Appeal rejected for CloudFlare. The Milan Court reiterates the July ruling, and now the victory of the Italian record companies can be considered definitive.
CloudFlare, after the appeal was rejected, will have to block its public DNS service to three torrent sites.
Let’s see better how the Court of Milan expressed itself. We then reconstruct the chronology of a lawsuit that saw record companies in our country bring a lawsuit against CloudFlare, which had already had a favorable outcome in the summer.
The Court of Milan rejects CloudFlare’s appeal
We said that the Court of Milan has not changed its mind compared to July: the appeal of CloudFlare, which requested the injunction of the measure, was rejected.
“The Court of Milan rejected CloudFlare’s arguments on the substance of the request, confirming that the platform must comply with the ordered order or in any case be subject to penalties.”
But what does the July decision consist of?
The legal action
The legal action was initiated last July by Sony Music Entertainment Italy, Universal Music Entertainment Italy and Warner Music Italy against the US company CloudFlarewhich deals with secure browsing services and distributed DNS.
And it is here that the accusation is concentrated, which is then that of having made it possible to access three torrent sites (CorsaroNero.pro, Limetorrents.pro and kickasstorrents.to) despite the blocks previously imposed by the Authority for Guarantees in Communications (Agcom) for Italian users.
The public DNS
To illustrate, CloudFlare made available a public DNS, which is the access system to websites that “translates” the web addresses of the sites into IP addresses.
In other words, thanks to the intermediation of CloudFlare, the blocks provided by Agcom were circumvented, and it was possible to download from torrent sites. Hence, here is the accusation of the record labels, it was very easy to download copyrighted music content.
CloudFlare was aware of this possibility, and could have made sure that Agcom’s directives were not bypassed. But it did nothing in this direction.
The sentence
Despite CloudFlare’s unconvincing attempts to defend, the court has ruled in favor of the record labels. The legal action of which was coordinated by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the organization representing the interests of the record industry worldwide. Supported by the Italian Fpm (Federation against Music and Multimedia Piracy).
The American company has tried to bring up (unsuccessfully) conflicts of jurisdiction, and the uselessness of applying filters, since there are numerous other systems to override the Agcom directives.
The US company was therefore forced to inhibit access to its users to the three blocked domains. He had 30 days to comply, and for each day of delay he would have to pay a penalty of 10,000 euros.
For the first time in Italy, therefore, a sentence had hit the intermediary company, a provider of DNS services. And not directly the sites that allow the dissemination of copyrighted material.
We remind you that a month ago the Court of Milan always imposed on TNTVillage the removal of all its contents.
The statements
The precedent generated by the Milan ruling is reaffirmed by Frances Moore, CEO of IFPI.
Moore said: “CloudFlare’s services allowed users to access copyright infringing websites that steal revenue from those who invest and create music.
Confirming the original order against CloudFlare, the Milan Court has set an important precedent that online intermediaries may be forced to take effective action if their services are used for music piracy. “
Similar words come from Enzo Mazza, CEO of the Italian Music Industry Federation (FIMI). According to Mazza “this is an important decision for Italy and beyond. Cloudflare, as well as other intermediaries providing similar services, should step up their efforts to prevent users from accessing illegal websites that have been ordered to be blocked ”.