Cloudflare Reconsiders Support for Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics

Cloudflare Challenges Fine and Reevaluates Olympic Support

The American internet company Cloudflare has announced that it is considering withdrawing its services from Italy, including those provided for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, after being fined €14 million ($16 million) for failing to meet legal obligations in combating online piracy.

The Italian communications regulatory authority, Agcom, imposed the fine on Thursday, accusing the company of "continuous violation of anti-piracy law," particularly for not disabling content flagged through its "Piracy Shield" system. This system allows copyright holders to report pirated content via an automated platform, obligating service providers to block the content within 30 minutess.

Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, condemned the fine, calling it an "internet censorship scheme," arguing that the system lacks judicial oversight, appeal processes, or transparency, and demands that services block content not only in Italy but globally. The company has already launched legal challenges against the scheme and is now fighting the fine, which it deems "unfair."

Prince emphasized that the company might forfeit millions of dollars in pro bono cybersecurity services intended for the Milan-Cortina Olympics. He plans to discuss the issue with U.S. officials next week in Washington, D.C., before traveling to Lausanne for negotiations with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is organizing the Games from February 6 to 22 in northern Italy. He also warned that Cloudflare may cease its free cybersecurity services for users in Italy, remove all servers from Italian cities, and cancel investment plans in the country.

Cloudflare is a platform that provides security services, traffic management, and optimization for websites and applications, claiming control over approximately 20% of global internet traffic. Since the adoption of the Piracy Shield system in February 2024, Agcom stated that at least 65,000 fully qualified domain names and about 14,000 IP addresses have been disabled.