Amazon, Google and Cloudflare are facing aggressive anti-piracy efforts in Europe

Amazon, Google and other tech giants the alarm sounded because of overly strict measures to combat piracy abroad. The companies are warning the US government that anti-piracy campaigns, particularly in France and Italy, will not only hurt international trade and cost money, but could also Unexpected censorship followed.

Recently, the I2Coalition, which represents the interests of both technology giants and many small companies such as hosting providers and VPN services, sent their proposals to the US Trade Representative. In their submission, the group criticized existing systems for blocking pirated content.

Of particular concern to technology companies is that anti-piracy measures are becoming increasingly strict. If previous restrictions had only affected internet providers, they are now trying to include DNS providers, CDN networks and VPN services in this process. In addition, any error in the system can lead to serious consequences – along with pirate resources, completely legal sites are often targeted.

A case in point is the Italian Piracy Shield system. Because of her work, Google Drive was once blocked, and after Cloudflare’s IP address was blocked, users lost access to many legal resources. In addition, the system must respond to blocking requests in just 30 minutes, which leaves almost no time to investigate and correct errors. As a result, some VPN services decided to close their servers in Italy.

But in France, a local court recently ordered Google, Cloudflare and Cisco to change the operation of their DNS systems to combat pirate sites. The companies tried to resist, pointing out technical problems and possible problems, but the court did not pay attention to their arguments. As a result, for example, OpenDNS stopped working in France.

I2Coalition emphasizes that no one is against the fight against piracy, but measures must be reasonable. Not only do the existing blocking systems require serious technical costs, but they also threaten to divide the Internet into “islands.” Therefore, the coalition calls on the US government to work with other countries to create common international standards that help keep the Internet open and secure without interfering with the growth of digital commerce.