Italy’s Piracy Shield anti-piracy system reportedly launched last week , albeit in limited fashion.

Whether the platform had any impact on pirate IPTV providers offering the big game last Friday is unclear but plans supporting a full-on assault are pressing ahead.

Technical and Operational Requirements

A new document released by AGCOM describes Piracy Shield as a “single technology platform with automated operation” and elsewhere as a piece of “machine-to-machine platform management software.”

The document goes into some detail on its operational and technical requirements including its stated purpose: Automated handling of reports from rightsholders for the purpose of ensuring timely and effective protection of rights and, specifically, intervention within thirty minutes of the report in accordance with the manner and procedure regulated therein.

Various pieces of information reported last week by local news outlet DDAY.it are confirmed with extra detail. In addition to a roundtable meeting on September 7, 2023, attended by the National Cybersecurity Agency, the Guardia di Finanza, the Postal Police, and representatives of the Ministry of Enterprise, discussions were initiated with search engine providers and, more generally, “information society service providers involved in any capacity in website accessibility of illegal services other than ISPs.”

IPv4 Scarcity and Other Technical Issues

ISP-side user manuals for Piracy Shield were emailed on October 11 and on November 13, AGCOM’s position on various technical issues raised by anti-piracy groups, rightsholders including Serie A and DAZN, and ISPs, were finally clarified.

One item mentioned in more detail concerns IPv4 IP addresses. They are often reported as running out and it appears AGCOM intends to block as many as it needs to.

With reference to two specific issues, pertaining to the alleged and gradual depletion, following the implementation of the blocks, of IPv4 addresses, which constitute a scarce resource, and to the requested refreshments for the costs incurred for the implementations necessary for the operation of the platform, it was clarified that the law does not give the Authority powers in this regard, but that it reserves the right to make a report to the Government in the face of the evidence provided.

Another issue appears to refer to service provider concerns over the volume of domains and/or IP addresses they could be expected to block during the transitional phase leading up to the “full deployment of the platform’s functionalities.”

“In this sense, the indications regarding the maximum number of IPs and FQDNs [fully qualified domains] to be blocked in the thirty minutes and the distinction between theoretical SLA [service-level agreement] and actual SLA aimed at taking into account, at this stage, the limitations represented by some ISPs in terms of the maximum number of tickets to be handled in the thirty minutes should be understood,” the document adds.

All Entities Involved in Accessibility of Pirate Services Must Block

When lawmakers gave Italy’s new blocking regime the green light during the summer, the text made it clear that blocking instructions would not be limited to regular ISPs. The relevant section (Paragraph 5 Art. 2) for reference below;

The document issued by AGCOM acts as a clear reminder of the above and specifically highlights that VPN and DNS providers are no exception.

“[A]ll parties in any capacity involved in the accessibility of illegally disseminated content – and therefore also, by way of example and not limitation – VPN and open DNS service providers, will have to execute the blocks requested by the Authority [AGCOM] including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform or otherwise implementing measures that prevent the user from reaching that content,” the notice reads.

Whether the DNS provider requirement will be affected by Cloudflare’s recent win over Sony in Germany is unclear. The decision was grounded in EU law and Cloudflare has already signaled that it will push back against any future blocking demands .

How VPN providers will respond is currently unknown. Demands to block access to certain platforms have been handled differently depending on circumstances and geography.

Some providers previously agreed to limited blocking in the United States as part of settlements in civil actions. When asked to block services in Russia, others simply pulled out. Whether that would prevent their IP addresses from being blocked in Italy seems unlikely.

Search Engines Included Too, Google Appears to Be Playing Ball

The relevant section of the new law is in some ways even more broad when it comes to search engines such as Google. Whether they are directly involved in accessibility or not, they’re still required to take action.

AGCOM suggests that Google understands its obligations and is also prepared to take things further. The company says it will deindex offending platforms from search and also remove their ability to advertise.

“Since this is a dynamic blocking, the search engine therefore undertakes to perform de-indexing of all websites/telematic addresses that are the subject of subsequent reports that can also be communicated by rights holders accredited to the platform,” AGCOM writes.

“Google has shared a procedural mode for the communication of the blocking list, and the Company has also committed to the timely removal of all advertisements that do not comply with the company’s policies, having particular regard to those that invest the promotion of pirate sites referring to protected sporting events.”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In 2021 , Sony Music obtained an injunction that ordered DNS resolver Quad9 to block a popular pirate site.

The injunction, issued by the District Court of Hamburg, required the Swiss DNS resolver to block access to a site that links to pirated music.

The name of the targeted site initially remained a mystery, but we deduced that Canna.to was the target. That site was, not coincidentally, also targeted by a voluntary blocking agreement previously signed by rightsholders and ISPs.

The music groups presumably targeted the site to prevent people from circumventing the ISP blockades. However, the non-profit Quad9 Foundation was not happy with this far-reaching measure and fiercely opposed the injunction.

The DNS resolver stressed that it doesn’t condone piracy but believes that enforcing blocking measures through third-party intermediaries, that don’t host any content, is a step too far.

This initial objection failed; the Regional Court in Hamburg upheld the blocking injunction . However, the case continued at the Higher Regional Court in Dresden where Quad9 managed to turn the case around.

Quad9 Books Key Victory in Court

The Higher Regional Court ultimately concludes that DNS resolvers can’t be held liable under German and European law. These services are neutral intermediaries and don’t play a “central role” in the copyright-infringing activities of pirate sites.

The court stresses that the DNS resolver doesn’t host any pirated content and its users don’t make copyright-infringing content available either. DNS resolvers simply translate a domain name request to an IP-address.

“[Quad9] does not initiate this transmission, nor does it select the addressee and the content of the information. It plays a less central role than those who have committed the infringement themselves (site operator) or have contributed to it by providing services (hosting provider),” the court writes (translated).

“The users of [Quad9] do not make infringing content publicly available but at best request it. The defendant does not store this content. It doesn’t transmit such content, but only the domain request of a user and the IP address of the server on which this content may be stored.”

Since Quad9 doesn’t play a “central role” in the copyright infringing activities it can’t be held liable. As a result, it can’t be ordered by an injunction to block access to the pirate site.

The public DNS resolver is pleased with the outcome and immediately removed all blocking measures on its system. This means that all domains of CannaPower, also dubbed the “ Queen of Music Warez ”, are available globally once again.

“Today marks a bright moment in the efforts to keep the internet a neutral and trusted resource for everyone,” Quad9 writes while thanking all supporters of its legal efforts.

This is the second order of this kind in Germany this fall. Previously, the Higher Regional Court of Cologne concluded that Cloudflare doesn’t have to take any measures on its public DNS resolver in response to copyright complaints, as the service operates in a purely passive, automatic, and neutral manner.

Trouble Ahead in Italy

The Dresden court stressed that its decision is final, which means the case cannot go to a higher court. This limits Sony’s options to appeal the verdict. However, the trouble for Quad9 isn’t over yet.

Over in Italy, Sony Music Italy, Universal Music Italy, Warner Music Italy, and the Italian Music Industry Federation, have recently requested similar DNS blocking measures from Quad9.

The music companies haven’t filed a lawsuit yet but want the DNS provider to ban the domain names of three torrent sites: LimeTorrents, KickassTorrents, and Ilcorsaronero. These three targets were not chosen at random. An Italian court previously ordered Cloudflare’s DNS resolver to block the same domain names.

Quad9 is determined to fight this blocking request in Italy, but it first wants to make sure that the German case is final. In the meantime, the DNS resolver has complied with the Italian request by blocking the aforementioned torrent sites globally.

—

A copy of the order from the Higher Regional Court in Dresden is available here ( German, pdf ) and a machine-translated English copy can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Copyright holders have made serious work of website blocking in recent years, expanding the practice to over forty countries worldwide.

In Germany, for example, the largest Internet providers agreed to voluntarily block pirate sites as part of a deal they struck with rightsholders.

These blockades, which are put in place following a thorough vetting process, are generally implemented at DNS level. This is a relatively easy option, as all ISPs have their own DNS resolvers.

The downside of this simple measure is that it’s easy to bypass. Instead of using the ISPs’ DNS resolvers, subscribers can switch to public alternatives offered by Cloudflare, Google, OpenDNS, or Quad9. This relatively simple change usually renders blocking efforts useless.

Pirate Site DNS Blocking

Copyright holders are aware of this weakness. In an attempt to broaden the impact of their anti-piracy efforts, they sued Quad9 , which was required to implement a global pirate site blockade . Meanwhile, Cloudflare also found itself in the crosshairs.

The German branch of Universal Music previously sued Cloudflare for offering its services to pirate site DDL-Music. The Internet infrastructure company lost this legal battle in the first instance, before the case moved to the Higher Regional Court of Cologne.

The appeal wasn’t just about Cloudflare terminating services to DDL-Music as a customer but also the implementation of an expanded DNS blockade. Universal demanded that Cloudflare should block the pirate site for all users of its publicly available 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver.

Last month, the Higher Court concluded that Cloudflare doesn’t have to take any measures on its public DNS resolver in response to copyright complaints, as the service operates in a purely passive, automatic, and neutral manner. As a pass-through service, it is not liable for third-party actions under German and EU law.

In a blog post , Cloudflare’s Senior Associate General Counsel, Patrick Nemeroff, applauds the verdict. The American company has always argued that public DNS resolvers are neutral services.

Nemeroff notes that DNS servers are not a good place to try to moderate content on the Internet. This isn’t just disproportionate but also ineffective.

“That’s a position we’ve long advocated, because blocking through public resolvers is ineffective and disproportionate, and it does not allow for much-needed transparency as to what is blocked and why,” he writes.

Ineffective

Cloudflare equates its DNS resolver to a phone book that people historically used to look up someone’s number. In a similar vein, DNS servers link a domain name to an IP-address, allowing people to access a website without having to memorize a string of numbers.

Blocking a domain by tampering with a DNS resolver doesn’t take down the website. People can still use alternative DNS providers, build their own DNS solution, or simply enter the site’s IP-address manually.

“[I]t’s not even effective. Traditionally, website operators or hosting providers are ordered to remove infringing or illegal content, which is an effective way to make sure that information is no longer available.

“A DNS block works only as long as the individual continues to use the resolver, and the content remains available and will become accessible again as soon as they switch to another resolver, or build their own,” Nemeroff adds.

Disproportionate

Copyright holders are aware of this, of course, and would counter that doing something is better than nothing at all. At the moment, many ISPs also rely on DNS blockades and that tends to stop at least part of the traffic to pirate sites.

Cloudflare stresses that public DNS resolvers shouldn’t be compared to ISPs’ DNS servers. The main difference lies in the audience, which is global in Cloudflare’s case. This means that basic DNS blockades would apply globally too.

“[P]ublic DNS resolvers aren’t the same as DNS resolvers operated by a local ISP. Public DNS resolvers typically operate the same way around the globe. That means that if a public resolver applied the block the way an ISP does, it would apply everywhere.”

There are technical solutions to apply blockades more locally over DNS, but that would require more data gathering, which limits the privacy of the public at large.

“Blocking orders directed at public resolvers would require the collection of information about where the requests are coming from in order to limit these negative impacts while demonstrating compliance. That would be bad for personal privacy and bad for the Internet.”

The Fight Continues

The verdict of the Higher Regional Court is not entirely positive for Cloudflare, as it further clarified that the company can be held liable for pirate sites that use its CDN services. The case at hand revolves around DDL-Music, which is already defunct, but in future could expand to other Cloudflare customers such as The Pirate Bay.

In addition, the DNS battle isn’t over either. There are similar legal battles ongoing against other providers such as Quad9 while Cloudflare itself has been targeted in Italy as well.

“While the Higher Regional Court’s decision represents important progress on the DNS issue, the fight over how best to address online infringement continues,” Cloudflare notes.

Cloudflare says that it will continue to protest such orders going forward and hopes that the Higher Regional Court’s reasoning on the DNS issue, which is partly grounded in EU law, will help to that end.

“This decision marks further progress in Cloudflare’s fight to ensure that efforts to address online infringement are compatible with the technical nature of various Internet services, and with important legal and human rights principles around due process, transparency, and proportionality.”

“We will continue that battle both through public advocacy and, as necessary, through litigation, as one more part of helping build a better Internet,” Nemeroff concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Unanimously approved by the Chamber of Deputies back in March and then unanimously approved by the Senate earlier this month, Italy’s new anti-piracy law has just been unanimously approved by telecoms regulator AGCOM.

In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM welcomed the amendments to Online Copyright Enforcement regulation 680/13/CONS , which concern measures to counter the illegal distribution of live sports streams, as laid out in Resolution 189/23/CONS.

The new provisions grant AGCOM the power to issue “dynamic injunctions” against online service providers of all kinds, a privilege usually reserved for judges in Europe’s highest courts. The aim is to streamline blocking measures against unlicensed IPTV services, with the goal of rendering them inaccessible across all of Italy.

“With such measures, it will be possible to disable access to pirated content in the first 30 minutes of the event broadcast by blocking DNS resolution of domain names and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses uniquely intended for illicit activities,” AGCOM says.

Dated July 14, 2023, the law ( LEGGE 14 luglio 2023, n. 93 ) underpinning the new measures will come into force on August 8, at which point AGCOM says it will be able to disrupt the pirated broadcasting of all events transmitted live, whether sport-related or otherwise.

“With this amendment, in perfect synchrony with the changes introduced by Parliament, AGCOM is once again at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy activity,” says AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio .

Nationwide dynamic blocking measures aren’t the only changes heading Italy’s way.

Penalties For Challenging AGCOM’s New Powers

When AGCOM issues blocking instructions to service providers, their details will be passed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome.

After carrying out AGCOM’s instructions, those providers will be required to send a report “without delay” to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It must detail “all activities carried out in fulfillment of the aforementioned measures” along with “any existing data or information in their possession that may allow for the identification of the providers of the content disseminated abusively.”

In other words, ISPs will be expected to block pirates and gather intelligence on the way. Failure to comply with the instructions of AGCOM will result in a sanction as laid out in LEGGE 31 luglio 1997, n. 249 (Law 249 of July 31, 1997); an administrative fine of 20 million lira to 500 million lira, or in today’s currency – €10,620 to €265,000.

Those involved in the supply/distribution of infringing streams will now face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to €15,000. That’s just €5,000 higher than the minimum punishment intermediaries risk should they fail to follow blocking instructions. Notably, it’s still €250,000 less than the maximum fine a service provider could face if they fail to block piracy carried out by actual pirates.

Watch Pirate Streams? There’s a Fine For That

Unlike the United States where simply consuming pirated streams probably isn’t illegal, in 2017 the Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed that consuming illicit streams in the EU runs contrary to law .

With new deterrents in place against operators of pirate services and otherwise innocent online service providers, Italy has a new deterrent for people who consume pirated streams. From August 8, 2023, they risk a fine of up to €5,000. At least on paper, that has the potential to become quite interesting.

IPSOS research carried out in Italy over the past few years found that roughly 25% of the adult population consume pirate IPTV streams to some extent during a year.

Italy has a population of around 59 million so even with some aggressive rounding that’s still a few million potential pirates. How evidence of this offense can be obtained and then attributed to an individual is unclear.

Presumably, the intent is to target people who buy IPTV packages, but in any event, the overriding aim is to deter any involvement in illegal streams, no matter where they begin, or where they end.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

The protracted arms race between criminals who wage distributed denial-of-service attacks and the defenders who attempt to stop them continues, as the former embraces “alarming” new methods to make their online offensives more powerful and destructive, researchers from content-delivery network Cloudflare reported Wednesday.

With a global network spanning more than 300 cities in more than 100 countries around the world, Cloudflare has visibility into these types of attacks that’s shared by only a handful of other companies. The company said it delivers more than 63 million network requests per second and more than 2 trillion domain lookups per day during peak times. Among the services that Cloudflare provides is mitigation for the attacks, which are typically referred to by the abbreviation DDoS.

Alarming escalation

“In recent months, there's been an alarming escalation in the sophistication of DDoS attacks,” Cloudflare researchers Omer Yoachimik and Jorge Pacheco wrote Wednesday in a threat report that recaps highlights during the second quarter of this year. “And even the largest and most sophisticated attacks that we’ve seen may only last a few minutes or even seconds—which doesn’t give a human sufficient time to respond.”

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Orders for ISPs to block sites on copyright infringement grounds used to be rare and controversial. Any imposition of ‘internet police’ duties angered ISPs; blocking wouldn’t end with pirate sites, some warned.

Court Orders ISPs to Block Uptobox

The launch of regulator ARCOM in early 2022 allowed France to block pirate sites on an industrial scale, and it wasted no time in doing so. Self-reported results hailed site-blocking measures as extremely effective and therefore totally justified.

ISPs now partner with rightsholders to ensure blocking goes smoothly, meaning the friction and fears of the past remain there. We’re informed that ISPs blocked 1,299 domain names under this system in 2022 but in common with the websites themselves, their names aren’t for public consumption.

Court processes leading to blocking are more open, a recent case against Z-Library , for example. Thanks to a report by French journalist Marc Rees this week, customers of local ISP Orange discovered why popular file-hosting site Uptobox was no longer accessible.

Movie Industry Targets Uptobox

According to SimilarWeb data, last month Uptobox received 10 million visits from French users. Give or take, that accounts for roughly a third of its 34 million visits in April. The site has been around since 2011 and gained popularity by making it easy for users to upload, store, and share files with others.

Uptobox has no search feature on the site but there’s no denying its popularity among pirates. There’s no money to be earned directly but users can earn points according to the popularity of their files. When they have accumulated enough, points can be exchanged for access to premium features, such as derestricted access to the site’s comprehensive API .

Almost inevitably, Uptobox became a candidate for blocking. On behalf of industry groups including National Federation of Film Distributors (FNEF) and several others, an investigation conducted by local anti-piracy group ALPA found 25,500 active download links on Uptobox, the majority offering unauthorized access to protected audiovisual works.

Access to that content was reportedly provided by “no less” than 113 third-party indexing sites, including Filmoflix, FilmGratuit, Wawacity and Zone-Téléchargement. All of these sites had previously been deemed infringing by the Tribunal de Paris , and responses to takedown notices issued by ALPA were described as “neither credible nor effective.”

Another Judgment, More Blocking

On March 29, 2023, five major ISPs – Orange, Bouygues Télécom, Free, SFR and SFR Fiber – were informed of the blocking application. The court handed down a judgment in favor of the movie groups on May 11 and Orange became the first ISP to implement the blocks, linforme reports.

The four remaining ISPs are expected to implement similar blocking in the coming days and maintain it for 18 months. Any costs incurred while blocking the domains listed below are not recoverable from the movie companies.

1. Uptobox.com
2. Uptostream.com
3. Uptobox.fr
4. Uptostream.com
5. Beta-uptobox.com
6. Uptostream.net

Whether the blocking order can be modified to include additional domains isn’t yet clear. Dynamic injunctions are becoming more common as rightsholders adapt to blocking countermeasures, so it’s highly likely rightsholders will seek to include additional domains. Blocking these six domains alone won’t hinder the site at all since DNS blocking is defeated in seconds.

Blocking Never Goes Wrong, Mostly

ARCOM’s blocking decisions are not for public consumption, so broader oversight and general accountability remain lacking. That has some people worried, especially after events reported last weekend.

According to a Le Monde report , Telegram’s ‘t.me’ domain was suddenly rendered inaccessible on Saturday after most ISPs in France were issued with blocking instructions.

The exact circumstances remain unclear but it appears that instead of requesting a block against a specific URL (https://t.me/specific-content-here), “human error” led to the blocking of t.me and everything behind it. As a result, all of Telegram remained inaccessible for several hours until the error was rectified.

A technical analysis of the blocking mechanism reveals that the aim of the blocking was to prevent serious crime. Due to the blunder, visitors who attempted to visit t.me were diverted to a government website which recorded their visit and linked it the crime in question.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Last month a bill crafted to crack down on pirate IPTV services was unanimously approved by Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.

If passed by the Senate, broadcasters through telecoms regulator AGCOM will have new powers to compel internet service providers to block pirate streams in a matter of minutes, potentially seconds. Site-blocking measures to deal with piracy are nothing new in Italy, but by narrowing the blocking window, the window for correcting errors is narrowed too.

Italy’s ‘Mega-Firewall’

The Association of Italian Internet Providers ( AIIP ) represents the interests of small to medium-sized ISPs in Italy. Given that ISPs are already required to implement AGCOM’s blocking instructions under the current regime, it follows that they will also have key responsibilities under the proposed rapid blocking system.

AIIP recently revealed that it had sent a memorandum to the authorities detailing its concerns over the current proposals, which are already in the final stages before becoming law.

President of AIIP, Giovanni Zorzoni, says that the objective appears to be the creation of a “mega-firewall” managed by AGCOM which will have the legal authority to compel internet service providers to implement it, regardless of the inherent risks.

“The creation of a homogeneous infrastructure based on a synchronous filtering system, capable of interfacing simultaneously with the operators offering access to the Internet, with the CDNs and with the Cloud operators, constitutes a single susceptible ‘point of failure’ to undermine the security and resilience of national networks,” Zorzoni warns.

Critical Need to Protect Critical Infrastructure

AIIP says it has always been in favor of copyright protection but says the speed at which the blocking proposals are being pushed through is a cause for concern. AIIP says that in advance of the Senate’s forthcoming examination, it is seeking a reassessment to ensure an adequate balance between the protection of intellectual property on one hand, and the protection of the internet ecosystem on the other.

AIIP reports progress in the form of a government commitment to evaluate the preparation of a “whitelist” of IP addresses and servers for the root zone of the Domain Name System (DNS) that can not be included in the blocking program. Since this would minimize the risks of “erroneously disabling critical systems,” AIIP hopes the government will fully implement the proposal.

Who Pays to Enforce Copyrights?

According to AIIP, internet service providers will be required to implement the new blocking system. It will entail “significant costs” that will fall first on ISPs, but ultimately trickle down to their customers.

“Precisely with respect to costs, the association highlights the unreasonableness of downloading them to access operators, third parties without any responsibility for the offenses, and therefore indirectly to Italian users, rather than to the subjects who will directly benefit from the new tool, i.e the rights holders,” AIIP says.

Not only are ISPs concerned that their customers will end up footing the bill for blocking, they’re also worried about who pays when it all goes wrong.

“We have asked the politicians to add an article to the text of the provision which excludes the legal liability of service providers in the event that they find themselves slavishly executing the Authority’s order,” Zorzoni says .

“Let’s imagine, for example, that while executing the filtering operation, the operator blocks IP addresses that carry not only illegal traffic but also legal traffic; or that what had been indicated as illegal in reality is not; here, in all these cases, it could be the service operators who get involved, for which we ask for the necessary protections.”

Precise Blocking to Date Doesn’t Eliminate Future Disasters

As reported last month, Italy’s blocking program currently covers more than 3,200 domains. Our analysis of those domains reveals legitimate reasons for blocking, all of which can be cross-referenced with transparency reports published by AGCOM.

The big question is what happens to that methodical and transparent system when decisions are made on the fly in an attempt to block access to more mobile pirated streams of live events.

Will AGCOM commit to publishing the details of servers and IP addresses that are subjected to blocking in the way that it currently does for domains? Will it publish the names of the companies who requested those online locations to be blocked so there’s complete transparency when something goes wrong?

The indication from AIIP that ISPs face potential liability suggests that both costs and risks are already being pushed down the line, in a direction that favors those who stand to benefit most from the new blocking regime.

That Italian internet users seem destined to indirectly pay for site blocking comes as no real surprise. If the project works as planned and pirate services do indeed become more difficult to access, it will be no surprise to see the prices of legitimate TV subscriptions rise either.

After all the hard work, why would any broadcaster that has paid for exclusivity not seek to maximize profits in a market with no competitors? Only time will tell if Italians will effectively get to pay for blocking twice, but it certainly can’t be ruled out.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Website blocking has become an increasingly common anti-piracy tool. ISPs in dozens of countries have been ordered by courts to block pirate sites.

More recently, these blocking requests have expanded to DNS providers as well. In Germany, for example, a court ordered DNS resolver Quad9 to prevent users from accessing the music piracy site Canna.to.

Court Ordered Cloudflare to Block Torrent Sites

As one of the larger DNS resolvers, Cloudflare is also under fire. In Italy, several music companies, including Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal, took Cloudflare to court, demanding the blocking of three torrent sites on the company’s freely available 1.1.1.1 resolver.

Last year, an Italian court sided with the music companies . Through an interim order, the court ordered the blocking of kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro, and ilcorsaronero.pro, three domains that are already blocked by ISPs in Italy following an order from local regulator AGCOM.

Cloudflare was unhappy with the court’s decision and immediately protested the injunction. The challenge failed last November when the court upheld its initial ruling , discarding Cloudflare’s objections.

Among other things, the court held that the blocking order doesn’t require the DNS resolver to surveil user activity, as Cloudflare challenged. A general monitoring obligation for online intermediaries would violate EU law, but the court determined that wasn’t relevant in this case.

“Cloudflare’s obligation to intervene to prevent the resolution of names does not derive from a general duty of surveillance but arises with the reporting of the specific illegal activity carried out through the public DNS service,” the court held.

Court Confirms DNS Blocking Requirement

The ruling was a setback for Cloudflare, but that wasn’t its only challenge. The American company filed an additional application where it requested clarification on the technical implementation of the blocking order. According to Cloudflare, blocking measures severely interrupt its DNS service, also in relation to competitors.

In a new ruling last week, the Court of Milan dismissed these arguments as well. According to the court, the original order already confirmed that blocking the site is technically feasible. Any issues regarding the technical efficiency of the measures are outside of the scope of the injunction proceedings.

The Court of Milan further highlighted that Cloudflare already blocks content on its DNS servers. For example, on its DNS resolver for families .

“The evidence on record seems to suggest that the appellant itself sets up general preventive verification systems on the content of the sites it serves, with regard to the monitoring of content unsuitable for minors or for crimes related to pedophilia,” the court noted.

Rightsholders Prepare Follow-Up Requests

The music companies are pleased with the court’s confirmation. According to music industry group IFPI, it sets an important precedent, confirming that online intermediaries, including DNS resolvers, can be required to take anti-piracy measures.

While the present order only applies to three sites, local telecoms regulator AGCOM has already ordered local ISPs to block thousands of piracy-related domains. This means that Cloudflare could also be subjected to follow-up requests.

Enzo Mazza, CEO of Italian music industry group FIMI , informs TorrentFreak that the music industry does indeed have plans to request additional blockades. Not just from Cloudflare, but also from other online intermediaries.

“We will continue our strategy based on blocking orders issued by AGCOM. This will involve new requests to Cloudflare and potentially other similar platforms not complying with the AGCOM blocking orders,” Mazza says.

Cloudflare Vowed to Fight

TorrentFreak reached out to Cloudflare for a comment on the dismissal, but we received no immediate response. The company previously said that it would do everything it could to protest DNS blocking orders, as these could affect other countries as well.

“Because such a block would apply globally to all users of the resolver, regardless of where they are located, it would affect end users outside of the blocking government’s jurisdiction,” Cloudflare noted .

Last September, the company said that it hadn’t blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver yet. Instead, it relies on an “alternative remedy” to comply with the Italian court order.

Following the most recent court order, Cloudflare’s options to appeal against the interim injunctions are exhausted. The company could still file a lawsuit to challenge the merits of the blocking requirements, however.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.