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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#471

Post by nkmnz »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #407
nkmnz wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting it a hundred times doesn't make your claim more correct. If your rights are infringed, you can always go to court. If you think you being blocked from accessing certain information is an infringement of Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG ("Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality [...]"), you can drag this to The Federal Constitutional Court.

No I can't, since I lack the monetary funds. My claim stands correct, going to the federal constitutional court is expensive enough that many people are barred from that option. My claim stands correct - no judicial verdict is needed for the CUII to censor websites. Don't believe me. Believe the activists [1]. [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-cuii-wie-konzerne-heimlich-webse...

new comment: you're so wrong that not even the opposite of your statement would be true. CUII is a private body, but it forces its members to go to court before they ask CUII to initiate a block:

Jede DNS-Sperre einer strukturell urheberrechtsverletzenden Webseite (SUW) wird im Rahmen der CUII gerichtlich überprüft.

Das ist freiwillige Selbstverpflichtung der CUII-Mitglieder. Denn eigentlich besteht kein Richtervorbehalt für die Sperransprüche nach § 8 Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG). Aus diesem Grund sind auch die DNS-Sperren nach dem alten Verhaltenskodex mit behördlicher Beteiligung zulässig gewesen (Siehe Fragen: “Was verändert sich durch den neuen Verhaltenskodex der CUII?” und “Warum gab es zum Juli 2025 - nach jahrelanger Arbeit - einen Systemwechsel in der CUII?”).

old comment: CUII is not a governmental body so what the hell should they need a court order for when doing the thing that their members pay them to do? If your not happy with your internet access provider being a member of CUII, switch your internet access provider. I agree that CUII should publish a list of blocked domains as part of transparent communication and proving that they are doing a good job.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#473

Post by HDThoreaun »

troyvit wrote: post #445
tokioyoyo wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.

I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down. But as a middle manager of a small nonprofi…

Cloudflare has very limited leverage here. Punishing the entire country for the actions of their elected government in hope of protest is about as good as they can do other than hoping Trump does something crazy. Every italian citizen has some say over their governments actions, even if they dont support them.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#474

Post by bflesch »

troyvit wrote: post #445
tokioyoyo wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.

I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down. But as a middle manager of a small nonprofi…

The act of threatening unrelated customers just because they are in the same country is extremely stupid.

Businesses might not care whether he tweets at JD Vance or Taylor Swift, but the risk of having your website shut down because the CEO of your firewall vendor has a psychological breakdown on Twitter is unacceptable.

It is Friday evening in Europe and the fact that Cloudflare leadership and Cloudflare legal team couldn't put out a statement to mitigate this situation within the last 5 hours shows that this guys could run the company into the ground within blink of an eye.

Remember, some weeks ago Cloudflare had an outage because of an extremely stupid engineering mishap, today it is an extremely stupid leadership mishap. How many more strikes should they be granted?

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#475

Post by tag2103 »

Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #462
Alupis wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do when the fine is more than double your annual revenue in the foreign nation, has international and geopolitical implications, impacts many other US businesses, could harm foreign relations, and will harm regular US citizens. That's exactly the type of thing the Executive Branch is supposed to deal with.

Do people not understand that companies on this scale are geopolitically important?

The Italians obviously don't

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#476

Post by bhelkey »

Foxboron wrote: post #318
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the fine amounts to over 200% of Italy-sourced revenue ($17 million fine vs. $8 million in revenue in 2024). Why would you continue doing business in Italy?

They are a conglomerate and per Matthews words "an internet infrastructure provider". Why does the local revenue matter when they are serving a global market? EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.

> EDIT: And fwiw, "Why would you continue doing business in Italy?" is not what is being proposed. They are threatening to block 55 million people from ~20% of the world wide web.

There is no mention of blocking people in Italy from using sites protected by Cloudflare. From the tweet:

> we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#477

Post by nkmnz »

jacquesm wrote: post #417
nkmnz wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, he's not bringing them up as intellectual support for his argumentative base – he's bringing them up as support for acts of retaliation. This is mostly about power and we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.

Maybe 'the economy' is not the only valid yardstick to compare countries by?

I absolutely and 100% agree! But it's the stick that others will use to force their world view down your throat. So if you want to be not only righteous, but also hold others accountable according to your standards, you need the economic power to do so.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#478

Post by hermanzegerman »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #310
hermanzegerman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tech and speech regulation is a central feature of that conflict" The only conflict is that Europeans don't want Russian Misinformation and Manipulation from foreign powers onto them. It's no accident that Musks X serves preferentially content from European Far-Right Parties. The US used the same argument for their TikTok-Ban/Forced Takeover. They also don't make a secret out of their plan to push the far-right to e…

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#479

Post by miohtama »

nathanlied wrote: post #449
t0mas88 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it with Southern Europe and the football overlords? Spain is blocking half the internet, Italy is fighting Cloudflare. What's up? Are football leagues big political donors?

Football is extremely popular, and football clubs (and their owners) are quite influential (socially and politically). But it's a little bigger than that. EU is pushing for measures against live-event piracy[1], because they frame this as a systemic threat to cultural/economic systems, giving national regulators broad cover to act aggressively. While football is quite huge in Europe at large, the impact to GDP of the…

Football, the clubs, are also major driver of money laundering. Dirty cash buys a lot of politicians.

https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/a-red-card-for-dirty-money...

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#480

Post by jules »

troyvit wrote: post #445
tokioyoyo wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has a point about why they would they offer a country services, when the country fines them more than their entire revenue in the said jurisdiction.

I agree, and I'm really split about a lot of this, because screw this ~blackmail~ extortion AGCOM was trying to pull. The only thing I'd say is that a country is more than a department, and these actions will hurt others who had no influence on AGCOM's decisions far more than it'll hurt AGCOM directly. Maybe it will create pressure against AGCOM and force them to back down. But as a middle manager of a small nonprofi…

If Italians have no influence over AGCOM, then who does?
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