Cloudflare Reports Surge in Geo-Blocked Pirate Site Domains

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📰 New article from TorrentFreak

Cloudflare Reports Surge in Geo-Blocked Pirate Site Domains

https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-reports-surge-in-geo-blocked-pirate-site-domains/

Cloudflare’s Geo-Block Boom: nearly 3,000 pirate sites blocked in 6 months

Cloudflare—behind nearly 20% of the web—is finally bending to pressure over pirate sites. In just six months (H2 2025), it geo-blocked 2,791 domains, a massive jump from just 308 the previous year. Why the surge? Court orders—and new laws—are forcing the CDN giant to act.

📍 Where it’s happening:

  • đŸ‡«đŸ‡· France & 🇧đŸ‡Ș Belgium: Cloudflare complies when named in court orders. Belgium adds illegal gambling sites to the list.
  • đŸ‡°đŸ‡· South Korea: A new law mandates CDN-level blocking—Cloudflare restricts access only for users in Korea (not globally).
  • 🇬🇧 UK: Voluntary blocking under an old High Court ruling (Cloudflare isn’t officially party to it).

DNS vs. CDN: Cloudflare says geo-blocking via its CDN services sometimes reduces the need to block via 1.1.1.1 DNS—though it insists it hasn’t used its public DNS resolver to block content. Still, Italy isn’t buying it: the country fined Cloudflare €14M for refusing to block pirate sites through 1.1.1.1 under its “Piracy Shield” law.

đŸ€– Automation takes over: Of the 67,941 takedowns Cloudflare acted on in H2 2025, over 64,000 were handled automatically—part of a new system rolled out last year. Also axed: 59,843 R2 storage accounts.

Bottom line: Cloudflare isn’t going full censor—but it’s getting much pickier about who gets its services.

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