An anti-piracy system designed to protect Italian football streams prevented millions of Italians from accessing Google Drive for more than 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday.
The outage was caused by the country's newly launched Piracy Shield, which blocked Google's file storage service in an effort to prevent copyright violations.
Italy passed the Piracy Shield law in December 2023, which requires internet service providers, VPNs, and public DNS services to block access to sites that illegally stream live sports, particularly football.
The system takes a “block now, check later” approach, removing websites within 30 minutes of a rights holder's complaint, with no judicial review required.
However, things went haywire when the system's aggressive blocking protocols were activated by mistake.
According to TorrentFreak, the block was caused by either human error or reckless programming.
The exact Google subdomain drive.usercontent.google.com has been added to the Piracy Shield's block list.
What was the result? Google Drive went dark in Italy.
Criticism of Piracy Shield's unchecked power began long before this incident. Giorgio Bonfiglio, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) technical manager, warned about the risks.
“Piracy Shield blocks IPs without considering the complexity of modern internet services,” according to Bonfiglio.
“If content is shared through multiple IPs, blocking part of that content becomes illogical and potentially illegal.”
A similar incident occurred in February 2024, when Piracy Shield blocked Cloudflare, resulting in widespread disruptions to school websites, ticket services, and even telecommunications companies.
At the time, Bonfiglio had already stated that changing IP addresses to avoid blocking was now simple, rendering such blocks ineffective.
The commotion escalated following the unintentional blocking. Millions of Italian users were unable to work or study due to the lack of Google Drive availability.
The blackout occurred as families and businesses attempted to access important files on the popular platform.
Bonfiglio sarcastically remarked: “While Italy's Piracy Shield blocked access to people's livelihoods, at least football games were still available to watch.”
The block was first noticed around 6 p.m. local time on Saturday. By 9 p.m., almost all access to Google Drive had been disabled.
Approximately 13.5% of users were still affected as of early Sunday morning, with 3% still experiencing domain name system (DNS) blocking issues.
The Italian government has not yet commented on the incident, and it is unclear whether Piracy Shield's operators will face any consequences.
TorrentFreak also stated that there has been no mention of compensation for the millions affected.
Andy Maxwell of TorrentFreak criticized the event, calling the Google Drive blackout more than just an IP address issue.
“This was reckless, blocking a subdomain that anyone, including a 10-year-old, could recognize as critical. “What's next?”
This debacle has only fueled suspicions about Piracy Shield. Critics argue that the platform's lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability may result in similar incidents.
As of now, the system remains intact, protecting football streams – but at what cost to the internet?
Following the Google Drive disaster, experts and critics have called for immediate reform of Italy's Piracy Shield.
Bonfiglio and others are advocating for more balanced, thoughtful regulations before the next overzealous block causes further damage.
Italy's government has yet to make a statement on how it intends to address the obvious flaws in Piracy Shield.
For the time being, businesses and students across Italy are left to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives, relieved that the damage did not occur during the workweek.