Milan’s Cathedral Square. Photo Credit: Tom Podmore
In July of 2022, the IFPI celebrated an Italian court’s interim injunction against Cloudflare (NYSE: NET), which the industry representative accused of “making it possible for users to access copyright infringing websites.” Now, the IFPI has formally responded to a new decision upholding the injunction.
London’s International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) just recently addressed this latest development in the dispute with San Francisco-headquartered Cloudflare. The latter, the IFPI claimed last summer, had been “providing services for users to access three copyright infringing BitTorrent sites.”
And these alleged copyright-infringing sites, the IFPI also indicated at the time, had previously been blocked by Italy’s Authority for Communications Guarantees (AGCOM) telecommunications regulator. Moreover, the IFPI further specified that the court had given Cloudflare 30 days “to implement technical measures to stop users accessing the identified sites via its public DNS service.”
“By ordering CloudFlare to stop providing access to these sites, the Court of Milan has made an important ruling that we believe sends a clear message to other online intermediaries that they too may be subject to action if their services are used for music piracy,” IFPI head Frances Moore relayed approximately eight months ago.
November of 2022 saw the Court of Milan dismiss Cloudflare’s appeal of the initial ruling, and now, the court has likewise dismissed “an additional application filed by Cloudflare to clarify the technical implementation of the order,” per the IFPI. Consequently, the publicly traded business must in fact cease providing access to the three above-mentioned websites, according to the same source.
“The court held that CloudFlare’s motion was outside the scope of enforcement proceedings as it addressed issues which had already been considered in the injunction proceedings,” the IFPI explained of this newest judgement. “The court also noted that Cloudflare can block websites via its public DNS service as it adopts similar measures for example in connection with other illegal or harmful content.”
And in an official statement, the 90-year-old IFPI emphasized the “important precedent” that it believes the decision has set.
“We welcome the decision today from the Court of Milan which confirmed that CloudFlare is obliged to cease providing access to three copyright infringing sites and any additional ‘mirror sites’ via its public DNS service,” reads a quote put out by the IFPI itself. “In doing so the Court of Milan has set an important precedent that online intermediaries can be required to take effective action if their services are used for music piracy.”
The IFPI kicked off 2023 by touting “the first successful blocking action targeting” stream-ripping platforms in India, before announcing (in coordination with Pro-Música Brasil) the takedown of 1,720 infringing domains and music apps in Brazil. According once again to the IFPI, the South American nation boasted the ninth-largest music market globally in 2022.