Cloudflare has launched a legal action against LaLiga over IP blocking action that it says blocked millions of users from accessing unrelated websites.
As reported in Broadband TV News, websites DazcFutbolios and RBTV77 were last weekend blocked in a joint action by the Spanish football league and local ISPs after illegally distributing LaLiga matches.
LaLiga said the two pirates were using technology provided by Cloudflare to conceal their identity and evade security controls. Together, the two platforms had more than 400,000 unique monthly users in Spain.
Cloudflare called the effort misguided and said LaLiga had left it with no other option than to pursue the legal action. “LaLiga secured this blocking order without notifying cloud providers, while concealing from the court the predictable harm to third parties a
10 Comments
jonatron
It's my understanding that the usual process is to ask Cloudflare to move infringing domains from shared IP addresses to fixed IP's, before blocking.
viraptor
I can't find a violin small enough for cloudflare here. They're known for ignoring abuse and now they want to retaliate for someone blocking them like they're some kind of required utility provider? Maybe it's time for legal action from all the people randomly blocked by cloudflare without recourse?
asp1
Some context the article misses: there's a court order that allows the Spanish Football League to block websites which may be unlawfully broadcasting football, and the ISPs have to comply. Since Chrome activated ECH, LaLiga requested the order to be expanded to block individual IPs, to which the court happily obliged, and this order is being used to block Cloudflare's IPs ranges.
The result is that web browsing in Spain on weekends, when football is on, is severely impaired, with thousands of web sites going down as matches play. This is a breach of the court order itself, which clearly states that "no unrelated sites may be affected", all while the court order itself probably being illegal as well. And, of course, IPTV pirates found ways around the block.
bandaancha.eu is doing a fantastic job on the reporting of this.
karlkloss
Cloudflare's ddos protection constantly locks out non-mainstream browsers, so pot and kettle, and such.
nubinetwork
I'd be interested to see if twitch is on their block list… or if running pirated tv, movies and sports from all over the world 24/7 just isn't as visible enough to them for them to say something…
jb1991
Cloudflare is a flaming heap of garbage of a company and to see them have beef with another company like this is very ironic.
dkh
While massive overreach in the name of fighting piracy it's very on-brand for LaLiga, this seems pretty wild, even for them. I can't help but wonder if perhaps they didn't realize quite how many unrelated, legitimate sites/services that their citizens use would be affected by this.
I think burns/jokes about Cloudflare are missing the point. It's not about Cloudflare, it's about the millions of people in Spain who couldn't access a plethora of legitimate, unrelated websites and services because of the block. The block included things like Redsys, a major payments processor used by tons of ecommerce sites in Spain.
Piracy or not, you shouldn't be able to get away with this kind of collateral damage, blocking an entire population from accessing a far greater number legitimate websites.
And while I do understand their problems with piracy, LaLiga's view on the matter has always been so over-the-top and reminiscent of the false logic the record companies did in the early 2000s: LaLiga believe (or at least say, all the time) that every euro's worth of football that is pirated is a euro that has been stolen from them; that if piracy didn't exist, they would have that much more money. It's simply not the case. It's a hugely outdated viewpoint, and they shouldn't be able to cause damage to the public because of their adherence to it.
ErneX
When they started doing these blocks a few weeks ago they also took down Telegram for the whole weekend and part of Monday.
netdevphoenix
I don't understand why Cloudflare allowed itself to be use like this and is heading to court instead of just refusing to accept LaLiga's requests. They could just request them to provide appropriate evidence and make them pay for the time Cloudflare staff would need to review the evidence
Frederation
This arguement on whether LaLiga or Cloudflare are the biggest dicks is kinda dumb.
Yeah, CF has stepped in it from to time and yeah, maybe they have ego-ish proclivities. What Behemoth online service doesn't?
But at the core of this debate is about LaLiga and it's peripheral relationships dragging a lot of innocent folks along with the genuine targets of their focus.
It's like those Drift Netters
who have demonstrated they care not for the unindended species they catch. A bit of a labored metaphore but, there you have it.