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Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

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Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#501

Post by notepad0x90 »

does he not understand that countries are...countries? "quasi-judicial" is so childish of a thing to say, of all people by a CEO.

I don't even care about the details of the law, what is he aiming to achieve here by disrespecting their government as a foreigner and accusing them of "censorship". Makes wish they'd fine him just for that tweet alone. You do what a country tells you to do as a foreigner, or you leave.

These people want immigrants in their own country who obey their own laws to be treated like animals and deported to countries they've never even heard of before, yet they don't think they're obliged to follow the laws of other countries.

Isn't this guy an HN user too @eastdakota (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eastdakota), or am I mistaken? I'd love to hear his response to this thread, just as a fly-on-the-wall.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#503

Post by anthem2025 »

alanfranz wrote: post #49

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…

Why would you be inclined to think that?

Why? Because tech companies have shown to bbe honest and transparent? Because their flouting of the law has ever been anything but extreme self interest?

FFS Grok is openly a revenge porn and CSAM generator. These aren’t good people and they aren’t the sort we want as champions of speech because they are not interested in anything but their own profits.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#504

Post by michaelt »

burkaman wrote: post #233
NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But might does make rights. Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have. If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.

This is the Stephen Miller caveman view of the world, but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. It's a very straightforward consequence of refusing to ever admit you are wrong. "If I did it, then I must have had the right to do it." It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights. The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire…

> it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. [...] It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights.

Or it's an attempt to reconcile the philosophical concept of rights with global politics and observed reality.

Does an Afghan girl have a right to education? A Uyghur Muslim a right to freedom of religion? A Palestinian a right to food? A Hong Kong resident a right to freedom of expression?

It would appear that in these cases, the politicians commanding the loyalty of the men with guns do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.

Of course, that's not the only reasonable line of thinking. Just because people in distant lands don't have certain rights in practice, I have those rights because I live in a great country with strong institutions and the rule of law.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#505

Post by enricotal »

alanfranz wrote: post #49

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…

Also another Italian here. For context, the "Piracy Shield" mentioned in the order is basically a legislative hacksaw authorized by the regulator (AGCOM) primarily to protect Serie A football rights. Soccer rules Italy more than the Vatican..

It’s a mess technically: it mandates ISPs and DNS providers to block IPs/domains within 30 minutes of a report, with zero judicial oversight. It’s infamous locally for false positives—it has previously taken down Google Drive nodes and random legitimate CDNs just because they shared an IP with a pirate stream.

The NUCLEAR threat regarding the 2026 Winter Olympics (Milano-Cortina) is the real leverage here. He’s bypassing the regulator and putting a gun to the government’s head regarding national prestige and infrastructure security.

My personal take idea likely outcome: Cloudflare wins.

EU Law: The order almost certainly violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding general monitoring obligations and country-of-origin principles. Realpolitik: The Italian government can't risk the Olympics infrastructure getting DDoS'd into oblivion because AGCOM picked a fight they can't win. They will likely settle for a standard, court-ordered geo-block down the road, but the idea of Cloudflare integrating with a broken 30-minute takedown API is dead on arrival.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#506

Post by Dylan16807 »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #486
Dylan16807 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't make everything into us versus them. Also that paragraph is very critical as far as praise goes.

> don't make everything into us versus them Why not? There are real people out there who wish us harm, are we supposed to just take it?

Rejecting the system, everyone in it, and everyone that's willing to interact with it, is not a way to get good outcomes. No don't "just take it" but encouraging one of the good opinions of the vice president is fine.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#507

Post by user34283 »

bflesch wrote: post #55
grayhatter wrote: post #30

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,…

Musk and JD Vance are not "extremely unpopular in the EU", they are primarily unpopular with progressives, regardless of the location.

It sounds like you're just upset the Cloudflare CEO sides with conservatives on this particular issue.

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#508

Post by ilogik »

betaby wrote: post #350
gibbsnich wrote: post #202

If american corps do not want to play according to European rules: go ahead, just stop doing business in Europe. Europe will be fine! Understand that there are other things than the US‘s commercial interests even though it seems ATM that’s everything the US is: commercial interests. On the east, on the west: Wake up!

> Europe will be fine! Unfortunately, no. Europe is not fine and won't be fine anytime soon. CloudFlare's situation is one of the cases.

I don't fear getting shot by police. Or fear for my kid's while he's in school. Or medical debt

We can live without cloudflare

Re: Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

#509

Post by jp57 »

greyface- wrote: post #436
brightball wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them? 100% support whatever Cloudflare has to do to win this fight. IMO the timing of something like this in the middle of the Elon + X vs UK censorship fight with the current administration providing support is probably the best case scenario. People aren't going to want to hear that, but in this case it…

> Wasn't 1.1.1.1 explicitly created to help people in countries with government internet restrictions to get around them? No, it was explicitly created to receive and study the stream of "garbage traffic" being sent to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, which were previously held by APNIC and donated to Cloudflare on this basis. https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/ > APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and…

By these quotes, it was created to serve "a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system", and the service of help in studying the garbage traffic was offered in exchange for gaining controll of the address(es).
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