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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#151
post #40

[flagged]

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#152

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"…

> 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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#154

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 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?)…

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#155
post #17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#156
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

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,…

> 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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#157
post #138

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…

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...

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.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#158

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 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?)…

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

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#159

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…

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").

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#160
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

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