A court in Rome decided that the Cloudflare should block three torrent sites through the public program DNS resolver 1.1.1.1.
The decision applies to kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro and ilcorsaronero.pro, three domains that have already been blocked by Internet service providers in Italy following an order from local regulator AGCOM.
Disappointed by the decision, Cloudflare appealed to the Milan court. The Internet infrastructure company did not try to dispute the blocking of requests targeting its customers' websites, but said such interference with its DNS resolver program is problematic because such measures are not easily geo-restricted.
"Because such a block would apply globally to all users of the DNS resolver, regardless of where they are located, it would affect end users except of its jurisdiction governmentblocking," Cloudflare said.
"So we are evaluating any state or court requests commands to block content through a globally available public DNS resolver system such as requests or commands to block content globally.”
In the appeals court, Cloudflare argued that blocking DNS is an ineffective measure that can easily be bypassed, for example with a VPN. In addition, he contested that he was subject to the jurisdiction of an Italian court.
But Cloudflare failed to convince the judges and its appeal was rejected.
Cloudflare believes these types of decisions set a dangerous precedent. The company announced, however, that it did not actually block content through 1.1.1.1, but instead implemented a "workaround" to comply with the court order.