U.S. CDN and Internet service provider Cloudflare recently submitted recommendations to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for the first time, warning that website blocking measures implemented by many countries on the grounds of combating online piracy are causing widespread disruption to U.S. technology companies and constituting digital trade barriers.
Cloudflare said that Spanish courts allowed copyright owners to propose "overly broad" IP blocking orders. Since one IP address may serve thousands of websites, such blocking has resulted in tens of thousands of legitimate websites being innocently victimized, and the affected parties have been unable to obtain judicial relief. The Spanish government is aware of this problem but has not intervened. This situation has become an important obstacle for US companies to enter the Spanish market.
In Italy, the "Piracy Shield" anti-piracy system requires network and CDN service providers to implement blocking instructions within 30 minutes. US companies pointed out that the lack of adequate safeguards resulted in a large number of irrelevant websites being mistakenly blocked. For example, in February 2024, Cloudflare's IP address was blocked, rendering tens of thousands of websites inaccessible; in October 2024, the "drive.usercontent.google.com" domain was blocked, preventing Italian users from accessing Google Drive for up to 12 hours. Cloudflare said that the Italian courts allowed rights holders to "abuse" the judicial process and issue unilateral blocking orders without the right of enterprises to defend themselves. This practice has seriously affected business activities in Italy.
France's newly passed anti-piracy bill also raises concerns, requiring mandatory blocking of not only ordinary Internet service providers, but also DNS resolvers and VPN services. Cloudflare said that some service providers were technically unable to implement it, and some US companies withdrew from the French market as a result. In addition, France plans to introduce an automated IP blocking mechanism, similar to the Italian system, which is believed to further increase the risk of false blocking and interfere with the normal operation of cross-border digital services.
Since South Korea revised the Internet Law in 2023, it has forced CDN providers to block illegal content. Relevant regulatory authorities send updated lists to US CDN companies every month. The list contains more than 1.5 million items, bringing unprecedented compliance pressure.
Cloudflare calls on the U.S. Trade Representative to pay attention to it in the 2026 annual trade barriers report and promote the elimination of relevant obstacles. The above requirements are in clear opposition to calls from copyright owners to "expand blocking measures." Currently, the U.S. Congress is also considering similar legislation. How USTR weighs the opinions of all parties in the future will be revealed after the report is released next year.