in Germany.
That overstates things somewhat.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llglrd/2019...
> To some extent, judges are subordinated to a cabinet minister, and in most instances this is a minister of justice of either the federation or of one of the states. In Germany, the administration of justice, including the personnel matters of judges, is viewed as a function of the executive branch of government, even though it is carried out at the court level by the president of a court, and for the lower courts, there is an intermediate level of supervision through the president of a higher court. Ultimately, a cabinet minister is the top of this administrative structure. The supervision of judges includes appointment, promotion and discipline. Despite this involvement of the executive branch in the administration of justice, it appears that the independence of the German judiciary in making decisions from the bench is guaranteed through constitutional principles, statutory remedies, and institutional traditions that have been observed in the past fifty years. At times, however, the tensions inherent in this organizational framework become noticeable and allegations of undue executive influence are made.
You're completely on the wrong track here. The discussion is not about who does or doesn't control the courts, it's about the question if someone who's rights have been violated can go to court or not with regard to that specific matter. If a court rules that blocking an IP address is illegal, the access provider has to stop blocking it. Period.
Judicial oversight took a while in Germany, but it is there now (but I guess you will always find an incompetent judge if you really want). I wonder if cloudflare would implement the German blocklist now that we have judicial oversight. Currently it is as nice registry for pirating sites for anyone using 1.1.1.1 [1]
[1] https://cuiiliste.de/domains
The CUII does not need a verdict to enact censorship. Make of that what you will.
The police doesn't need a verdict to issue you a fine either. But you can challenge your fine (and your block) in court.
Challenging the IP bans in Italy is stupidly hard. Your VM gets an IP address that was used a few months ago for soccer piracy? Too bad, you won't be able to access it from Italy.
Surely there's some EU trade barriers law about that
1. CCUI isn't even a government body
2. parent comment is wrong, CCUI is requiring court action by their members before they act.
3. I rather have companies competing under market pressure to find solutions to topics like copyright infringement than the German state (once again) creating massive surveillance laws and technical infrastructure for their enforcement in -house.
2 is wrong. The CUII even blocks political activists because they dare to post their entire blocklist [1]
[1]: https://lina.sh/blog/telefonica-sabotages-me
Read the post, they never blocked the activist. They just changed what they replied to a DNS query of an already blocked site to make it harder to detect.
Are you really countering an argument against censorship by a power abusing entity with another group famous for power abuse?
No.
Is this similar to what happened in Spain?
yes, it's quite similar. They blocked some lawful services too such as google drive (yes, really) and a TON of sites behind cloudflare by blocking some of its IPs (it happened a while ago, it's not directly related to this).
It's in a way related because this is also meant to combat "football streaming piracy", the same as in Spain. Idiot moves.
Also Italian. I think everybody sucks here?
Most Italian authorities like this one are chock full of incompetents, and I'm almost sure they're just caving in to some soccer broadcaster or some crap like that. He might very well be fully correct on the fact of the matter.
Still, the rhetoric of the post is frankly disgusting. No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much. No, I don't think that might makes right and it's unsurprising that those who believe otherwise are so eager to transparently suck up to this administration.
Making public threats in this way is just vice signaling, nice bait.
But might does make rights.
Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.
If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
This is the Stephen Miller caveman view of the world, but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. It's a very straightforward consequence of refusing to ever admit you are wrong. "If I did it, then I must have had the right to do it."
It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights. The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader, it's just that the leader benevolently decided to let you vote against them. You don't have the right to life, it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now. Laws don't actually exist. Any right that appeared to be established against the wishes of the men with guns (i.e. all of them) was actually fake or an inexplicable accident. You can imagine a world that works like this, but it certainly isn't our world. No historical period or even any fictional story I can think of operates like this.
> but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds.
Maduro would disagree.
Refusing to accept the philosophical concept of rights is just correct. You are born with fuck all unless people have decided you are entitled to something by existing. Plenty of people were born without anything remotely resembling rights. If rights were inherent and not simple enforced by people, that wouldn't be the case, would it? Life isn't a fairy tail.
Civilization is literally built on what you're saying being wrong.
It's not wrong because of physics or biology, but because civilization made it so.
Like so many cultural achievements, it's true when you can count on the person next to you expecting it to be true. (1)
Which in turn means you can make that culture collapse if you impress enough people with your edgelord attitude.
Cooperative culture is fragile and must be preserved by preserving shared values such as these. On the other hand, in the long run, the cultures that do this successfully prevail because cooperation is stronger than the law of the jungle.
Unfortunately that 'long run' may take a while.
(1) That's basically the definition of a cultural value. They're emergent phenomena based on Keynesian beauty contests.
> The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader,
I would say you're wrong. The right to vote does exist because men rose up together and fought leaders that wouldn't let them vote. And, when leaders rise up that take our right to vote and we don't stop them they will prevail.
> it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now.
Correct. Start up a big disaster where food goes away for some reason and it comes back.
We have a stable world where we don't kill each other at the moment because in general we all have food, water, shelter, and I would say enough entertainment that fighting each other isn't worth the risk. There is no rule that says this will last forever. Quite often in history there have been stable times, that then fell apart because of greed and malice of leaders.
I am not saying it's impossible for rights to be taken away, I am arguing against this statement:
> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
I do not own a gun and I have no fighting skills, so I cannot defend myself against men with guns. Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?
I think that you and the original poster are seeing the situation "you are vulnerable to potentially losing rights in the future", which is true, but conflating that with "you have no rights". It's like telling a rich person "you actually don't have any money" because it's possible they might be robbed someday.
>Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?
You have the right to vote, if you lose that right, and you don't have a gun after that you have whatever 'rights' that are provided to you by a dictator.
One of the things you're missing here is the idea of herd immunity. While you won't fight for your rights, theoretically someone else will making taking your rights dangerous. Once enough people won't fight for their rights, or enough of the population gathers together to take your rights, you lose your rights.
I believe that in this conversation one party is saying that people have intrinsic rights (see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and the other party might agree on that but they say that those rights can be enforced only if they can be defended. Example: both parties probably agree that people have a right to free speech but nevertheless people end up in jail if they attempt free speech on the wrong subject in the wrong country.
> it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. [...] It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights.
Or it's an attempt to reconcile the philosophical concept of rights with global politics and observed reality.
Does an Afghan girl have a right to education? A Uyghur Muslim a right to freedom of religion? A Palestinian a right to food? A Hong Kong resident a right to freedom of expression?
It would appear that in these cases, the politicians commanding the loyalty of the men with guns do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
Of course, that's not the only reasonable line of thinking. Just because people in distant lands don't have certain rights in practice, I have those rights because I live in a great country with strong institutions and the rule of law.
> Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.
Plenty folks of didn't / don't change their minds about what rights they thought they had/have, even in the face of guns. Just look at what's currently going in Iran.
If you're in the US, and believe in your own Constitution, then people have "unalienable Rights" that are "endowed by their Creator", regardless of whether they are recognized by the government or not:
* https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...
You can go back to the ancient Greeks to explain what is wrong about that.
Literally two thousand years of civilization were spent on combating the pockets in which people live by that principle.
You're conflating rights with freedoms, which is the same category error as confusing legality with morality.
Your rights are, by their nature inalienable. They are recognized (or not) by individual power structures, granting you freedoms.
Under an authoritarian regime, your freedoms maybe be limited, for example, your right to free speech may be curtailed by men with guns. Killing those men is illegal, but not unethical, exactly because they are infringing your rights.
This all may seem academic to the person with a boot on their throat, but it dictates how outsiders view one's actions.
Ok. So a man with a gun has the right to shoot you and kill you. Then a policeman comes with a bigger gun and he has the right to kidnap the murderer. Then comes a judge with an even bigger gun (the law) and has the right to lock him up in a prison. But then the murderer gets hold of a weapon and he has the right to escape from prison. Etc.
You see that this view doesn't go very far.
> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.
My sister is wheelchair bound with MS. Half the time she can barely see. You can give her all the guns you want and she isn't going be to able to defend herself. I reject your nonsense assertion that because of this she has no rights.
race to the bottom logic
this kind of logic will always lead to everyone losing in the long run. always. there will always be a more powerful bully that steps up to take over. history is very clear on this one.
You might be conflating description with prescription.
Descriptively, powerful people have all the rights and weak people have none. This is what we observe in the world. No amount of philosophical thought outweighs actual observations. For example, Donald Trump has (retroactively!) the right to r**e ch*ldren. We know this because he is not suffering consequences for doing that. But Renee Good did not have a right to free speech. We know this because she was executed because of her speech.
You can prescribe whatever fancy academia language you want, but the facts in the real world don't seem to currently support any of it beyond "might makes rights".
Might can defend, or violate, rights, but it does not make them.
What does make them? Children apparently don't have them, and many races in many countries didn't have them for a long time either. How do you account for that? Are we now distinguishing between "having" rights and uh... being allow to use them?
> No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much
You are falling into a trap where you can not recognize a true point because it is made by someone you disagree with. I don't condone Vance or the Trump admin. He is right about European governemnt's attacks on free speech.
And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.
We're not discussing Pol Pot's views on cooking either, even though he might have had some valuable insight. Bringing up Vance and Musk in polite conversation to bolster your argument is - especially in the context of Europe, which both men seem to have declared to be enemy #1 before Russia and China - a little tone deaf.
To be fair, he's not bringing them up as intellectual support for his argumentative base – he's bringing them up as support for acts of retaliation. This is mostly about power and we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.
Maybe 'the economy' is not the only valid yardstick to compare countries by?
I absolutely and 100% agree! But it's the stick that others will use to force their world view down your throat. So if you want to be not only righteous, but also hold others accountable according to your standards, you need the economic power to do so.
Most of our power loss is from electing a belligerent dumb fuck twice and allowing him to sabotage our international relationships and destroying our remaining credibility.
> And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.
No. I'm identifying this one statement as factual, regardless of the person saying it. Surely then, you would not deny the color of the sun to be yellow just because Pot might have observed it to be that way?
That's besides the point: JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.
> JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.
People focus on Vance in this issue because they hate him and hate is easy to come by. They ignore that popular Democrats and progressives said the same thing. Hell, even the Atlantic posted a piece about the issue.
People focus on Vance because he's the one referenced in the tweet.
It has been very clear that the Trump adminstrations definition of freedom of speech, including JD Vance's, is that you should be free to say whatever the Trump administration wants and nothing else.
They have consistently prosecuted, threatened, deported, withheld money from, and so on people who say things they do not like.
And the answer to that is to point out the hypocrisy (what you're doing), not to take the opposite view, that censorship is important (what so many others are doing when Trump takes a position on anything).
you are falling into the trap of ignoring the pandering. cloudflare bro is clearly pandering here and showing that, in the moment, he will say/do whatever to whomever to get what he wants. cloudflare kind of has a history of doing this.
there was zero reason to name drop vance and elon besides appealing to their rabid fans to bolster support.
it's just more hypocrisy.
What other option do they have? It’s either comply with unjust rulings that undermine the free internet (and their business) or make a deal with the devil. Either one is bad but only complying has an immediate negative impact.
If there was any sense that this ruling was just a temporary mistake that will be corrected by pending regulation/legislation, then a third option would be on the table: temporarily comply and wait it out. But all indications are that the EU is hell-bent on making things worse, not better, for the open internet.
Cloudflare, the company that regularly blocks me from legitimately visiting websites because their bot detection software absolutely sucks probably is the biggest effective censor on the planet.
The AI generated art is also disgusting. Makes the CEO look like an angry kid because his multi-billion dolar industry got a 1% income fine, which is nothing for them, for a service they provide that keeps having outages because they have bad coders who thought moving their shit code to Rust was a good idea.
I would like to see a similar rant about the DMCA from US CEOs, which amounts to similar global effect. Not a great law but all this censorship stuff is bullshit.
To replicate the rant: Cloudflare on the otherhand blocks me regularly from using the Internet using a privacy aware browser because I fail to pass their bot checks so that I can enter their CDN based replica of a real internet.
To be fair big tech did do a full court press to stop site blocking when such a law (SOPA/PIPA) was proposed in the US, and they continue to oppose the MPA's attempts to get site blocking via the courts. DMCA on the other hand seems very broken, don't give the MPA the "3 strikes" regime they want and you get sued into the ground like Cox. I suspect tech CEOs don't complain about this because they don't want the same treatment.
AFAIK, the DMCA doesn't require infrastructure providers (ISPs, DNS resolvers, "relay" services like Cloudflare) to block entire websites. It's just for surgical removals of content (and blocking of ISP / hosting provider customers who are notorious infringers).
The US doesn't have the kind of website blocking laws that many European countries have.
>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.
This is everywhere.
The reason is you DONT want a law to be too detailed with tech mumbo jombo. If too detailed, it will get outdated. See that USA crypto wars ban in the 90s.
I recently learned that Poland literally has a law on the books[1] (from the executive, not the legislative), mandating our use of SOAP and WSDL. You're definitely right on that score. As far as I know, it's supported by some EU directive or other, no less.
[1] (Polish) https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20240...
se non del tutto giusto, quasi niente sbagliato :)
I also wonder why he felt emboldened to escalate like this. Maybe he thinks Italy is so small it can be slapped around by a rage post on Twitter?
There's a DNS blocklist from media industry applied by German ISPs and I assume Cloudflare was also asked to block these websites, so why didn't I read a story about Cloudflare making a big stir about the German DNS blocking?
> There's a DNS blocklist from media industry applied by German ISPs
By the CUII with no judicial oversight. German organizations like the CCC and free speech activists very much hate that this is a thing.
Posting it a hundred times doesn't make your claim more correct. If your rights are infringed, you can always go to court. If you think you being blocked from accessing certain information is an infringement of Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG ("Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality [...]"), you can drag this to The Federal Constitutional Court.
No I can't, since I lack the monetary funds. My claim stands correct, going to the federal constitutional court is expensive enough that many people are barred from that option. My claim stands correct - no judicial verdict is needed for the CUII to censor websites. Don't believe me. Believe the activists [1].
[1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-cuii-wie-konzerne-heimlich-webse...
new comment: you're so wrong that not even the opposite of your statement would be true. CUII is a private body, but it forces its members to go to court before they ask CUII to initiate a block:
Jede DNS-Sperre einer strukturell urheberrechtsverletzenden Webseite (SUW) wird im Rahmen der CUII gerichtlich überprüft.
Das ist freiwillige Selbstverpflichtung der CUII-Mitglieder. Denn eigentlich besteht kein Richtervorbehalt für die Sperransprüche nach § 8 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG). Aus diesem Grund sind auch die DNS-Sperren nach dem alten Verhaltenskodex mit behördlicher Beteiligung zulässig gewesen (Siehe Fragen: “Was verändert sich durch den neuen Verhaltenskodex der CUII?” und “Warum gab es zum Juli 2025 - nach jahrelanger Arbeit - einen Systemwechsel in der CUII?”).
old comment: CUII is not a governmental body so what the hell should they need a court order for when doing the thing that their members pay them to do? If your not happy with your internet access provider being a member of CUII, switch your internet access provider. I agree that CUII should publish a list of blocked domains as part of transparent communication and proving that they are doing a good job.
Why should a private entity control what people see online?
Why should you - a private entity - control what content other people have to serve you?
ISPs act as gatekeepers for essential information. When they control what flows, they’re effectively regulating speech.
Yes, I didn't want to say it is a good thing.
If the German filters only apply to ISPs in Germany, they have no effect on users in foreign countries. Moreover, Cloudflare is obviously not an ISP.
the filters the Italian authorities complain about also only apply in italy.
It's likely a process thing, Italy has had website bans since forever, but the new regulation applies _without going through a judge_. Some copyright holders can say "this website is infringing" and ISPs, CDNs etc.. are required to shut them down immediately.
A similar system was introduced in Spain, with the same problems, for the same reason (football $$$).
EDIT: to be clear, CF argues that they need to block the DNS globally, and that's unreasonable. The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block and are just being uncooperative.
> EDIT: to be clear, CF argues that they need to block the DNS globally, and that's unreasonable. The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block and are just being uncooperative.
Similar to the UK's attempt to try and get noncompliant sites like Imgur and 4chan to block themselves from serving content to UK locations, I think the responsibility for country-wide blocks lies with the country attempting to regulate the space, not CDNs or websites.
I don't doubt that Italy is correct that CF has the technical ability do a local block like they're asking for, but I also don't see how CF is in any way (legally) compelled to do so. Whether or not Italy (or any country) is capable of doing so, or paying contractors for an appropriate solution, isn't CF's problem either.
The difference is that Imgur/4chan have no presence in the UK but Cloudflare has servers and probably a sales office in Italy. Cloudflare does have to follow Italian law within Italy.
Either Cloudflare can block pirate sites or ISPs will completely block Cloudflare (as seen in Spain). Which way do you prefer?
> The Italian authority argues that they have the skills to do a local block
they certainly do, they have the source IP and their platform lets them geolocate an ip
Do you think the Italian bureaucrats really want to ban something in France or Germany?
The Cloudflare CEO is clearly misinterpreting something that was lost in translation, which is the bureaucrats stating "Cloudflare must prevent access to XY from everywhere". For bureaucrats "everywhere" means "in my jurisdiction". I cannot believe that the Cloudflare CEO is trying to nitpick around a single word that he so clearly misinterprets.
> Do you think the Italian bureaucrats really want to ban something in France or Germany?
Yes 100% they absolutely do.
I'm pretty sure Cloudflare is an ISP according to German law ("Diensteanbieter" according to DDG). You might confuse "ISP" with the terminology of "Access Provider" according to the (now defunct) §8 TMG.
What is the escalation? Cloudflare or any company is free to stop doing business in any country which mistreats them or doesn't align with their interest. How can you interpret this in some way as Cloudflare being the aggressor? They don't owe the nation of Italy anything.
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".
He did mention that they were fighting the law before they were fined and they plan to challenge the fine in court. He has also been vocal about other similar legislation before they were enacted or the company got fined (not sure about this specific one though).
So I don't think it's fair to characterize it as he "only complains about it when his company is fined".
He also said this:
> In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines.
which, although his rant really pisses me off, further proves your point.
He's giving Italy and Italians fair warning that he will abandon the Italian market to avoid being subject to their laws, and I think it will go that way. I guess it's up to the Italians to find a replacement.
Find a replacement global edge network and get the rest of the world to use it?
Why does his rant piss you off?
> financing a company that thinks it is above the law
I've never liked arguments like this, because laws are often complex, unreasonable, and unjust, and all of us (both individuals and companies) routinely use our best judgment to decide which laws to flout and which to follow, and when, where, and why to do so.
I share that perspective. Being an international company is a challenging thing regards law. You have to operate in best intent, and judges respect that.
And sure, some laws and most likely this one, are stupid. I always take GDPR as an example. Annoying as fuck, but a good regulation. Well written, well executed and hits its goal.
However, disrespecting and being tone deaf in communication is wrong, ignoring the intent (Italian based legal control of IP violations) is wrong and treating the Internet as a legal free space (or only accept US perspective) is wrong. Italy is a sovereign state and the Internet is operating there and on its citizens. It has all right and duty to do so. We have to respect that.
It feels good to see someone give a giant middle finger to corruption.
A giant middle finger to corruption by sucking up the most corrupt government the US has ever seen?
I don't know if you read the tweet? Maybe give it another go.
Did Matthew donate to the Trump ballroom yet?
For real. Laws likee anti-circumvention laws are a horrible plague on humanity. There's all kinds of nonsense & so often businesses have far too much sway or outright grasp over the legal system.
You can't be a hacker without having any Question Authority backbone or will. You don't have to be full onboard but very few nations seem capable of behaving at all reasonably when it comes to technology. And few even have the chance to do right: American corporate empire has insisted countries adopt particularly brutal ip laws for decades, and made trade contingent upon it.
The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace & Doctorow's recent talk on the EU needing their own break for Cyberspace & IP Independence are both important revealing materials here. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420951 https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
Style aside, what do you think he should do? Faced with a law that not only imposes disproportionate fines (more than revenue from the country), but on the surface also requires blocking globally, there are really only a few things to do:
1. Challenge the law in court
3. Influence the law via political means
3. Try to sway public opinion so 2. may be easier
4. Give in and play ball
5. Exit the country entirely
> Challenge the law in court
Do the courts in Italy work or do they do what the govt wants them to do.
The government complains everyday about the judges and it's trying to make a referendum to make judges angry, so I wouldn't say courts do what govt says
It looks like he skipped 1 and 2 and went straight for option 3. I wonder why that is.
how ever did you reach that conclusion? For 1, his tweet literally says "That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme." 2 is something that happens behind the doors, and it's rather uncharitable to just assume he skipped it.
That's fair, but he also didn't give any specifics. If Cloudflare is suing Italy there should be some documents we can read.
Crying free speech and attempting to rile up the tech bros is just what companies do these days.
It doesn't matter if, like this issue, it has absolutely nothing to do with free speech; if you position yourself as a defender of the "open internet", "open source", "free thinking" or "innovation" you get every dingleberry that hangs off Musk to come and defend you.
What is an example of a crazy law from EU?
https://fightchatcontrol.eu
Agreed. But to be fair, the proposal was rejected.
The fact that it was even proposed in the first place is still concerning.
It wasn't, it passed on the Council of EU.
Not for long, seemingly.
Effective ban of GMOs across EU, ban on paternity tests in France without a court order are the two that come to mind for me.
> I don't feel comfortable financing a company that thinks it is above the law
Of all the companies to make that claim about in 2026, Cloudflare would not be very high on the list I would think... Also, hopefully you're not paying for any genAI services and making that statement?
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.
> when they lobbied the FTC to investigate him
FYI Cloudflare didn't actually do that: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1566160152684011520
(Disclosure: I work at Cloudflare but have no personal involvement with this.)
Right. I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.
Not sure if my word is any better but I wouldn't be working for him if I thought he was the kind of person who harasses security researchers.
How is CFs business model a protection racket?
JD Vance business is a protection racket. That is how I read it
I mean I dislike JD Vance as much as the next guy, but I don't see how it's unreasonable to appeal to the federal government for assistance in dealing with international legal issues. That's very much in the government's remit.
Lawyers are for legal issues.
Do you call your government if you get a fine in a foreign country?
Unless it’s life threatening I doubt that.
You do when the fine is more than double your annual revenue in the foreign nation, has international and geopolitical implications, impacts many other US businesses, could harm foreign relations, and will harm regular US citizens.
That's exactly the type of thing the Executive Branch is supposed to deal with.
Executive branch is supposed to deal with other countries' laws and courts? Does it also hold for European executive branches and American laws? I don't want to even imagine a world that works like this.
It’s called diplomacy.
Do people not understand that companies on this scale are geopolitically important?
Thank they should act like it and respect the laws of the countries.
If you run to the US executive to assert US understanding of law onto other countries you are geopolitical important, however, as a tool for the US national interest not as a true international company. A true international company would serve their customers in their legal systems. Fight the laws there, try to make them better, but don't strongarm them with other country forces. They are a sovereign country.
When a country is trying to impose extra-territorial laws, then it goes beyond enforcing their sovereignty, and it is completely reasonable for the affected to request diplomatic intervention.
Surely I don't need to point out the irony of complaining to the US government about another country wanting to impose extraterritorial laws?
Has Trump considered bombing Italy and kidnapping Meloni yet?
Italy should have no right to take a website off the internet globally, which from what I’ve read this allows them to do. That’s insane.
Why would Italy pick Cloudflare over Bunny.net or even CDNetworks if Cloudflare can't follow their laws? Today US tech products sell well in Europe because of the past 80 years of positive relationships. So Cloudflare is the obvious choice over CDNetworks, but for how long will it be like that?
Maybe that's the way it is in the US, because the country is run by corporations. But in the rest of the world we don't operate like that.
The Italians obviously don't
I mean, that's an argument for making them respect your country's laws or banning them from your country if they don't want to.
They're not.
When the risks are too high, then exit the market. When you do business in a market, adhere to the laws there.
It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets. But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon. They do not want globalization anymore but American first. Reactions of other countries will be higher fines, more regulation and higher entry barriers.
> When the risks are too high, then exit the market. When you do business in a market, adhere to the laws there.
And when you want help to improve your terms of trade, you can petition your government to assist.
> It is however the business of governments to foster harmonized (globalized) markets.
It is the business of governments to further the interests and wishes of their people.
> But the US has killed so many regulations and collaborations in the last year, that there is little hope that this will improve any time soon.
Is Italy's actions here fostering "harmonized (globalized) markets", I wonder?
> They do not want globalization anymore but American first.
If globalization is what Americans want, then that is what their government should be accommodating. If it's not, then the government should not.
Even if "the experts" think something is right or wrong, even if some economic factor or other might objectively improve with a particular policy, it should be up to the people to decide. Self-determination is one of the most fundamental human rights there is, too often ignored by the ruling class.
I’m not sure whose business model you’re referring to, Cloudflare or Trump/Vance? Or sounds like the former, but I’m not sure how that appeal “validates the view…”.
He's very likely being defensive.
while the spirit of your statement is clear , i dont think its 'properly craven' to recognise both an individual's faults and their strengths - in this case the author goes to lengths to state he does not necessarily agree with either musk or vance. has anybody successfully recieved protection from this US administration while acknowledging fault of said administration ? from outside this doesnt seem likely as US politics is currently operating like team sports (ie. no tolerance of toeing party lines, 'youre either with us or against us')
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?
This is taking place in a larger geopolitical context. He is applying whatever pressure that Cloudflare can apply on its own (not much), and he mentions Vance as a way to call for US administration help at a time when the US is entering an open economic conflict with Europe. Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict.
IMHO this is a time when there are no good players. I support CF’s fight to keep the internet open against encroaching EU regulation while also acknowledging that the US has been a recurring bad actor here. I am not as anti-Cloudflare as some (I have no problem with their pro free speech policies) but I do think centralization of infrastructure is a bad thing, and CF encourages that.
Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
100% support whatever Cloudflare has to do to win this fight. IMO the timing of something like this in the middle of the Elon + X vs UK censorship fight with the current administration providing support is probably the best case scenario.
People aren't going to want to hear that, but in this case it's probably true.
> Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them?
No, it was explicitly created to receive and study the stream of "garbage traffic" being sent to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, which were previously held by APNIC and donated to Cloudflare on this basis. https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/
> APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. While the addresses were valid, so many people had entered them into various random systems that they were continuously overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic. APNIC wanted to study this garbage traffic but any time they'd tried to announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any conventional network.
> We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system. They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered Cloudflare's network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that, 1.1.1.1 was born.
By these quotes, it was created to serve "a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system", and the service of help in studying the garbage traffic was offered in exchange for gaining controll of the address(es).
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I think this clearly shows the hubris of Cloudflare CEO. Cloudflare is simply not important enough in Europe, and he unnecessarily provided a scapegoat "evil US tech company" for European media and politicians to slaughter. In terms of corporate politics it's not clever for him to attach his name to this issue, why not let legal handle this through EU lobby channels the same way other US tech companies do it in Europe.
Cloudflare should just block Italy altogether.
Add Spain with LaLiga on top too. Inb4 "the CF CEO it's a right winger", so it's the Soccer -LaLiga- CEO.
His hubris isn't news. Remember when he woke up in the middle of the night and blocked some website because he personally didn't like it?
No, haven't heard that story. Can you share a source?
I suspect this is referring to the removal (not block) of The Daily Stormer in 2017[0].
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
Oh, there's also Kiwifarms in 2022: https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/
"Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict"
The only conflict is that Europeans don't want Russian Misinformation and Manipulation from foreign powers onto them. It's no accident that Musks X serves preferentially content from European Far-Right Parties.
The US used the same argument for their TikTok-Ban/Forced Takeover. They also don't make a secret out of their plan to push the far-right to end the EU. They even wrote about this in their new National Security Strategy
Pure Hypocrisy
> The only conflict is that Europeans don't want Russian Misinformation and Manipulation from foreign powers onto them
People always have reasons for wanting to censor speech.
> Pure Hypocrisy
Ironic.
There is a big difference between right to free speech by citizens of a certain country vs. someone working in the military propaganda unit of a foreign country who artificially amplifies their opinion thousandfold while masquerading as a citizen of the victim country with ultimate goal to harm the victim country.
You are focusing on identity and intent, e.g you are defending the restriction of speech based on who is speaking and why. Knowing the difference between an opinion of an origin you consider valid and one you consider invalid is difficult enough that one can abuse that justification to censor "real" speech by citizens.
Ivan from St. Petersburg calls himself "Heinz Müller" and creates a Telegram group that reports about immigrant crime in my neighborhood, trying to fool elderly citizens with lack of social media experience into believing his fake news stories. It's a proven approach and Ivan's main job. If Ivan would've been born in another country, he simply would've tried to scam elderly citizens, but because he was born in russia he works for the propaganda unit so he doesn't get sent to a meat assault on the frontlines.
In his free time Ivan comes to HN and poses as a free speech absolutist.
> In his free time Ivan comes to HN and poses as a free speech absolutist.
I am not an absolutist, far from it, and I'm pretty sad that you feel the need to resort to personal attacks, even if indirect.
Is there also a progressive woke version of Ivan or is there always only a far right version of him?
Well you see, <my side>'s swarm intelligence is organic and honest and people from <other side> are bots.
Jokes aside, the Harris campaign openly manipulated Reddit to get their opinions on the top [1]. I was there on election night. The entire site slowed to a crawl. Opinions of people you normally never read gained hundreds to thousands of upvotes. It felt organic for exactly one day.
[1]: https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/29/busted-the-inside-story...
If the plan is to sow division, it would be really weird to always only try to play one side. If I was trying to stir division, I would make sure to play all sides for maximum effect. But apparently other commentators here think only one side is being played and its always the same one.
So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try. By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud because it's sometimes hard to distinguish from aggressive marketing, or couldn't have espionage laws because it's hard to distinguish from journalism.
The distinction isn't about "valid" vs "invalid" opinions, as you framed it, it's just about authenticity and coordination. A Russian citizen genuinely expressing pro Kremlin views on their personal account is exercising speech. A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare.
And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage.
Every democracy already makes this distinction in other domains. Foreign governments can't donate to political campaigns. Foreign agents must register when lobbying. Do you call them violations of free speech? They're just acknowledgments that coordinated foreign influence is fundamentally different from citizen discourse.
The difficulty of drawing lines doesn't mean no lines exist.
> So you are basically arguing that it's hard to distinguish, therefore we shouldn't try
No, I said because it's hard to distinguish, therefore we can not use it as an excuse to enact censorship.
> By that logic, we couldn't prosecute fraud
Fraud is illegal.
> couldn't have espionage laws
Espionage is illegal.
No matter what you do or what you write, enacting "desinformation laws" would require a ministry of truth to decide what is fact and what isn't, a task governments are famously incredibly bad at because they always have vested interests in not telling the truth.
> A state funded operation running hundreds of fake accounts pretending to be American citizens, artificially amplifying divisive content, is something different, it's basically a form of information warfare
And yet it is still speech and not distinguishable from genuine Russians sharing their opinions. It is easy to refute the opinions of many a people by discrediting them to be of the origin of a manufactured propaganda machine. Once you start doing this for foreign people, the next logical step is to continue this strategy for local activists or political opponents.
> And what I write here isn't theoretical, coordinated influence operations have inflamed ethnic tensions from the Balkans to Myanmar, not to mention Russian-Ukraininan conflict propaganda. These aren't just "opinions we disagree with", they're documented operations with measurable effects on real world violence. I mean this is a form of war, in which some countries want to destroy your society fabric for their advantage
I know this to be factual. I'm not denying it's existence at all. I'm making a point here. I don't want the government to hold these tools you propose. Any law enacted and every power given will not only be wielded by a government of parties you support, but also at one point by factions you disagree with entirely.
Guess what? Copyright violation is also illegal.
You are all over this thread in god knows how many comments arguing about Germany and world wide censorship whereas this thread - and the fine - is about copyright and Italy. The second they use it for anything else I'll be happy to jump the line but until then they are - for once - using this law as it is intended and it doesn't really matter that there are other unrelated wrongs that you could commit using the same mechanism.
You are jumping back and forth between moral arguments and legalistic arguments.
If your defense for going after fraud and espionage is its illegal, are you fine if a country makes censorship legal?
No. My point is that real people are hurt by fraud and espionage and comparing outlawing those to outlawing speech is inane
I am hurt when I think I am hearing words from a fellow citizen that are their own opinion, when instead it is a foreign actor pushing a narrative for their state.
I am all for free speech, but I am not for anonymous speech which is choking the internet. If I am in person speaking with you, I can be fairly certain that you aren't actually a completely different person underneath a rubber mask. I want to at least know that an account I am speaking to is a _person_ and not a robot, although Id probably want country of origin too.
I do not have a good answer for how to achieve that without having a chilling effect on speech, but maybe that's a good thing? I go back and forth on if its better or not to require you to say who you are if you want to say something in public.
In private, go hog wild.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating inaction as neutral. It isn't. Choosing not to act against coordinated foreign influence operations is itself a choice with consequences. If a hostile state can freely run thousands of fake accounts to inflame divisions, amplify extremism, and erode trust in institutions (and we deliberately tie our hands) then we're not preserving some pristine free speech environment. I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
The "marketplace of ideas" doesn't function when one participant is a state apparatus with unlimited resources pretending to be thousands of organic voices. Your slippery slope argument applies to laws we already have and accept. Lets take US as an example, the Foreign Agents Registration Act has existed since 1938. Foreign campaign contributions are illegal. These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they? Imperfect enforcement, sure. But "the government of a faction I disagree with might someday abuse this" hasn't been a reason to repeal FARA.
Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do? I mean if your answer is "nothing, because any tool could theoretically be abused" then you are not offering any policy, right? but basically you are arguing for resignation.
> The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating inaction as neutral.
The issue I have with your argument is that you're treating action as a necessary evil enacted by a well meaning government. It isn't.
> I mean we're ceding the information space to whoever is willing to manipulate it most aggressively.
I am well aware that this is a difficult thing to solve. What is it then, that you propose we do?
> These laws require distinguishing foreign influence from domestic speech. By your logic, these should have already devolved into tools of domestic political persecution. Have they?
Yes. YES. The FARA has sometimes been applied asymmetrically, especially against individuals or organizations connected to political opponents, lobbyists and think tanks. It is the perfect example for what I mean. The FARA is broadly defined and with a DOJ under an administration, it is prone to misuse. The DOJ under Trump considered to use it to charge Hunter Biden. The identification of "hostile agents" that you argue is necessary is exactly what I mean when I point to government misuse, as the Trump admin is currently using these exact laws to identify activists and nonprofits as domestic terrorists [1]. We have people in this thread decry the Trump administration for their actions and stances on selectively applying free speech while they at the same time argue for more government power even while it is being abused in this very moment. I am aghast at how this is happening.
> Another issue that I have with your argument is that you've identified risks of action but proposed nothing. What's your actual framework here? If coordinated foreign information warfare is real and harmful, and ongoing (which you acknowledge) what should democracies do?
Do what democracy's are already doing. Issue sanctions that hurt. A large amount of LNG and gas imports in Europe are still traceable to Russia. Invest into digital thinking and digital literacy. But that would require putting your money where your mouth is, instead of arguing for those sweet tools of citizen control. Germany spends below average on education and our pupils suffer. The same is true for US education.
Sorry, but I won't argue for controlling a stupid populace when we fail at teaching at the same time. I will give you an example. The censorship tools already exist, at least in Germany, and they are justified and enacted by politicians that cite "studies" from NGOs like Amadeu Antonio, HateAid, Demokratie leben! or NETTZ. All organizations that receive massive funds from the govt that exist only to deliver "proof" and "reasons" for censorship because of "hate" and "misinformation". Of course, these studies [2] are then cited massively [3] by the media aparatus and ultimately the same politicians that paid to have this information produced [4]. Sometime after, the truth may be reveiled [5], the falsified data exposed, but the damage is done and laws are proposed [6] that enable the government to break and enter into journalist offices and media companies and shutting them down without a court order. All in the name of fighting misinformation and saving democracy.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-nspm-7-seeks...
[2]: https://hateaid.org/neue-studie-politisch-engagierte-und-dig...
[3]: https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2025/01/15/neue-studie-dig...
[4]: https://taz.de/Justizministerin-Lambrecht-ueber-NetzDG/!5689...
[5]: https://www.publicomag.com/2020/07/publico-dossierverfolgter...
[6]: https://dserver.bundestag.de/brd/2025/0766-25.pdf
Sanctions haven't stopped Russian influence operations, they've continued under the heaviest sanctions regime in history. I agree that digital literacy is genuinely important, but lets not kid ourselves that we can suddenly make it work tomorrow, it's basically a generational project. Meanwhile, influence operations are happening now, at scale, with measurable effects. So what I mean is that "invest in education" approach is correct but insufficient as a response to an active, ongoing campaign. It's like responding to a house fire by saying we should invest in fire safety education. Your home will burn down while you do this.
So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power, they should unilaterally disarm against adversaries who face no such constraints. Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within.That is an endgame of your approach, and I just can't agree with this. So doing nothing because our tools might be misused feels like it guarantees we lose.
I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution. Transparency requirements (forcing platforms to label state affiliated accounts), requiring disclosure of foreign funding for political ads and influencers, holding platforms accountable for coordinated inauthentic behavior etc etc, these don't require the government to decide what's true. They require disclosure of who is speaking and who is paying. Think of the US influencers paid unknowingly by Russia, or the "patriotic" X accounts that turned out to be foreign run. Those are just the obvious cases already happening. This needs to stop or at least the public needs clear disclosure of funding and origin.
We have homomorphic encryption now. Let's use it in a way that protects privacy but still helps flag foreign influence and helps distinguish between foreign speech and protected domestic speech.
Ha! What sanctions? We are not sanctioning like we truly mean it.
> So I understand your point but you're essentially arguing that because democracies can abuse power,
No, my point is that because democracies are abusing power, right now, we should be against giving them more tools. The US democracy is in an active state of being dismantled because they have lots of shiny legal tools to do it. These very same beginnings can be seen in Europe too, when the EU tries again and again to pass privacy invading internet tracking laws. We are not in favour of Iran building nukes for "defense", and I would wager you won't defend their efforts in the face of critics when they say "hey, we're pretty sure they will abuse it" because it might not happen, even though abuse is clearly already happening.
> Russia etc have no free speech concerns limiting their operations against us. Doing nothing will allow these adveraries to destroy our democracies from within
If democracy is so weak that it needs to be protected from uncomfortable truths and the opinions of its people (read: opinions you or I may not share), then maybe it's not saveable.
> I think we can at least agree that the choice isn't only between "government ministry of truth" and "do nothing" and we need a middle ground solution.
Dead on. The only true weapon to combat misinformation is transparency. But transparency efforts are not what I'm seeing, and they are certainly not what Ursula von der Leyen means when she talks about the Digital Services Act.
I don't think transparency alone will be enough. We may need to treat foreign speech differently from domestic speech (my last sentence from previous comment), with different protections (prioritizing domestic speech) because you simply cannot control the firehose of propaganda coming from the rest of the world. And don't get me wrong, this isn't about silencing foreign opinions. What I mean is we need to recognize that a citizen expressing a view and a state apparatus manufacturing thousands of fake citizens expressing that view are fundamentally different things, deserving different treatment. We already make this distinction in campaign finance, lobbying, broadcasting etc. So I think extending it to the information space isn't a radical departure, it's basically catching up to the modern world.
I want to circle back to something, because I think there's an irony in your argument that's worth examining. The administration you're worried about abusing power is itself a product of the influence operations. We have documented evidence (not speculation) of Russian operations boosting Trump's candidacy in 2016 and 2024. We have confirmed payments to influencers like Tim Pool and others through Tenet Media, amplification networks on social platforms, coordinated campaigns targeting swing state voters. The Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the recent DOJ indictments etc all showing the same thing.
So when you say "look at how Trump is abusing power, this is why we shouldn't give governments these tools", I'd ask: how do you think he got there? The foreign influence you're arguing we should mostly tolerate helped install the government you're now citing as proof we can't trust government.
You're using the consequences of the problem as an argument against addressing the problem.
On your "if democracy can't survive this, maybe it's not saveable" point, I find this fatalistic in a way that doesn't match how you argue about everything else. You clearly do think democracy is worth protecting (that's why you're worried about government overreach, civil liberties etc) So I think yu're not a nihilist. So why adopt an all or nothing frame specifically here? Democracies have always required defensive mechanisms. We have treason laws, foreign agent registration, campaign finance rules etc. So it wasn't about "pure openness vs. authoritarianism", but basically it always been about where to draw lines. Drawing them poorly is a risk. But as I said before refusing to draw them at all isn't principled neutrality, it's just losing by default.
I may have missed something but Akamai seem to be living proof that it's possible to operate that kind of business at scale from the US without vice signalling or publicly sucking up to fascist authoritarians.
Akamai doesn't have to, because they don't go attracting the kind of clientele who would host pirated soccer videos.
Good point.
> he mentions Vance as a way to call for US administration help at a time when the US is entering an open economic conflict with Europe
This is a great way of bombing its business in the EU. Just sayin' :)
This is not as much of a flex as you appear to think it is.
The good players are the US on this front. I say this as a European. Europe at large is in a dark place in terms of freedom of speech, the press, and other issues like immigration. And the US might eventually have to be the ones to apply force to hold our leaders accountable, ironic as that is given history.
> The good players are the US on this front.
Don't be fooled. People like Elon aren't pro-free speech. They only want their speech. For example on Elon's X you can call people all kinds of things but calling someone "CIS gendered" is a ban-able offense [1]. Linking to other platforms was also forbidden for a while and in the H1B discussion X shadow banned a bunch of people [2] and I could go on for a while.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2023/07/02/elon-mus... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/laura-loomer-elon-musk-x-twitter-h1...
Him being a hypocrite doesn't make him wrong
Do as I say, not as I do.
CF is a US company, the EU has the right to make their own - misguided - laws. And CF has the option to simply stop doing business with Italy, or comply with the law. This stupid grandstanding is just a thinly veiled attempt at blackmail which I'm sure will very much impress the legislators and the judges of the country to which it is addressed. /s
I'm a team lead in an American organization that relies heavily on Cloudflare's Project Galileo[1], and I read that post with growing dread. My first thought was that this guy doesn't sound very much like a CEO. Let me rephrase that: He sounds like the kind of unhinged CEO of orgs I try to stay away from (X, for instance).
Then I read what you're talking about:
> [...] we are considering the following actions: [...] 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; [...]
That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power (Project Galileo is free for journalists). If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
I was complacent and we need to re-think our relationship with them. It's true what they say: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo/
He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.
I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down.
But as a middle manager of a small nonprofit who makes decisions for my org's web infrastructure I have to make sure our organization's infra doesn't become part of a bargaining chip in a future conflict between a giant company and our government.
The act of threatening unrelated customers just because they are in the same country is extremely stupid.
Businesses might not care whether he tweets at JD Vance or Taylor Swift, but the risk of having your website shut down because the CEO of your firewall vendor has a psychological breakdown on Twitter is unacceptable.
It is Friday evening in Europe and the fact that Cloudflare leadership and Cloudflare legal team couldn't put out a statement to mitigate this situation within the last 5 hours shows that this guys could run the company into the ground within blink of an eye.
Remember, some weeks ago Cloudflare had an outage because of an extremely stupid engineering mishap, today it is an extremely stupid leadership mishap. How many more strikes should they be granted?
They are not threatening customers. They are minimizing liability.
If Italians have no influence over AGCOM, then who does?
Cloudflare has very limited leverage here. Punishing the entire country for the actions of their elected government in hope of protest is about as good as they can do other than hoping Trump does something crazy. Every italian citizen has some say over their governments actions, even if they dont support them.
When you fine a company more than the entire revenue they get from your nation, they will pull out. It is not retributive. What is hard to understand about that?
Folks tend to forget what private enterprise is and think these companies have to provide these services like their government's public service.
Voglio vederti ricevere una multa di 14 milioni di euro e rimanere diplomatico
Cloudflare's job is not to call truth to power. Cloudflare's job is to make money.
> If my state had a similar spat with Cloudflare would we be in danger of losing the infrastructure we've grown to depend on?
Absolutely. And if any of their competitors claims they can guarantee that they won't ever (have to) pull out somewhere for political reasons, they're lying or ignorant. You cannot escape politics. One election or new law can redraw the landscape overnight.
Also I doubt you "depend" on any single SaaS product where you're completely at the mercy of another company. There's probably nothing that you couldn't swap out in a pinch.
> That's punishing all of Italy's users including those whose job it is to call truth to power
Cloudflare is a business. If the fines for operating are several times the money it can get from Italian users, why should it stay in Italy at all?
It's like when Wikipedia went dark for a day. It punished all users, but the point is to show that politicians are forcing it to do so.
It is not unrealistic at all. The Olympics are run by politicians, essentially, since they appoint the committees, make the investments, build the infrastructure.
And the ones pushing for these bans are the sport media tycoons: this fight isn't about Anna's Archive, it is about people watching soccer illegally. Because that is where the real money is.
Yeah correct. I hate this so much in this topic. I hate the disrespect for the law in this topic here but he is right here. The Olympics, soccer and all the other sports (but also other billionaires businesses) have to be put back in their place. How is FIFA able to prevent me from drinking my favourite beer in the city center of my favourite town just because world cup is on town.
> 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.
I think it's worth noting the quotes around the pro-bono. As outlined by Matthew Prince (Co-founder & CEO, CloudFlare):
> Bandwidth Chicken & Egg: in order to get the unit economics around bandwidth to offer competitive pricing at acceptable margins you need to have scale, but in order to get scale from paying users you need competitive pricing. Free customers early on helped us solve this chicken & egg problem. Today we continue to see that benefit in regions where our diversity of customers helps convince regional telecoms to peer with us locally, continuing to drive down our unit costs of bandwidth.
* https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/88685
* Via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42712433#unv_42712845
It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them.
> It is not charity but a business decision that benefits them.
Of course it benefits them, it's a private enterprise, not a local government providing trash service.
No one also can force them to provide such a service, try to control their global operations which is outside of Italy's jurisdiction, and if they're not making any more they can pack their stuff and leave.
It seems the panel that fined him is politically appointed so seems reasonable to reach for politics to attempt to fight/resolve it.
The panel is backed by a law. Respect the law. Italy has a judicial system and in cases like this, probably some EU court could be also called. US politicians can reach out to EU/Italian politics to harmonize trade... But wait, do not we kill trade deals. They are so unfair (aka. compromises)
Politics tends to work that way.
He replies to an Italian user
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably. Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
On one hand, I agree with you, it's problematic to threaten collective punishment. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to "divest" from a country trying to fine you for behavior outside of said country. It's also important to communicate that clearly, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?
I think it is a big strategic mistake for him to personally take ownership of this topic and to elevate it on a political level. He openly aligned himself with two people who are extremely unpopular in Europe, while threatening an important EU member state.
I think his hubris makes him overestimate Cloudflare's importance for Europe. Cloudflare is simply not important enough. If it was Microsoft or Apple threatening, then maybe - but those companies are clever enough to leverage lobbying for this.
Now the Cloudflare CEO has set himself up to be at the whims of JD Vance/Trump, while providing a perfect "arrogant US tech company" scapegoat that can be slaugthered by European politics and the media conglomerate that he is threatening.
Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
Anyways, it is like Facebook CEO and Amazon CEO applauding the Trump inauguration; it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare. It takes people's illusion that Cloudflare is a neutral tech company and replaces it with this guy's twitter ramblings, who is obviously an Elon Musk and JD Vance fanboy.
> it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare.
My take was, If you need help from the current State Department, or the current administration, (and I assume they do) it absolutely is a necessary statement. And then, this is them trying very hard to suck up, as is required, without pissing off everyone.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and this is actually a form of honesty, instead of performative theater. In which case I would probably agree with you. It's unfortunate. But I default to the assumption that people aren't children by choice.
Then why bring up Musk, who is perhaps more reviled than even Vance?
I agree, he seems to be ranting and escalating unnecessarily.
The are fining his company 213% of yearly Italian revenue. He is not the one escalating.
He took a risk in ignoring a law instead of exiting the market. They did not escalate, they applied the law.
What we need is an international legal framework for the Internet. And that includes compromises on all sides. China, EU, Russia, US and others have very different understanding on what is right. But hey, I think US politics is America first and cancel all international treaties. Sounds like more problems like this are incoming.
> Europe is too important for USA. I don't think the US administration will like the relationship to go sour at this very point in time just because of this Cloudflare doofus barking around.
When you say "for USA", what do you mean by "USA"?
Are you talking about the general US population? US corporations? Or the person who decides foreign policy direction (i.e., Trump)?
Because Trump recently ordered the snatching of a foreign head of state because he didn't like how the guy danced and allegedly didn't take him seriously.
I was trying to say that even though the US administration is actively escalating with Europe, I don't think the point in time has been reached where they want to go full berserk and cut Europe off from services by US tech companies. Cloudflare CEO tries to trigger such an escalation right now, but I'm not sure the US administration wants this kind of escalation right now, because it would also accelerate migration away from Microsoft and other US tech companies, hurting their revenue. For FAANG $7M is peanuts, and they won't leave billions on the table just because Cloudflare CEO has a big ego.
Musk and JD Vance are not "extremely unpopular in the EU", they are primarily unpopular with progressives, regardless of the location.
It sounds like you're just upset the Cloudflare CEO sides with conservatives on this particular issue.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but they are, in fact, extremely unpopular in EU
You believe Musk is unpopular with conservatives in the EU?
Overall he is very unpopular. There are a few far right parties that love him but they are outnumbered.
Well, for example, from what you quoted:
> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably.
This is normal and reasonable.
> Fix your government or lose access to our charity.
This is petulant and smug.
My suggestion for what they could have done differently is have a PR team handle the public announcements.
TBF what they did here is probably more effective than my plan, but only because the world is a trash fire.
Is there some more context then the original post? All I see is CF CEO saying that Vance agrees with the idea that these laws are bad.
Was with him in the first part, then wtf. Vance and the others dont stand for free speech either, it's only their own speech that matters and they'll proudly ban anything else.
Cloudflare really is all in on "we happily host pirate sites and tada, they're not in your country so we'll do nothing about it at all."
1. Vance built a lot of support in Silicon Valley.
2. Tech donated to Vance (and Trump) under the understanding that they would be a protected class.
3. By tagging Vance publicly and directly, he’s calling a favor.
4. If Vance doesn’t take action, it’s a signal that he’s not worth investing in.
> Vance built a lot of support in Silicon Valley.
That's a polite way of saying Thiel successfully installed a puppet as the heir apparent to the most powerful position in the world.
Exactly, his whole tirade felt extraordinarily far fetched, sketchy if not outright racist.
No matter the merit of the claim, the appeal to the fascists in the US government invalidates any legitimacy.
And that is an achievement given how moronic the current Italian government is.
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.
Yes I thought the same. I thought the post was making a good point, but the image just undermined the seriousness of the post, as it characterized Italian politicians as zombies. It made me think less of the author.
It reminds me of any of elon musk’s crash outs.
Kinda a bad thing to be associated with
Attaching a little cartoon at the bottom makes it extremely childish, no "seem" about it.
A person praising Vance and Musk obviously doesn't value due process, judicial oversight and ultimately decency.
Please don't make everything into us versus them.
Also that paragraph is very critical as far as praise goes.
> don't make everything into us versus them
Why not? There are real people out there who wish us harm, are we supposed to just take it?
Rejecting the system, everyone in it, and everyone that's willing to interact with it, is not a way to get good outcomes. No don't "just take it" but encouraging one of the good opinions of the vice president is fine.
I disagree, some systems are so bad they need to be rejected outright. As a European, I find asking for the help of Vance and Musk as hostile, even if the person asking is in the right.
What would you have them do instead? Honest question.
If an actor asked Harvey Weinstein for help, I would think less of them. End of story.
Not ping them?
You are right. But there is a point here that international harmonization and compromise is a solution here. Which is not exactly a strength of an America First policy.
The "free speech" argument worked in his favor this time, so... Let's see if he still uses this card the next time something inconvenient comes up.
I agree. Musk calls for "free speech" while censoring his own AI and manipulating elections. There goes my respect for this CEO.
Maybe the free speech he was thinking of was Grok dressing people in microbikinis. I think that's Elon's favourite free speech too.
And yet this is the only thing people seem to focus on in a discussion about a government agency without any of those attributes.
His argument of “free speech” has zero meaning when “shouting out” JDV and Elon. What a joke of a CEO
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.
Agreed, he really should learn from how Pavel Durov responded to France after he was treated unfairly by French police.
Indeed. There was a much better way to make this point.
The post is unhinged. Basically a tantrum. It’s sad really. It reminds me of https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
tldr you don’t get angry discussing with institutions because it makes you look like an amateur.
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
HN does not use a "Just one moment..." Cloudlfare interstitial
It seems to do just fine without it
HN does not require Javascript or use of a particular client to request and read its HTML. I use an HTML reader (offline) with no suupport for auto-loading resources, images, JS, CSS or DNS "prefetch" nonsense
The Cloudflare "protection" against so-called "abuse" forces www users to enable Javascript and use a client that exposes them to increased risks, including risks to their privacy and quiet enjoyment of the web
It cannot tell the difference between (a) a single reguest from a single IP address by a www user who prefers a client that is not distributed by an online advertising company or an online advertising company's business partner and (b) so-called "abuse" such as an excessive number of requests, sometimes from many IP addresses
For the purposes of "protection", it considers (a) and (b) the same
CF's "solution" is to force the www user to choose a particular client that puts the www user at risk and exposes them to surveillance and advertising, and surreptitious data collection
"Solve" a problem by creating a new, additional problem
One thing it should mean is that anyone using Cloudflare is doing so while risking that its CEO suddenly pulls the rug and closes down the service; not a dependency you want in your stack, and not a great look for a service that's supposed to be usable as a stable high-availability one.
I’m sure they’d give you several month to migrate off (and make noise to your government).
I can honestly see why you’d want to stop giving stuff for free to people taking your money.
Sure, at least the ones that survive DDoS attacks will be.
The alternative to the "checking your internet connection" page for many websites is either "508 Resource Limit Is Reached", "Please click all the boxes with traffic lights", or no website at all. They're not there to bully you, they're there to protect websites from abuse.
https://xcancel.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492
Thanks. I was looking for that at the top, but had to scroll down all the way here to find it.
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.
Yeah, it's weird. I don't like the law in Italy, Cloudflare, or the current US administration, but I'm fairly anti-censorship, so I feel compelled to side with Cloudflare unless more info comes to light.
It really doesn’t matter what administration is in charge, at a certain level you have to curry favor with whatever administration is in power and hold your true motives close to your chest. People seem to think what people say in public is perfect knowledge of their true intentions. No. What they say is what they want someone to hear them say. There is nothing to gain by saying what you really feel, no one can prove it’s what you really feel anyway.
Yup.
Plenty of activists on the other side of the spectrum note of "greenwashing" and "pinkwashing", nice words about the environment or LGBT+ rights without any noticeable action beyond adding a temporary pride badge to social media accounts in pride month or a picture of a wind turbine on their website.
Yeah well nobody glazed Biden or Kamala's dicks that hard.
In at least half those cases I can see why. Maybe choose your metaphors a bit more classy?
Classy? In this economy??
I'm fringe class bro.
Because it got you nothing
Isn't that a good thing?
You really don't have to praise fascists.
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.
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.
Cloudflare and other US tech companies base business decisions on revenue (and apparently on emotion), not allegiance to government agencies that have fallen out of fashion.
A bit naive concerning the leaks of 15 years ago. NSA cooperation with big tech is very well known.
The NSA don't pay?
Claiming to and following through are two different actions, lots can happen between the two.
Yes, it is good for Europe that US tech leadership comes out in the open and share their twitter ramblings, so nobody can deny that their interests are not aligned with us.
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?
Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?
They are a conglomerate and per Matthews words "an internet infrastructure provider". Why does the local revenue matter when they are serving a global market?
EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
They're threatening to remove servers from Italy. They're explicitly NOT threatening to block Italians from being able to access sites through Cloudflare.
I have my fair share of problems with CF, but I assume here that they're threatening higher latency (i.e. requests from Italian users would have to go to a neighboring country to be routed) rather than blocking.
Also Italy would see (very slightly) lower GDP because data centers would have less demand from CF.
How freaking expensive do you think infrastructure is? It's not that expensive, and certainly not anywhere close to the point where it would make a noticeable impact on GDP.
Every little bit counts. At cloudflares scale it could be the difference between a DC having to close up shop or not.
If they do not want to comply with introducing censorship, then withdrawing from Italy is the only other option. Italian citizens and residents are unfortunately collateral damage.
Because they only violated the "law" in a local market (Italy) .
And the correct response to that is to write up a threat towards the entire population of a country?
It absolutely is. Why should people receive a free service while their democratically elected officials enact laws that enable them to target global revenue in their fines?
Not the whole population. Only those using cloudflare to protect their websites?
What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play". They owe Italy nothing.
Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
> What else could they do? The government represent the country. If their business model is not welcome there then they withdraw. It's very fair to say "if you insist on those rules I choose not to play".
They can just not threaten the population of Italy? They are a 2 billion dollar company that has apparently scheduled a meeting with the vice president of the US on short notice? This is going to be resolved politically.
> Btw, I recently "threatened" Switzerland to withdraw my business from there because the cost of doing business there (complying with their VAT regulation) is higher than my revenue from there (maybe 1-2 licenses a year). The whole Switzerland will not be able to buy my software because of that. I didn't think of posting about it on Twitter though.
You have not given "free services" to 20% of the world wide web that you are now using as leverage.
Politic is not separate from the population though. Pressure from the population (hopefully) sways political decisions. This is why google news pulling out of countries were public.
> EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.
There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:
> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
How much revenue did Kiwifarms bring in?
He isn't threatening to block Italy, just to remove cloudflare's business from there. Anyone living and surfing from Italy would not be blocked by cloudflare from accessing any service provided by cloudflare.
Yeah that makes sense to me. If you come up to me and say “you have to arrest that guy; he’s stealing from me” I have to do a lot of research to make sure that everything is correct.
On the other hand, if I see you steal from me, I don’t have to do a lot of research. I am a first party to the thing. I can be sure.
It’s the difference between a policeman arriving on the scene of an assault and someone actually assaulting the policeman.
The acting party being the affected party simplifies things because you know you’re not a “confused deputy”.
How do you not understand the difference..?
> So blocking Kiwifarms took.. months of activism and loud complaining.
Kiwifarms isn't a pirate site. It's just another site that you think is legitimate to censor.
> However a fine that amounts to ~0.7% of the annual revenue and they threaten to block an entire country?
What's going to be next weeks fine? Of course they should block the entire country. Even if they pay the fine (I could imagine there's some way that the EU could force that on pain of forcing them out of Europe), they should block the country.
Shouldn't Italy want lawbreakers to leave?
>activism and loud complaining
I'm not sure why would you want to remind the world about that episode. those men lied, stalked, harassed, and threatened a lot of people to get that perfectly legal website exposed to very illegal DDoS attacks.
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.
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Please don't cross into personal attack or name-calling, and please don't take HN on generic ideological tangents of flamewar tangents.
You may not owe $CEO better but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
All of this should be clear if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html recently.
I read the tweet twice and I don’t see any mention of free speech. What he’s describing, when you look past the rhetoric, sounds ridiculous: a single medium sized country is demanding power to institute global blocks of content on the internet? If that’s an accurate description, that’s deeply concerning for the long term viability of the internet.
> And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
seems perfectly reasonable for a country of any size to exercise this sort of power within their own borders
the US constitution doesn't apply worldwide
if Petulant Prince doesn't like it: he can leave
He is mentioning Vance and Musk as beacons of democracy and free speech.
Did you and I read different tweets?
"While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration" and "in this case @ElonMusk is right" are not how you talk about beacons.
He is likely referring to the Trump admin's efforts to prevent the UK from globally censoring the internet according to UK morality/laws, of which would indicate the admin's free speech defense (unlike the prior admin which pressured social media sites to censor opinions they did not like, a 1A issue).
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
Yes, the Administration who is famously so pro Free-Speech, that they intimidate and prosecute senators, when they make a video about "PSA: You can refuse illegal orders"
Well, what is it now?
UK, Italy, Europe, European Union?
Seems hard to differentiate for many, it seems.
Read the tweet a 3rd time. Free Speech is mentioned in Paragraph 4 when he's thanking Vance and Musk. It's highlighted in Blue. It's a Hashtag.
Please read the entire tweet. Free speech is mentioned at character number 1779.
I cannot believe this is the first time that Cloudflare has been confronted by a local government which asked to perform "global" filtering of content. It is clear for anyone who has worked with bureaucrats that their "global" means "within our jurisdiction". It is extremely weird that he feels emboldened to publicly lash out like this and pull in people who are extremely unpopular in Europe.
You keep saying this, but 'global' has never meant 'in my jurisdiction' in any conversation or document I've ever read. What additional information can you provide the confirms your interpretation is correct?
> obviously an idiot praising Vance's and Elon's actions
He praised their opinions on free speech. You should be able to differentiate a single opinion objectively from the people holding them.
He actually praised Vance role as a defender of democratic values, but Vance is known to deny Greenlands souvereignity, ready to capitulate to a russian dictator, indifference to police killing a protester recently, etc.
His idea of free speech does not include critical reporting. The wider US government is trying to shut down the BBC with a lawsuit or has public officials threaten individual journalists to their face, basically nothing is too large or too small.
> He actually praised Vance role as a defender of democratic values, but Vance is known to deny Greenlands souvereignity, ready to capitulate to a russian dictator, indifference to police killing a protester recently, etc.
Horrible stuff. I agree. His statement about free speech in the EU, when removed from him as a person, is still true. Progressive media sources agree [1]. If both aisles, as well as European free speech activists, think something is going horribly wrong in Europe, we should listen.
[1]: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/germany-insult...
Oof, Cloudflare has been one of the most interesting tech companies for me, and one I would have worked for in a heartbeat. But the MAGA pandering in this tweet is quite disappointing. I get it, running a large business in the US these days requires a certain amount of bootlicking, but still. And I say this while generally agreeing with Matthew's stance.
The "haters" who long ago have warned about the risk of Cloudflare MITM'ing global website traffic have been proven right. In the end, Cloudflare is another mass surveillance tool next to Meta/Google/Apple which will be weaponized in the interests of the current US administration.
I hope people go take a look at previous statements by MP/JGC (to be fair, no longer affiliated) with this in mind - I have always found them to be just as degrading and whiny as this announcement reads.
In Spain the LaLiga CEO, Tebas (Soccer association, they are legally fighting against Cloudflare and doing MITM's everwhere) isn't very different in that case (Francoist far right supporter).
Every time any of these CEOs see even the mildest of pushback, the mask just fully falls off and you see them immediately run to the worst people on the planet.
I feel for his chief legal counsel who must be crying in their office right now. In the US, courts have been deactivated for MAGA-aligned rich people, but Cloudflare CEO is so stupid to assume that the same has happened in Italy. The arrogance and ignorance is astounding.
Nobody gets to these positions unless they're a complete sociopath who've long lost touch with reality. Just listen to anything thiel, musk, altman, vance and other degenerates have to say, some animals display more humanity than these golems
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.
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?
It's all a racket to extract money from Italians, not enforcing IP rights.
Just like it's mentioned in Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu, some organizations are designed to extract resources from masses. Italian loves soccer and some big shots managed to get the TV rights for a per-pay service, and that's why they're pushing for so hard. Otherwise I don't think Italian courts would go after people selling pirated DVDs on the streets of Milan.
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?
23 violations of an unjust and unworkable law. The law is bad and should go.
Fair enough but thats not up to cloudflare to decide, if they operate in the country they must respect its laws
We don't know what the law is. The rules were created with an administrative procedure backed by a very generic statute which is likely unconstitutional. Neither the Supreme court (Cassazione) nor the Constitutional court have ruled on the matter yet.
Getting a fine is the first step towards further judicial review, probably.
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.
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.
Setup AdGuard and never look back
How about Quad9?
I'll have to check. I assume they are not immune to decisions of European courts either?
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"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Not every comment about Germany requires a mention of a dark past.
Doesn't require it, but in this case it sure is relevant
It does not, since the context is absolutely not the same. Closing a major piracy actor VS actions that led to a world war.
Banning books is the same as banning books. Whether it's in the name of censorship or anti-piracy
Not sure you can call it censorship if it's the author of the book who doesn't want you to access it for free. I know there are a few levels of indirection here, but with a few notable exceptions authors are normally against their books being pirated.
I personally sure want Anna's Archive staying up, but comparing it to nazis burning books is a bit too much IMO
This isn't banning books, it's akin to banning a book store. If a book store chain isn't paying their taxes and gets shut down, the books have not been banned or censored.
Because the US doesn't act against copyright infringement? They just suspended the Annas Archive .org domain
At least we don't ban books from Libraries, because they contain the true history or "wrong thought" and Republicans don't like that
Don't even need to rely to anti-piracy to find book banners. US public schools continue to accelerate their book banning tendencies.
* https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/ * https://www.ala.org/news/2025/04/american-library-associatio... * https://cdhe.colorado.gov/banned-book-list
Book bans at department of defense high schools are resulting directly from this administration's executive orders.
* https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/dodea-book-bans
We need to keep fighting for the right to read freely.
Meanwhile, waiting for Cloudflare to walk away from their US government contracts to protest these blatant free speech attacks.
I mean when Germany is jailing people for being "offensive" it's hard not too.
You are confidently incorrect, very impressive.
Don't worry, this time it's the Social Democrats who ban books, it's _totally_ different.
Most western countries who care about IP have banned piracy. I'm not anti piracy but it's silly to compare.
Back in the day it was US media companies which started the big war against piracy and for the use of DRM. It was pushed by US media companies and the US government upon Europe. Same as with software patents. It's weird that now US companies complain about local media rights holders doing their censorship thing when the whole thing was started by the US.
I'm not sure, does US not block websites by DNS? Wrt Anna's Archive they've gone as far as revoking its main domain
US owns the registrars, they just deregister domains they don't like and show some sort of FBI logo instead.
I demand the RIGHT to get media for free without paying for it! And I equate this with a ban on literature!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...
> Participants: Republican lawmakers in red states
oh weird, it's the opposite of what you said.
Politics isn't the exclusive hobby of the united states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/politics/the-spd-parties...
And by the way, in the same wikipedia link you posted, there's documentation of Democrats also banning books.
What book banning are you referencing, then? it's all very vague
I can buy all the books listed there in the USA.
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.
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.
> You do what a country tells you to do as a foreigner, or you leave.
I suppose you're right. You're still allowed to criticize the government's decisions though! This is certainly true in Italy, which has quite reasonable laws with regards to freedom of speech.
> what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government
Western government instituitions are hardly sacred. Again, people are allowed to criticize them, or disrespect them event if they so desire. What he's trying to achieve is a more just and reasonable application of the law, as it's quite clear if you'll care to carefully read the tweet instead of raging at his supposed disrespect for the Italian government.
The people in italy are allowed to do whatever they want with their own government. Even foreigners in other countries, who cares. But if you're a guest, you don't disrespect your host, certainly not about the rules they have.
Imagine if I were to complain about HN rules and how the moderators are tyrants. That's what @eastdakota is doing. It's one thing to say that when you're posting else where, but not here. he's not having to following italian laws because he's an italian, he's having to do so, so that he can be afforded the privileges of doing business there.
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.
> BTW, before I read this Xweet I was a Cloudflare fan.
The CEO of a US tech company asking the Vice President for help with censorship caused you to immediately flip you opinion? And not only flip your opinion, but practically embrace complete censorship of the internet if that means Cloudflare leaving Europe?
..yikes.
Why is he asking for Elon for help too?
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 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
some good takes in this response but complementing jd and elon was absolutely not necessary
One must be thankful to him for removing the illusion that Cloudflare is some benevolent, neutral US company fighting for a more secure internet.
My risk acceptance is not big enough to have all Cloudflare-secured websites in my country to go offline just because someone from my country has a Twitter fight with a member of the US administration or with the Cloudflare leadership.
> One must be thankful to him for removing the illusion that Cloudflare is some benevolent, neutral US company fighting for a more secure internet.
yeah it's great isn't it
now all anyone has to do to discredit cloudflare is point to their CEO's pro-elon posts
the AI slop picture at the bottom really sells it too
He's just sucking up to them to get them to act on his behalf.
It was necessary to get them to take action. The only thing the current administration cares about is public image so publicly fellating them is what you need to do to get them to go to bat on your behalf.
He runs a private company, not a government institution and I'm sure they can pay a lawyer to sue the Italian entity if it displeases him so much. Like everybody else would.
When did Hacker News start talking like Reddit?
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
CCP: Forges the Great Firewall, a brittle shield against the chaos of free thought.
EU: Skinless bureaucrats salivate: "Ooh, must copy that fragility machine!"
If the Italian law is equivalent to the Great Firewall, why is Cloudflare upset about it? They have servers in 35 different locations around mainland China and I don't remember reading about their plans to pull out.
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/network/
You know in your heart of hearts that this is a blatantly intellectually dishonest comparison. Nobody’s buying it, not even yourself.
FWIW, this is the least effective way to disagree with someone on the internet. Everyone knows it, even yourself.
(snark aside -- either say _why_ you disagree, or just don't engage at all if you think it's a troll.)
True. CCP does not attempt to impose their censorship on other countries, while EU have asked Cloudflare to DNS block their wish list for the entire world.
I'm buying it. Look up the number of people prosecuted in China for internet speech versus the UK (not even EU). The UK prosecutes more even though it has a much smaller population.
That's not true.
source?
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.
okay, Cloudflare CEO is gonna complain his business and legal issues with the one who is defending a murder . Great!.
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!
> Europe will be fine!
Unfortunately, no. Europe is not fine and won't be fine anytime soon. CloudFlare's situation is one of the cases.
Doing business is different in the EU as it is different in China or Russia. If you want it to be not different, work in globalization not America first.
Europe was fine until it got disrupted by Russia and the US. But that has nothing to do with this topic here. This is just a company not following a local law. Nothing special in the law (it is shitty like any IP law) or the case here.
I don't fear getting shot by police. Or fear for my kid's while he's in school. Or medical debt
We can live without cloudflare
Reminds me of what France did to Telegram, but Pavel Durov has obviously made a much better statement
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.
> 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.
It can be both. I run many open source websites behind cloudflare.
It's the same as github. All the free hosting and free CIs and free issues/discussion forums, and free code review for open source repos (90% of all open source projects?) happens to be a a loss leader as well.
Both are still a huge free contribution to the world. They don't have to do it. They could just have zero free anything.
What market share would they have without offering the free tier? Much lower than what they have now, and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet
Do you remember how bad things were before CloudFlare? You’d get attacked constantly if you ran a large website.
I remember Tor being significantly more usable, and not having random 3 second delays on websites.
> and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet
The only people that say that haven't run a site on the open internet in the last decade plus. It's such an ignorant takes it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
I’m not advocating for having no protections at all. Without Cloudflare giving away protection for free it’s entirely possible that we would have multiple smaller provider offering protection at a fair price so maybe only a smaller fraction of the internet goes offline next time Cloudflare pushes a bad configuration
Im sorry but your epistemics are very wrong. Providing a free service with no strings attached to nearly every website in the world adds a ton of value, possibly more than Cloudflare’s market cap. And the fact that a free product can lead to profits, when other companies make the choice to pay more, does not remove that worldly contribution.
The first one is always free...
I prefer to not have it at all. One thing is offering free service because you truly know the values. The other is making threats to people.
Another italian here; while this whole situation is bad and piracy shield is definitely not the solution, having the cloudflare CEO that threatens to remove free-tier service makes me wonder. They offer a free pill, just to be the "powerful" guys that threaten people when they are paying some million euros.
Well done my friend. :-) I'm already moving websites off cloudflare. bye!
P.S: I believe piracy shield is a s*t idea naturally.
Cloudflare is clearly in the right. Global censorship from an unaccountable cabal is a moral wrong. There's no sense in which Italy somehow 'wins' here, because even if they win, they lose.
Presumably AGCOM are accountable to the Italian government and therefore ultimately the Italian people. Or do you just mean 'unaccountable' in the sense that Americans should be able to do whatever they please, wherever they please, and they don't appreciate being hindered by trivial things like other country's laws.
Clearly? Or clearly according to the statement in a Xweet from their CFO?
I am very pro-piracy, but calling to Trumpist elite reads like he thinks that European instututions have no right to censor Internet, because they are European, while controlling the Internet is an exlusive American right.
I really think Europe should adopt a Chinese approach to copyright, but I don't expect US to like it at all - they started it all after all with DMCA etc.
AGCOM and cloudflare ceo can all be wrong and horrible at the same time. You don't have to pick a side
Agreed!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46557533
Well considering the fine is larger than their profits in Italy, why on earth would they keep doing business there?
Yeah lemme just keep burning money to provide a service in a single country.
Is there some idea that CF is a public utility?
Or an idea that CF should just comply with a 30 minutes zero questions asked API infamous for egregious false positives?
That CEO should stop posting but that just sounds like a business decision
> 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.
While that is true, the datacenters hosting those servers are going to lose a massive amount of monthly income by not having those servers colocated anymore.
And just out of curiosity, how many small/medium websites would have the in house know-how to switch to a different CDN? Cloudflare fronts your site, giving you an 'automatic' CDN, where most others require changes to your site to work with.
What happens when BunnyCDN finds itself in the same situation?
I suspect they'll follow the law and do what the court says
rather than pleading to their feudal masters on twitter and threatening to throw their toys out of the pram
> I suspect they'll follow the law and do what the court says
Which, to me, seems like a clearly worse outcome? I hate the feudal masters more than most on HN, if that somehow matters for the credibility of my own opinion.
The free offerings are not a loss-leader in the conventional sense of anticipating future upsell. They are a traffic generator used to drive up Cloudflare’s leverage when negotiating peering with carriers & service providers, in order to drive down the marginal cost of bandwidth for Cloudflare’s actual product, the enterprise DDoS protection, with the criticality of traffic interchange expenses being evident in the vehemence with which Cloudflare discuss peering matters, such as via the astroturf’d “bandwidth alliance” grouping they sponsor.
In which vein, anyone familiar with The Peering Playbook will recognise the kind of annoying hardball Prince thinks he is playing, but I doubt it works on nation states.
> 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.
This isn't international law though. It's an authoritarian move by the Italian government. "Technically" and "legally", you're correct that Cloudflare is wrong for not building infrastructure to help Italy censor the web from Italians, but sometimes you should break the law if you disagree with it strongly enough.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I find it interesting that no where in your comment did you try to justify the behaviour other than to say "it's the law". But that is the problem. Why is it the law? Do you think the law is justified?
> 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.
Completely agree with you there. Seems like a pretty stupid move to be honest. If I were CEO of Cloudflare I'd probably just shut my mouth and censor the internet.
The law is shitty. But we have football team owners mixing with politics, and this is the end result.
Berlusconi owned football teams, Lotito owns Lazio and is actually in the party Forza Italia, one of the parties in the ruling coalition
"he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law"
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
My conspiracy theory is that the EU is actively trying to create their own cloud through regulation after seeing the economic success from china's internet companies after the great firewall.
> EU is actively trying to create their own cloud
Unfortunately, the EU is not nearly coordinated for such a thing. And even if they were, regulation is not what will make it happen. EU is in a crisis of financial (VISA, AmEx) and software services (AWS, MS, Google) being almost entirely provided by USA. They are not going to dig themselves out of the hole by regulation.
For contrast, USA is (largely) dependent on China, Korea, and Taiwan for chips. But they decided to attack the problem by investing several hundred billion dollars to develop their domestic microchip manufacturing infrastructure [1]. This appears to be paying dividends already as TSMC is already producing chips in Arizona, and estimated 30% of all production of 2nm and better to be produced in USA by 2030.
It seems to me that this is the way nations take control of their problems. Unfortunately EU seems incapable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act
> It seems to me that this is the way nations take control of their problems. Unfortunately EU seems incapable.
Incapable of being a nation I guess
It's not.
I think GP meant that in the sense that the EU is not a nation, it's a union of nations.
> estimated 30% of all production of 2nm and better to be produced in USA by 2030
There will come a time when the EU is also buying their chips from USA and then they'll wonder how that happened.
There will be a time when the whole world buys its Fabs from the EU. Good luck getting more after US steals Greenland...
This is called "digital sovereignty", and it has been a major topic for OpenInfra foundation and other open source cloud foundations. Open source, and open cloud software, is the way to ensure your data can stay inside your own borders and be governed by your local laws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvz2PcHq0yY is one example of folks talking about this, but realistically you can find talks from OpenStack/OpenInfra going back 4/5 years on this topic.
I love this. digital sovereignty sounds so cool too
That's definitely happening. The US does this through massive government spending on American solutions. The EU is only starting to go that route as well.
>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
International law??
Italian law you mean.
Why should 1.1.1.1 block a site because some Italian wanted it blocked? Sod off.
Also I am Swedish, so EU here too. Sick of this whiny victim attitude.
> International law??
Note the "general line". You know, bombing boats in international waters, abducting awful dictators and "running" the country sidelining the opposition, threatening to take over an autonomous territory of Denmark, meddling with German and British politics and generally behaving very much like fascists and a wannabe dictator.
First off, the immediate appeal to Vance and Musk is embarrassing.
It's a very unhinged, very Trumpy response. The repeated use of "cabal" and hyperbole is, as you say, embarrassing.
It's useful to know this is the official voice, tone, and attitude of CloudFlare. Now I know not to recommend it to my company. The owners would not be happy to do business with an organization that has its politics and alignment so close to the surface.
Really?
A group of people who were elected by nobody, should, without any accountability or due process, be able to ban any website they don't like from the internet? And not just for Italians but globally?
Even if you think this is a great thing for Italians (I have no idea why anyone would think that), you expect the whole world to surrender to this absurd demand? Categorical imperative???
Piracy Shield only works within Italy. No provider has ever been expected to take down sites globally in response to a Piracy Shield trigger, or has ever done so.
Also read the start of the comment. See this?
> as much as I think Piracy Shield shouldn't exist
> i’m italian
unfortunately this preamble doesn’t add the weight you assume it should. what has being italian got to do with having an opinion on this? this and all the other “italian here” takes below. fwiw unless eastdakota is being intentionally malicious, he, with the cloudflare legal team, understands the situation and its implications for cloudflare better than any random italian.
Cloudflare is talking about Italian law and Italian policy and making comments about his actions they will take in Italy with Italian users specifically.
“Italian here” as in “I am not a random person with no skin in the game / I live in the country and presumably am more well informed on the policy he is talking about.
If there was a post about a law in nyc, I think it would be helpful to hear takes from New Yorkers.
> I believe he knows he's technically in the wrong for not abiding to the law,
Free speech loses when people answer to critics of a speech limiting law that they should just follow it.
I also didn't enjoy the bit where, after saying the EU was against what Italy is doing, then blames the whole continent of Europe for this policy...and then inflicting it on the UK, which despite brexit, is still in Europe
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.
Since when Cloudflare started to fight for Open Internet? Thanks to them last year we weren’t able to visit many websites. If that’s how they perceive openness, they have to think twice.
Reading this comment thread it’s now clear to me that HN is beyond any repair and is officially dead.
It’s fully transitioned to a political reactionary Reddit board devoid of any interesting discussion or insight.
Did it get too popular for its own good or has everyone just gone crazy?
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.'
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.
AI generated image he attached to his post is cringe.
It’s easier for a state to enforce censorship when there is only a SPoF
If you are curious on how it looks a website taken down by Italian state apparatus, have a look at
https://phica.eu
(in details: the action was carried out by the Central Directorate for Scientific Police and Cybersecurity within the Department of Public Security, Ministry of the Interior).
The domain resolves (by many DNS, 1.1.1.1 included) to Cloudflare IPs :)
I have a feeling that usually when someone complains about freedom of speech, they are actually complaining about something else.
Definitely an everyone sucks here situation.
Surly this post must have the opposite effect of what he intended. Even if you side with Cloudflare on the core issue this post is so cringy my butthole collapsed into itself.
Are Americans not embarrassed by the way these tech bros operate? As a European it’s obvious that the US gone from an allied to an enemy. I would feel like a traitor if I picked US tech these days.
Just by looking at the profile picture my douchebag detecting spidey-senses were tingling. And reading further down the text with people he brings up as he cries for mommy... ding ding ding!
I totally disagree with Italy's law, but quoting Vance and Musk on this plus the AI slop at the end. Nah, I'm taking my stuff out of Cloudflare.
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.
> But his MAGA comments make me ashamed to be a Cloudflare customer.
You have the power.
I'm actively looking for alternatives to migrate current projects.
For sure I won't use it for new projects.
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cdn-content-delive...
Which MAGA comment, specifically? Are you referring to this?
> While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue [...]
You may or may not agree, it hardly seems MAGA though.
Sounds similar to the UK Online Safety Act and their internet Czar.
I don’t understand why they are tying the fine amount to global revenue rather than Italian revenue. Any Italian here who can explain it ?
It's pretty common in fact for certain countries, see for example https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-fines-google-20-de...
Where does it mention Global Revenue ? It's just a symbolical fine
Practically it's the same - some arbitrary amount.
Easy. Tech companies love revenue and profit shifting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
The sales are 'made' in the US despite the customer and the "sales team" in the country.
Ah Digital service act fines and other eu fines are tied to Global revenue.
List the sites they want offline'd, @eastdakota?
I think the pirates are using fast flux so the list of sites changes daily or hourly.
The Italian 'piracy shield' is indeed reprehensible, but the tweet is very far out there as well. For all I care Cloudflare blocks the entirety of Europe for a week or so in protest, but aligning yourself with the bunch of fascists now in charge of the US government and prefacing that with "while there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration" is pretty insane as Cloudflare will be at the complete mercy of their lawlessness, if not now, then in the future.
Is this similar to what happened in Spain?
I am all for an open internet- I want to torrent US copyrighted content :)
“any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests”
Does anyone else find it difficult to discern truth in this era where everyone seems to want to pray in your emotions. My gut is that he’s angry for the right reasons, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone who tries to use the words “shadowy cabal” in a serious context.
It is banal to observe that an agency of a government can act orthogonally to another, and also the citizens of the country.
I have noticed a trend post-2020 of a higher level of emotionality and impulsive thinking among government and business leaders in the United States. Hopefully thermostatic opinion engages and this trend reverses.
>Using global revenue is further example of the extra-judicial overreach
Thank companies that transferred their national revenue via shady tax evation tricks into other countries so that their national revenue was nearly zero.
"EU shadow cabal" funny considering that he then mentions running for help to US politicians.
You can accuse the US politicians of a lot but hiding in the shadows is probably the last thing you can say about the current USA administration.
you mean because they get found out, not because they don't try?
Isn't this the same government that started a secret war against Venezuela without any authorization?
No. Furthermore, that is not a shadow cabal.
Why do people go out of their way to criticize Trump like this?
Attacking other countries without declaring war is a staple of pretty much every US president since WW2, republican or democrat. Carter is the only one who stands out (ironically, despite the fact that he had a good cause to invade Iran).
Sorry, which presidents did Obama and Biden kidnap again?
Vance is hardly operating in the shadows. He is a very public figure.
I presume that law was passed by public vote of Italian elected politicians? Not a shadow either
Yep. It sounds like “shadowy cabal” is just an emotive term for “deputised decision-makers doing something that is inconvenient for my organisation”. There’s nothing shadowy about it. It’s just not American.
we only see 20% of what happens in the shadow, but yah, I guess its better than 100%
If there were an EU shadow cabal who exactly would you run to help for?
When Bonasera’s daughter is assaulted and the perpetrators released, he goes to Don Corleone. That makes sense. It’s not funny or ironic that he turns to criminals to help with criminals.
You need power to counter power.
What an absurd twisting of reality this is. There is no EU shadow cabal, as opposed to the very real not-so-shadowy cabal currently running the USA. Where the EU is concerned with a rule-based order, justice, and fair conditions, the US administration engages in open corruption, cronyism, and outright rule by force.
The CEO of an American company complaining about the unfair treatment in Europe is more than ridiculous.
Probably because the admin has been vocal and proactive about extraterritorial overreach by European countries hellbent on global censorship programs.
The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media, as has Germany. Both of those countries also attempt to censor speech OUTSIDE of their own countries too.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
>The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media, as has Germany.
Source?
Certainly. The UK routinely and repeatedly jails people for protected speech, including speech protected by international standards. [1] [2] [3]
[1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/...
[2] "Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
[3] "A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
> proactive extraterritorial overreach
They are certainly very active in the subject, although judging by the last week, they are not really against it in every case
>The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media
That is just not true, is it. No matter how many times you say it
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/...
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
There are no "European Global Censorship Programs".
Maybe try to get your information elsewhere than Fox News (based on the Nonsense in all your recent comments)
This is flat-out factually inaccurate. Don’t bring this tripe here, please and thank you.
> The UK has thrown thousands of people in jail for speech on social media
Not true… and those that were jailed were convicted for inciting racial hatred and most of them admitted the offence
More information:
> Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM imposed a record-breaking €14.2 million fine on Cloudflare after the company failed to implement the required piracy blocking measures. Cloudflare argued that filtering its global 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would be "impossible" without hurting overall performance. AGCOM disagreed, noting that Cloudflare is not necessarily a neutral intermediary either. [...]
https://torrentfreak.com/italy-fines-cloudflare-e14-million-...
I kind of like(d) Cloudflare, but appealing to Musk and the couch lover that's currently serving as VP is despicable. What a swamp the US have become.
So now in Europe we can now also download all Hollywood movies for free? Because of the open internet?
Oh how far eastdakota has fallen. What is it with billionaires losing their damn mind the wealthier they become?
And they all seem to love LOTR while acting just like Gollum.
There was a gas leak on the island.
That's a pretty bad take. This whole situation came into existence because CF has positioned itself as a convenient choke point. The Italian government is dumb, but 'eastdakota' is being dumber here. JD Vance and Musk are about as poisonous to international relations as it gets and bringing them up in relation with Europe making and enforcing its own laws - no matter how misguided - makes me think you should probably focus on the beam in your own eye first.
As for the rest of the threats: please do. Europe needs less, not more dependencies on USD and US companies. We'll figure it out, or not.
There are many European CDN providers. Cloudflare is nowhere near as critical to the internet as HN crowd would suggest.
If a company choses Cloudflare they would have great service everywhere except Italy. If they chose a service with lower quality / reach, they will suffer degraded service across the board. If they try to use more than one CDN that’s a lot of hassle.
It’s not clear which way the decisions will go in reality. Past experience suggests that tech companies eventually accommodate local laws, trading complexity of explaining this to customers for complexity of implementing targeted blocking tools.
A lot depends on the next couple of months and the US's continued belligerence against - former? - allies. If that isn't toned down, and drastically so then I expect there to be many more consequences than just for CDN providers.
They're at 82% or so of all websites using CDNs, other providers are extremely small in comparison. CF is this large because of a feedback loop with respect to being able to deal with large denial of service attacks. They are - for most serious players - the only game in town now.
> a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests.
lets be real, they are definitely europeans but they don't live IN europe. iykyk
As a non-American (and non-European) I got the foul stench of ‘American upset that other legal jurisdictions exist’ before I even finished the first sentence. The absolute slathering on of such emotive language feels very disingenuous. It’s immediately obvious that I’m being taken for some sort of ride. I can picture Kyle’s dad from South Park, at his computer, with his glass of red, writing his Yelp reviews. I genuinely don’t know how anyone can write like this and think that it’s a good look.
Why cannot cloudlflare just apply a filter to the incoming requests and if the IP is belongs to am Italian AS they just drop it?
And if they can, can they please add my IP to that list as well.
His whole #freespeech theater would be slightly more convincing if they did not praise America's neo fascists in the same tweet and also if cloudflare did not work in, for example, China (where I guess they comply with local censorship).
It's fine to defend your profits but don't pretend you defend anything else.
Good, make it hurt. Saying this as a European.
Why I actually use American DNS etc, it is at least open by default often. EU loves to censor and hide.
In case people can’t/don’t want to read something on X, here is the statement:
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver meaning it risked blacking out any site on the Internet. And it required us not just to censor the content in Italy but globally. In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme. We, of course, will now fight the unjust fine. Not just because it’s wrong for us but because it is wrong for democratic values.
In addition, we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials and I’ll be meeting with the IOC in Lausanne shortly after to outline the risk to the Olympic Games if @Cloudflare withdraws our cyber security protection.
In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines. We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FIGHT AND WE WILL WIN!!!
It's not "quasi-judicial". They have no judicial authority, at all, despite how they present themselves.
They can only show them their supposed findings to a ministerial judge and tell them "Weeeh weeh, Cloudflare is being mean".
Then the judge will look at the AGCOM analysis, listen to Cloudflare or an EU representative or whoever may raise an objection to those findings, and then, after a loooooong time, enforce or not the fine.
"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome." - Charlie Munger
I think the fine is wrong, but the attempt to weaponise JD Vance and Elon Musk doesn’t look well at all. The next time they see something they don’t like hosted/protected by Cloudflare they will only have to ask more or less nicely and there is a good chance Cloudflare will handle it for them
The interesting part is that neither the AGCOM nor Cloudflare quite understand how each other really work. Also they both believe they got more leeway than they truly have.
AGCOM is an institutional apparatus, they operate separately, but not independently, from whatever leftwing or rightwing government in charge for the most part (past Berlusconian interests aside) and everything they do is entirely subject to not getting out of the guidelines imposed by the EU, no matter what they want anyone else to believe.
Frankly the best course of action for Cloudflare would be getting in touch with the Board of European Regulation pointing them out that AGCOM is, probably for the hundreth time I guess, overstepping their authority. And they should stop right there, otherwise they're the ones that will be actually fined.
Well put. Several nuances are most likely lost in translation. Nevertheless the Cloudflare CEO took it as an opportunity to out himself as a buffoon and harming Cloudflare's international reputation.
They clearly have way more in common than expected.
Hell, I think AGCOM will probably rescind the fine for the sole reason they found out someone who's taking them seriously for the first time.
Fascists catfighting fascists. Entertaining, but a sign of the shitstorm we're all in for soon.
Soon?
I flagged this for being a link to a site which produces and condones CSAM. Let’s keep this garbage off of HN.
Geoblock all of Italy
I mean just banning stuff because some media companies want it is brain dead, but immediately calling for daddy Vance and mommy Musk is just pathetic.
> To effectively tackle live sports piracy,
Of course it's about football/calcio. I love Italy and almost everything related to Italy (I'm a Juventus fan to boot), but in this the Italian officials are way out of their element and behind the times.
I find the "censorship" frame funny. This is happening because certain countries in Europe are governed by soccer oligarchs instead of big tech.
Choose your poison, I guess.
Fortunately I can ignore soccer, big tech however, not so much.
It might not be a conspiracy theory. Europeans have serious media skeletons in there closet.
Consider La Liga in Spain. When football matches are on they have a blank check to block whatever they want wherever they want. Genuinely they take down all of cloudflare and all kinds of shit. I think they were even DNS banning everyone on .tv TLD. Its wild how much legal power they have.
This was brought up on hacker news often.
They also have their apps spy on users microphones and gps to detect where someone might be watching their streams to make sure you aren't doing it in bars. [1]
Italian media is trying to do similar stuff with their piracy shield stuff. [2]
AtomicDig219303 on Reddit when Italy blocked all of google drive.
> Wait, I don't think that your post describes how fucking idiotic this whole thing is. Piracy shield is a system implemented by AGCOM (which as OP said is a governing agency) and basically "gifted" to the fucking mafia that is Serie A (yes, the football/soccer league) to block access to pirated streams of football matches.
[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/laligas-anti-piracy-crackdown-trig...
[1] https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/06/12/inenglish/15603...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1mgq41i/italys_pira...
Don't forget Robert Maxwell...
He contradicts himself in the span of a single sentence. How is it possible that this was done solely by Italy (with concerns from the rest of the EU) and yet this is the work of a cabal of European media elites? If this were true, why isn't the entire EU involved?
Italy and Spain are doing the same thing and there may be other EU countries being controlled by football leagues that I haven't heard of.
> there may be
Indeed, but there may not be. so maybe don't base any strong opinions on that kind of logic.
That's not really a self-contradiction; if we pretend the USA's copyright lobby had made California pass a similar law… well, that might not work, I have no idea if that would be unconstitutional inter-state trade restriction or something in the USA, but for the sake of showing why it's not a self-contradiction can we pretend?
If the US media elites had convinced California to do that, they'd be a "shadowy cabal of [US] media elites", even if there was opposition from the rest of the USA.
Again, don't read too much into if this would actually work in the USA, the EU is not the USA, this isn't that kind of comment.
It's not that long ago that US media conglomerates used MPAA to threaten Sweden to remove piratebay?
Sure, but Sweden isn't in the US so I don't see that illustrating anything in this analogy.
US media elites got DMCA and YouTubes copyright strike introduced, I suppose they were powerful enough to sidestep the states and go after Congress instead.
He is partially right. The Atlanticist faction in both the US and Europe has been working to get the internet under control since 2016. This project started as a backlash to the Trump election and moved into high gear with COVID and Ukraine. This faction has a sincere belief that the prior openness of the internet is a threat to the international order, as it prevents authorities from shaping civilian perceptions and behavior.
The battlefield has become more complex since 2016, as the old international order is pretty much dead now, so you have competing factions of Atlanticists (US rump admin/UK/FR/DE/Brussels) versus nationalists (US/Israel/Eastern Europe) who both want control of the internet, but through different means and for different reasons. You could also tack on BRICS nations who decided that the best path is to wall themselves off from the open internet.
Go ahead and downvote, you know I’m right which is why you won’t offer even a single comment in response.
Each of these factions trying to kill the open internet is doing it for selfish reasons and all are in the wrong for doing so. You’re strangling an international commons for your geopolitical games. Shame on all of you!
I'm sure there are popular Italian websites behind CloudFlare. Say, train tickets. Probably not, but just for the sake of the argument.
1. Order comes to block address 69.69.69.69 within 30 minutes
2. Quickly switch Trenitalia to 69.69.69.69. Which is fine, because CloudFlare probably doesn't promise you any specific IP address, so they can assign them from the pool as they please.
3. Block 69.69.69.69.
4. In the whole country everyone who tries to buy a train ticket or check the schedule sees "train service doesn't work because football, please try again after the match", effectively paralyzing public transport.
5. Average Giuseppe learns about the ridiculousness of the situation and gets upset.
6. The government suddenly has to explain to the people what happened. They cannot pin the blame on CloudFlare (as per current fine), so the only remaining scapegoat is the football association.
7. The entire bus stands up clapping.
Wow that guy does not sound like what in my head a Cloudflare CEO sounds like. Win stupid prizes? Bro...
Seriously. If only he had a professional comms team who could help him craft a message that didn't read like... that.
Another reason to dump an american big tech firm and switch to Bunny.net for example. Better a democratic based error than an american greed based CEO.
Damn, that’s a pretty disappointing statement. Some parts are correct but then he goes completely overboard. After everything that has been happening the past year with the new administration it’s hard to keep supporting this as a European.
Will move our startup from Cloudflare.
While he has a point and Italians are kinda embarrassing in their politics, can't help the feeling that he comes off as a bit of cry-baby. Trying to win points with the JD/Musk mafia that hard seems weird and icky. Seems like signaling to other billionaire bros that they belong to their faction, which in my books isn't that great either. That last uppercase line a cherry on top of shattering my image of CF as respectable tech-vendors.
looks like, he didn't pay enough for bribes
Elon Musk the bastion of free speech who famously banned a twitter account that posted publicly available information.
One? Elon banned thousands after he took over.
He event went as far as personally canceling a Tesla customer's order for criticizing him. That's how petty he is. He has no interest in freedom of speech whatsoever, it's merely a talking point.
Me included, not that I'm very interesting. Every time I asked why I got a different reason from support.
Edit: the last reason given was 'impersonation', which I thought was pretty random
I disagree.
Freedom of Speech guarantees the right to speak. Not the right to have no repercussions.
Elon has GREAT interest in Freedom of Speech, it enables him to have far more power than regulating the type of "speech" he showed in cancelling that customer's order.
Elon has interest in monetary gain and stirring conflicts around the world. It is sad that individuals like you are drunk on his coolaid.
> Freedom of Speech guarantees the right to speak. Not the right to have no repercussions.
How is that different from, say, Freedom of Theft guaranteeing the right to steal, but not the right to have no repercussions?
By these definitions, everyone has these “rights”?
he's controlling the speech, not freeing it
try posting "cisgender" on xhitter
Besides attempting to get him murdered by a crazy person seeing a chance to be famous, what possible reason does someone have to constantly broadcast the location of his transportation? What difference does knowing where it or he is make in the daily lives of anyone? What long term planning does the information give to people?
In the case of private plane info, to highlight hypocrisy regarding the eco-friendly identity he was at that time seemingly trying to curate.
Musk is a contrarian. He, however, is not a government body (nor does he represent one, u can choose to include the dubious Doge efforts into the discussion but that will devolve into semantics that do not negate the point). As a private citizen with a platform for which he overpaid - he can do as he pleases within the confines of said platform. Musk, however, cannot enforce fines on other providers and request stuff from them. This is what the post is about.
He can do whatever he wants on that platform. Equally, can elected officials decide to ban that private platform?
Again, apples and oranges. Private citizens vs government. Musk has no power given to him by someone, the government does, using that power in a way that might be considered abusive/authoritarian might yield (deserved) backlash.
I'm not sure if I'm not getting something. It's a for-profit organization vs a government entity. It's not even remotely similar.
If someone says they believe in free speech, they have to let me spraypaint anything I want on their house. Otherwise they're a hypocrite.
If they publicly state that the house is a "town square" (he has said that of twitter), and they say that they are a "free speech absolutist" (he has said this of himself in the context of this house/town square/website), and state that "By 'free speech,' I simply mean that which matches the law.", then yes, if they don't let you spray-paint (tweet) whatever you want that's not strictly unlawful (like, ah, calling for civil disorder in the UK?), they are indeed a hypocrite.
When the house is digital (twitter is), why even use spray paint as the analogy?
Can't throw rotten tomatoes at internet nazis in the nazi "town square" unfortunately.
When Musk bought twitter, he all-but-explicitly said "I have finally bought this house, which I will let anyone spray paint".
And then promptly started to ban terms like "cis-gendered".
except for trans people and all the people he banned that disagree with him
Intellectually dishonest analogy but I’m sure you already know this.
Italy can use the same argument.
> quasi-judicial
the tweet starts off pretty strong, which I didn't care for but I understand. this phrase however feels wrong. i guess i don't understand Italy, but isn't this like saying the SEC or FCC is quasi-judicial?
> In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
ah, unlike when CF themselves decides unilaterally, not even as part of a cabal, what should and should not be allowed online. got it.
I was nodding along in agreement until he inserted his tongue into Musk and Vance. A little bit of sick came up.
As a side note: just today Polish president veto'ed a law that would allow similar government power. The government coalition instantly turned on "think of the children" rhetoric in response. I think they are misreading the public sentiment on this one though.
>Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online. That, of course, is DISGUSTING
What's equally disgusting is that one corporation has managed to put itself in the position to dictate these things instead. Cloudflare has literally been running a denial of service on congress.gov (any many other important domains) for at least 3 years if you aren't running latest chrome or latest firefox or similar.
Like a broken clock, he's not wrong. But it's the pot calling the kettle black.
This tweet is unhinged and disappointing. Another techbro billionaire. I've sold what little stock I had in Cloudflare and will be moving off their services.
Any askers?
Threatens retaliation against the individuals in Italy directly on top of the government, and I notice he specified "based in Italy" not "Italian citizen".
Then goes on to thank JD Vance, and crow about Elon "I censor anyone who offends my ego" Musk as being right on Free Speech being in danger.
Also the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." which sounds synonymous with FAFO which this admin is using to mean "if you resist us, we will hurt you"
If he had just said that Cloudflare is unwilling to comply with these terms and is leaving the Italian market as such, that would be one thing, but this reads like he just ordered his MAGA hat and is going to suck up to the current admin to get them to pressure another country.
Lets add the hypocrisy here too, since he says that countries shouldn't regulate outside their borders, and is then running to Uncle Same for support
> "I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials...
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
of course cloudflare deplatformed some without any court involved. it would be a whole lot more honest if they had not shown their true colors
> I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
Pretending to take a principled stand against censorship but then randomly throwing flowers to two of the biggest threats to freedom of expression is deeply hypocritical, and makes it really hard to take his reaction seriously. And let's not forget that really vile AI image that is sure to alienate all Italians against Cloudflare.
He knows the only way he wins this is if the current US Administration goes to bat for him.
At this point, I'm wondering to what extent all this batting is driving the EU calls for digital sovereignty, and to what extent those calls will be turned into actions.
EU can't build so if they firewall themselves from the US they'll just have a pretty empty Internet.
The other night I was thinking about graphene. Not the OS, the material.
- https://innovationedge.com/2010/10/13/graphene-patent-geim/So, we absolutely can get stuff done, the Americans just keep buying us up (DeepMind) or stealing it or using initimidation (Graphene) or espionage (of Airbus for benefit of Boeing way back).
We actually have websites in Europe, including the very first one.
We had more before Reddit and Metabook centralised so many.
I think we will be fine thanks
EU is extremely good at "calling for" things to happen. I haven't seen a single one of those things actually happen.
He can't win this, at best he can quit Italy and not offer any services there.
Which will makes any non-US company reconsider using Cloudflare real quick.
Indeed, but that doesn't mean I have to be fine with that. He already had a perfectly good case against that fine, but using the occasion to cozy up to actual fascists completely discredits him to anyone serious.
I don’t know the backstory but Cloudflare arguing for an open internet is super ironic, presumably he means they want the be the one to close it off and are upset that someone else is ruining their monopoly on it.
Definitely getting that vibe. Also praising M*sk and USA leadership clearly points to only having his business interests in mind.
Feels like engagement bait for attention seeking. No doubt they'll still keep the Olympics contracts as they are.
1.1.1.1 DNS is just querying root DNS servers. And @elon.jet twitter account was just querying ADS data and posting it. Its exactly same, yet this guy praises Elon.
DNS lookups via 1.1.1.1 are also directly fed into the US surveillance state so peter thiel can use his palantir dashboard to see if you are the antichrist or not.
I'm sure he has a mirror lying around somewhere?
Is agreeing with an adversary on a single point the same as praising them?
Interesting choice of words to try and make the logic sound ok. Try:
'Is praising an adversary on a single issue the same as praising them'. Yes, yes it is
Here's the backstory:
A government agency in Italy which is known nation-wide to complain and fine other institutions for the stupidest and pettiest reasons, fined another institution for a stupid and petty reason. But of course, ignorant people just see this single occurrence and make up conspiracy theories about it. (Really, if you looked at some examples of previous fines and complaints by AGCOM you would laugh your ass off independently of your political stance)
I honestly don't see the irony. I believe Cloudflare tries to argue for an open internet. I use some of their features on the free plan and it's of tremendous help, especially considering the price I pay (ie 0$). I'm actually super glad that Cloudflare exists.
USian tech-CEO posting petulant self-serving arguments about "FREEDOM" on twitter? what a cliche
cloudflare have deliberately designed their network so that every IP can serve up every cloudflare website
this means a court order can't block a single cloudflare site without blocking every cloudflare site, causing massive collateral damage
I suspect this is a deliberate business decision: an attempt to raise the "cost" of blocking so high that courts won't attempt to do it at all
and then they make arguments about "it's not technically possible", when it is (farm the target of the orders off to a separate pool of IPs)
and for DNS they could apply a filter based on the source IP country of origin
Prince: please, please, please exercise your empty threat, and withdraw your shitty company's services from Italy
and then you'll watch as Italy then raises it at the EU level, and then you'll have to do the same there too
> this means a court order can't block a single cloudflare site without blocking every cloudflare site
Not true. Cloudflare can't block only a single web site _by IP address_ but that's pretty common with IPv4, The same is true of Fastly and AWS and I'd be shocked if there's a mass-market CDN out there that has a unique IPv4 address per customer.
They can absolutely block any site they want at the application layer (SNI or Host header or whatever they use, IDK, I'm a network guy).
> I'd be shocked if there's a mass-market CDN out there that has a unique IPv4 address per customer.
fortunately you only need to farm out the ones out that are under court orders
> They can absolutely block any site they want at the application layer (SNI or Host header or whatever they use, IDK, I'm a network guy).
these court orders usually work by getting end user ISPs (which are regulated) to block or reroute the IP and/or DNS entry
neither of which can be realistically done due to conscious decisions by cloudflare
So you think it's fine that if some Italian agency orders Cloudflare to block some domain on it's 1.1.1.1 public DNS (or Google on it's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) it should be blocked for everyone on Earth who is using this DNS server, including yourself? And if you think otherwise, you are merely "upset that someone else is ruining their monopoly on it"?
I suspect the "we're an American company and we're going to get the government protection racket to threaten you" gambit isn't going to achieve the results he's hoping for.
I was reading through this and at first I saw Italy as the bad guys, demanding ridiculous asks. The moment the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." nonsense appeared, followed right after by callouts to Vance and Musk, and threats that he's going to stomp his little feet to the administration...good god, this is pathetic. He looks like a clown. A snivelling, whiny, entitled clown.
lol, ban Cloudflare from Europe. Honestly, at this point all American companies should be banned everywhere but the US, as every American oligarch like this guy does this "We're American gosh darnit!" bit while this administration talks about annexing allies. Disgusting, deplorable behaviour.
So you saw the truth first, then your ego got bruised?
Is Matthew also pro-CSAM or is there some other reason to namedrop Elon Musk right now?
Another C-suite having a meltdown because their self-perceived power is not ubiquitous
By "shadowy cabal of European media elites," is Prince referring to elected Italian officials? What have they asked Cloudflare to ban?
No. To private entities (news outlets) who, according to this law, get to decide what websites to ban without a court order or any due process
The exact same thing is implemented in Germany already (DNS-level block), and I did not see Cloudflare CEO rage posting on Twitter about it.
"you must block things in germany after it goes through a formal government process" versus "you must block things globally even for places not subject to italian law because an italian media company doesn't like it"
There's more than a subtle difference betweeen the two.
Has Germany tried to fine Cloudflare over it?
I'm in Germany and Cloudflare DNS doesn't Block eg Annas Archive for me, while my ISP does. I also don't reckon Germany tried to fine Cloudflare yet. So what is your point?
Because the German law only harms Germans, whereas the Italian law in question demands global bans.
The driving force behind this is getting pirated streams of football matches knocked offline. Currently by the time any action is taken the match is over, which is why they want the response-within-30-minutes.
This is about football streaming, the cabal media elites are right holders fighting illegal streams, which 1.1.1.1 bypasses even if filters are put at the ISP level.
Europe's censorious behavior has become completely absurd, and reading the Italian docs (as several people here have already shared) doesn't make me more sympathetic. It's a real shame, and I'm disappointed that the dream of an internet free from censorship and manipulation seems to be forgotten by so many here - in favor of political squabbling.
Makes sense to me. Italy is going to fine them. Then Italy can build their own service.
He lost me when he started thanking fascists (Vance, Musk et al) who are actively attacking speech in the US they don't agree with. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
Really like the forthrightness.
I do appreciate reading a PR, from a CEO, that's not unsalvageably tone deaf. At the first half, I was wondering what the point of this was, given if Italy thinks this is something they're allowed to apply across the globe. That instantly makes this a political issue they probably need to be talking to the State Department about. Then I got to the 2nd half, and was impressed that I wasn't immediately annoyed by the ass kissing.
I assume Cloudflare has a great PR team because this feels like a master class in rhetoric. Given how you're expected to solicit help these days.
Rhetoric aside, it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out. Italy seems to have taken out a hammer, and their d.... well, I'm just gonna hope the Internet wins this one.
> was impressed that I wasn't immediately annoyed by any ass kissing.
Did it only annoy you after reading it again?
He should be careful, a third reading and he might start to enjoy it.
No? In a disagreement with Italy, cloudflare is definitely going to need the intervention of the US administration. This (angry Twitter post) is how you're expected to ask for help in this timeline. I was expecting to annoyed with the faux allegiance. But here, I think they communicated their distain over the behavior as best as they could, while still asking for help.
I might not like it, but I understand it.
Equally, I might be wrong; but this feels to me like the post tries to as subtly as possible communicate that they have problems with the administration (my expectations for anyone who is at all ethical) While still also needing their help. And if I'm wildly incorrect; and cloudflare is actually in love with the administration, then it's still a master class in rhetoric, because they tricked me, which was probably the point?
no offense, but this seems to me like a tantrum. I'd say a far cry from rhetoric, let alone a masterclass.
> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. I really couldn’t care less about your legal philosophy, mate. I understand that you’re used to corporations setting the rules, and I’m sure that it brought you such great joy to write a little post where you got to flex about being well-connected with your country’s morally corrupt administration. However, your views on whether or not a country had a right to self-regulation, have zero impact on your obligation to comply. You don’t get to parachute in and set your own terms. Do you really think that your childish threats of ‘pulling your free plan’ and ‘not opening an office’ will have the intended effect? I genuinely can’t work out why someone didn’t tap this kid on the shoulder and suggest that he tone his rant down a bit.
The US is a sick, sick country. Nowhere else does anyone have the misplaced confidence to act this insanely stupid.
For the first couple of paragraphs, I almost agreed with this dope. Thought he was a moderate on the wrong side of things after the next couple of paragraphs, and after the AI-generated anime picture, I'm pretty sure the guy is a groyper.