A court of Rome decided that the Cloudflare should block three torrent sites via the public DNS resolver program. 1.1.1.1.
The decision applies to kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro and ilcorsaronero.pro, three domains which have already been blocked by ISPs in Italy by order of the local regulator AGCOM.
Disappointed by the decision, Cloudflare appealed to the Milan court. The infrastructure company Internet did not try to argue against blocking requests targeting its customers' websites, but said that such interference with its DNS resolver program is problematic, as such measures are not easily geo-restricted.
"Because such a one exclusion it would apply globally to all DNS resolver users, regardless of where they are located, affecting end users except of the blocking government's jurisdiction," 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.