My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1np6kyn/my_games_server_is_blocked_in_spain_whenever/

by greazy • 10 months ago

431 222 10 months ago

old.reddit.com

4ndrewl• 10 months ago

pmontra• 10 months ago

Yes, we know. Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches.

It would be more interesting to know if something is getting done about this. Other businesses must work, people must communicate, the very same Spanish state must keep working. Is there any protest with at least a slight amount of hope?

Nyr• 10 months ago

Internet mostly works in Spain when there is a match: one can see traffic figures from the mayor exchange points: they are unaffected.

Big businesses are unaffected, since LaLiga will quickly reverse any block that impacts popular websites and risks triggering significant public outcry.

Most people in Spain don’t care — and many aren’t even aware of the overly broad blocks.

Cloudflare and RootedCON are challenging this in court, but it may take many years before a final outcome is reached.

CaptainOfCoit2• 10 months ago

Apparently it's not being communicated properly, or you don't actually read what you come across, because "Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches" isn't true at all.

Large parts are blocked, yes, as collateral damage. But it doesn't seem like they're completely switching it off, as obviously then there would be huge protests, mostly because people wouldn't be able to legally watch the games then!

Telemakhos• 10 months ago

the very same Spanish state must keep working

“Vuelva usted mañana.”

PlotCitizen2• 10 months ago

Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches.

There's a distinction between the above statement and the truth, which is that CloudFlare and other large CDNs do not work in Spain when there are football matches.

Yes, it's not CloudFlare's fault in this instance, since I believe CloudFlare is not being notified to take action in real time. The blocking needs to happen quickly to block access to illegal streams of a live event. My understanding is that CloudFlare is largely out of the picture when this decision is happening, and CloudFlare is only taking the blame since that's what Twitch uses, which also can't react as quickly as La Liga wants.

That being said there is a solution to this that helps protect from collateral as well as the decentralized open nature of the internet: moving away from those large CDNs

array_key_first2• 10 months ago

I think moving away from cloudflare is not a solution because:

1. You need CDNs for reasonable web performance, especially on mobile. Hitting your dedicated server for every static asset like images is going to bring latency through the roof.

2. Many companies don't have a physical presence in Europe, but are still able to achieve adequate performance because of CDNs.

3. If everyone just moves off of cloudflare, the blocking would just increase. Nothing would be solved if even bigger ranges are blocked, and probably even more stuff would break.

chakintosh• 10 months ago

If only Tebas put this much energy into improving LaLiga's awful and outright shady refereeing and the rampant racism problem.

Lucasoato• 10 months ago

In Italy something similar is happening: they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly (that's very high for our economy). To this, add the facts that there has been a major hit to illegal streaming piracy and that football games are getting extremely boring in our country (compared to the Premier League or our Serie A of twenty years ago). The major effect of this is that newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents. These people are trying to milk a cow that will be dry in less than 5 years, unless a major revolution happens in FIGC (Italian Football Federation).

Hendrikto2• 10 months ago

they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly

Same in Germany.

newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football

Also the same in Germany.

But I am not sure which direction the causality goes. Maybe people are less interested in football because of the shenanigans they are constantly pulling. Or maybe they try to squeeze the remaining audience because people are less interested. It may also not be related at all.

BoredPositron4• 10 months ago

>Also the same in Germany.

Just because you want something to be true to make your argument...doesn't make it true.

Growth for memberships over the last few years are pretty strong especially in the under 16 age group with 9% yoy.[1]

Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend.[2]

The last EM also had new highs in viewership linear and streaming. As overall the non-linear media surrounding football is growing...[3]

[1] https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris...

[2] https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-ge...

[3] https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz...

wobfan• 10 months ago

Same in Germany.

That's not right. Still expensive, but the dual abo for Sky Bundesliga + DAZN is 65€ per month.[1]

1 https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn

madaxe_again• 10 months ago

I think it’s most likely that football is honestly a bit shit, and there are many better things to do for entertainment that don’t require mortgaging a kidney to watch.

pjmlp• 10 months ago

What pisses me off over here, is that for some strange reason, well not strange rather the whole thing that is being discussed, we hardly get any matches on the radio, whereas in the south this is a given, even in Spain.

It is always some streaming service like Magenta Sport, and that's it.

kwanbix2• 10 months ago

Most leagues face the same issue: just one to three wealthy clubs dominate, winning around 70–80% of the time, which makes the competition less exciting. The German Bundesliga is one of the starkest examples: Bayern Munich has taken 16 of the last 20 titles.

rootsu2• 10 months ago

On the other hand, Serie A started streaming all matches free on YouTube for SEA countries.

https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_ann...

zwirbl• 10 months ago

So only a VPN is needed?

average_r_user• 10 months ago

They pulled the plug on the project almost right away. Apparently, it had something to do with YouTube not being able to limit the live stream to Southeast Asian countries without it leaking to the rest of the world—where you’d need a pricey subscription to watch the game.

lifestyleguru4• 10 months ago

So it looks like a self resolving problem? As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear, and hopefully kids will be encouraged to do more creative activities than kicking a ball.

zokier• 10 months ago

On the other hand kids (and adults) not getting enough exercise is a modern health crisis. More kids kicking a ball would be significant improvement over current status quo of kids staring at brainrot.

aeve890• 10 months ago

I agree with all you said except the last part.

Sport is good and team sport is better. A "lifestyle guru" should know that. Kicking a ball is maybe the lowest entry barrier sport in many countries. I'm from latin america and here you grow playing fútbol. Find a ball, gather your friends and you're ready to go.

dnh44• 10 months ago

you don't think kids should play sports? that seems like an unusual view and am kind of curious why you would think that.

CaptainOfCoit2• 10 months ago

As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear,

You think these people would suddenly stop needing an outlet for their emotions? They'll find a different way of doing the same thing, around a different theme. If you've hanged out with people who are proud to be hooligans and ultras today, you'd see how removing football wouldn't get them to stop.

bilekas3• 10 months ago

Given your username I wouldn't expect such harsh sentiment about people who enjoy playing football. I would prefer my kids play a sport they enjoy than sit on an iPad all day. But I'm not a lifestyle guru.

CuriouslyC• 10 months ago

Hooligans won't go away with football, they'll just find another outlet for their suppressed beta male rage and weak minded tribalism.

codedokode3• 10 months ago

Kicking a ball is fun though. However I am not interested in watching pros kicking a ball.

koakuma-chan2• 10 months ago

they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly

It's the same for anime, and guess what, I just pirate and pay no one.

pfortuny2• 10 months ago

Yes, but the problem is that you want to watch football live, and LaLiga is harming lots of unrelated businesses with this approach.

Krssst• 10 months ago

To be fair for anime you can get pretty good coverage with only crunchyroll and a minimal price. Though some significant shows often end up locked on random services unfortunately.

kps• 10 months ago

Anime has long had a model where shows are ‘free’ (historically, on broadcast TV) and the money comes from sales of disks, manga, and other merchandise. (On the other hand, Japan has copyright laws that make the US look laid back.)

XCSme• 10 months ago

Best way to watch sports now is to go to a bar that broadcasts it. If you have a drink, it only costs you 5EUR/match. Maybe you watch 5-6 matches a month, so still cheaper than 100EUR/month and you get drinks and service included.

codedokode3• 10 months ago

Also can shout without neighbours calling police.

mlinhares• 10 months ago

100 euros monthly is going to be very high anywhere, this is completely insane.

piltdownman3• 10 months ago

In Ireland it's closer to €200/month just for Soccer depending on who you support. As a result 1 in 5 homes in Ireland admit to having a 'dodgy box' - i.e. an android or SoC box capable of running an IPTV Subscription pirating live Digital TV and various streaming services. These are usually sold as an annual subscription for €50-100 in pubs and on places like facebook marketplace.

The Irish Legal Community has already raised issues with how Sky is going about tracking down infringement at the user level, as they have an appalling record in this area and are likely to try and emulate the egregious situation in Spain to mitigate or retaliate.

https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2025/june/dodg... https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0619/1519317-data-prote...

What's even more ridiculous is the "3pm blackout" rule which prevents football matches from being shown on UK television between 14:45 and 17:15 on Saturdays when 50% of fixtures in the top two divisions are scheduled to kick off at 15:00. The policy was introduced in the 1960s to encourage fans to attend lower league games - and it remains in force even in the globalised streaming era. Sadly the rights-holders can't be bothered splitting the package for Ireland, so we get to pay more for SkySports and still have to buy additional services.

In short, piracy is always a service issue. As a soccer fan going legit you'd possibly need to maintain a Sky Sports, BT Sport, TNT Sports and Premier Sports subscription. God forbid you want screen-casting support or 4K resolution.

In Ireland you STILL can't purchase/watch UFC PPVs as one-offs, there isn't a way for you to watch it legally the next day or live as a single event. The only way would be to get a subscription to a big provider like SkyTV or NOW!

ratelimitsteve• 10 months ago

Currently having this fight with hockey in the US. If I want to watch all of my team's games it's $65/mo split across 3 separate services

rascul• 10 months ago

NFL and NASCAR are similar.

EbNar• 10 months ago

newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents.

These are good news, tbh.

pronik2• 10 months ago

What pisses me off is that they've said (in Germany) that they are trying to avoid monopolies and the rights need to go to multiple rights owners. Instead of giving the same rights to multiple broadcasters as would be normal for real non-monopolies, they split up the rights and gave each part to a single broadcaster. Which means, the full broadcasting rights are held by multiple parties, e.g. it's not a monopoly, but each broadcaster has a monopoly over his part of the cake. Which means if you want to have the whole cake as a fan, you need to pay the cartel, i.e. all broadcasters at once.

bamboozled2• 10 months ago

The main reason I don't watch any one it is because it's all locked away under expensive subscriptions and I don't really live in a place with great football matches, so yeah...I'd actually be into it if it was accessible, I just couldn't be bothered figuring out how to watch it, nor can I afford 100 euroes a month.

pedrogpimenta• 10 months ago

My server is also unreachable: my website, my projects (which people use)... Because it's on some IP that Vercel uses.

illusive40802• 10 months ago

Mobile users should remove old from the url [0]. The old Reddit website does not load properly on my mobile device.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1np6kyn/my_games_s...

Edit: commenters below made me realize that my extension StopTheMadness messed up old Reddit. Sorry

QuantumNomad_• 10 months ago

Old Reddit loads perfectly fine for me on iOS.

What OS are you on and what is the specific problem you see when you try to load this Old Reddit link from OP?

illusive40802• 10 months ago

Your comment made me realize that it was an extension I’m using on my iPhone on iOS 26 that is causing the issue. The extension is StopTheMadness.

I had an option called “Protect page zoom controls” which allows you to zoom on sites that disable zoom, but it breaks this website.

sebtron• 10 months ago

Works fine for me (Firefox on Android)

piva00• 10 months ago

For me it's much the opposite, I even use an extension on iOS Safari to redirect "www.reddit.com" to "old.reddit.com".

givinguflac• 10 months ago

Stop trying to make new reddit happen, illusive Steve Huffman! /s

Seriously though, seconded that old works great still on ios 26.

asddubs• 10 months ago

I obviously don't agree with spain doing this, but I also have trouble feeling sorry for cloudflare, since they're also in the business of randomly blocking certain IPs from accessing half the internet

dncornholio• 10 months ago

Cloudflare created a problem where everything is centralized.

It's also, not that great. Even the most crude WordPress vulnerability scan requests aren't flagged or blocked. It seems most DDoS attacks may come through as well.

Don't get me even started on the checkbox.

It's a US data-hoarder.

forinti• 10 months ago

And I thought things were bad in my country where all "sports" shows are about football and you can have 3 different FM stations broadcasting the same game and they'll discuss football even when there is nothing going on.

It's a monothematic sporting desert.

I'm glad I raised my kids oblivious to this football religion.

iamzenitraM• 10 months ago

Some of us are tracking their blocking over at:

https://hayahora.futbol https://tinyuptime.sconde.net

It's not only Cloudflare, but also other not so tiny CDNs are being blocked - currently an entire Backblaze B2 region is blocked in 3 out of 5 ISPs (!).

Particularly hurtful, the entire Cloudflare R2 is blocked during football matches so you can't pull Docker images or Ollama models.

teekert2• 10 months ago

Man, and I was already annoyed that my tax money went to extra police to prevent idiots from fighting and wrecking stuff around matches.

I for one think that football streaming should be blocked when I'm pulling docker images ;)

pzlarsson• 10 months ago

The amount of resources that goes into soccer in many countries is really astonishing. It can be seen as a modern equivalent to bread and circuses however.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

swiftcoder2• 10 months ago

You should probably check Github as well. We have consistent problems connecting to github during football matches

FullMetalBitch• 10 months ago

My external home assistant doesnt work either, I have to use the VPN.

Thanks Tebas.

CodesInChaos• 10 months ago

I find it interesting that cloudflare is okay with those piracy sites getting its shared IPs blocked, while a couple of years ago they forced a casino to shell out for the enterprise plan and dedicated IPs to contain the fallout of banned IPs.

iMerNibor• 10 months ago

I would assume they'd just decline and shut operations for that particular domain and create a new domain/account on cloudflare for the new site?

Not sure how attached these sites are to their specific brand/domain (or if this is indirect where main sites link to other sites that host the video)

lyu07282• 10 months ago

They are not okay with it, they first in march tried to get it annulled that was rejected by the courts [1]. Now they are appealing in the constitutional court [2]. Spanish sources:

[1] https://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/gol-laliga-a-cloudflare-j...

[2] https://www.xataka.com/legislacion-y-derechos/bloqueos-ip-la...

Cloudflare also said they are prepared to go all the way to EU courts if necessary.

christkv• 10 months ago

I think companies need to start suing for damages when their business applications get blocked.

aucisson_masque• 10 months ago

I’m surprised it’s still going on. There are things a southern Europe government shouldn’t mess with, gas prices and football are part of them.

Spanish are surprisingly quiet about that or they bought vpn en masse.

nromiun2• 10 months ago

That is wild. Which other country gives a private body the power to ban any IP address for the entire country?

addandsubtract• 10 months ago

I mean, the power was given by the court, so you could argue that the ISPs are just following court orders.

On the other hand, there's SpaceX which has the power to block an entire country from accessing the internet.

nromiun2• 10 months ago

You could only say that if the IP address list was given by the court to the ISPs.

gpderetta• 10 months ago

Italy.

Fire-Dragon-DoL2• 10 months ago

Both countries are soccer addicts, funny

npteljes• 10 months ago

Larger discussion here:

"LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

rock_artist• 10 months ago

In the reddit there's a link to another article related and there's response from Laliga (If I got it right):

Desde LaLiga también advierten que "aquellos clientes de Cloudflare que puedan sufrir bloqueos en sus webs, pueden dirigirse al email afectadoscloudflare@laliga.es con el fin de hacer llegar a Cloudflare que el contenido ilegal alojado en la IP de su misma web no tiene su autorización".

So they eventually made an email to report if you're being affected by their blocking.

erremerre2• 10 months ago

What they do if receive such an email, it is to bully and threaten the owner of the webpage saying that their web is hosted in the same IP than pirates streaming and they would take legal action.

Just, so that you know what is really going on.

arximboldi• 10 months ago

But the intent of that email is not to unblock the IP, but to put pressure on Cloudfare to stop giving service to the allegedly pirate sites.

aosaigh2• 10 months ago

I might be naive, but this is absolutely outrageous. What laws allow a private company dictate what IPs can be banned across an entire country? Are the ISPs voluntarily cooperating or are they now all obliged to follow LaLiga requests?

erremerre2• 10 months ago

ISP with the right to football goes to court to report themselves (not a joke) about piracy happening in their networks.

An old man judge which understand technology as much as I understand biochemistry (nothing) decides that they need to stop piracy, His solution is to give laliga the power to block those illegal streams, that all ISP must comply for the time that a match exist. The judge covers himself by saying, that the blockage can't affect third parties.

All ISP happy comply. It does affect third parties.

Cloudflare (third party) puts a recourse to say that it is affecting their business. The very same old man, decides, that is not going to proceed with that investigation.

So cloudflare needs to to through a different slower legal procedure.

Meanwhile, we have a company with the authority to block what they want thanks to corruption.

aosaigh2• 10 months ago

Thanks for the summary. I assume this will go up the chain of appeals etc. and on to the EU courts if needed?

riffraff3• 10 months ago

Tribunals. But notice that a possible outcome here is that _Cloudflare_ gets mandated by the same tribunals to perform the blocking of sport streaming sites.

This is what's happening in Italy, for example.

dabeeeenster• 10 months ago

Related (7 years ago):

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/8q1j0o/la_liga_uses...

- Bars, pubs and other public establishments have to pay around 200€/month in order to show football on their TVs while the household package goes between 10 and 30€/month.

- The official app, with over 10 million downloads, asks you for microphone and GPS permissions.

- La Liga remotely activates the microphone and tries to detect if the sound matches with that of a football match. In addition, it uses the geolocation of the phone to locate exactly where the establishment is located. That way they can locate bars and other establishments where football is being pirated or showed without paying for the bar package.

Still amazes me this just sort of went by and no one really seemed bothered. Absolutely insane.

Phemist• 10 months ago

Wait, does that also mean bars have to police what people are watching on their phone, otherwise risking big fines?

E.g. I go to the pub, have a drink and watch some random LaLiga match on my phone?

piltdownman3• 10 months ago

No, the bar pays something like 10x the price of a normal subscription to be able to publicly show live Sports as a draw for their customers.

In UK/Ireland you can easily identify if the venue in question is paying for the commercial package as it will intermittently display a pint glass symbol in a bottom corner of the screen. Indeed, Sky investigators, who do spot checks, use it to quickly ensure that the pub has a valid pub contract and not a residential contract.

https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/668952/why-pub-TV...

La Liga are presumably muxing infrasonic audio into their residential streams to try and:

(a) watermark the residential account(s) used to provide the streaming services so they can prosecute the providers

(b) Detect commercial usage of residential accounts used in piracy to prosecute the venues, by listening out via the App.

They could presumably get around GDPR by virtue of the fact they're only listening and recording audio out of human audible range, and only for identification of copyright infringement as per the TOS of the La Liga App.

outside2344• 10 months ago

There has to be a EU privacy violation in there somewhere right? Or does that not count for giant EU companies?

whatevaa• 10 months ago

GDPR is enforced by country itself and this racket is supported by government, so... You would need to sue whole country.

Angostura2• 10 months ago

It’s not personal data.

matheusmoreira2• 10 months ago

They'll just say they have a "legitimate" interest in the data.

next_xibalba2• 10 months ago

I would never agree to this. But it doesn't strike me as particularly unethical, either. So long as both parties understand what they're agreeing to, this seems perfectly fine.

If, for example, the NFL ever did this, I would just not watch.

saghm2• 10 months ago

I'm not sure about other sports, but for the MLB, there are some very strange policies that make it difficult to watch games even if you want to pay for it, mostly stemming from the local broadcasters of the games. Even if you sign up for the subscription service to stream games, they'll "black out" the games that they expect you to be able to watch by getting a cable subscription, which not only is ridiculous (since one on of the main selling points for streaming is to not have to pay for a bundle of things you mostly don't want to be able to get the few things you do), but it assumes that people will never be traveling and unable to watch the games locally even if they do normally have access to it. My dad frequently travels for work, and he pays for the streaming service mostly to be able to watch Phillies games despite living in the Boston area, but the blackout rules mean that he can't even watch the Red Sox games with the streaming service if he's traveling outside of Boston. He also can't watch the Phillies games when they play the Red Sox in Boston, which is mostly fine, but it's still a little weird since he'll be have to watch the Red Sox broadcast (and therefore their commentators) rather than the Phillies one he's used to seeing for their games. The games that are given special slots on ESPN also tend to be blacked out for everyone, so that also causes issues for people wanting to stream them even if it's not a local game. The whole model seems to be more about trying to railroad people in paying for a less convenient, more expensive product even when they actively want to pay for something that's actually available but artificially limited. I don't get why anyone would be surprised that people just turn to "piracy" when things work like this.

throwaway894345• 10 months ago

The whole copyright institution seems pretty unethical to me. It's wild that someone can own the royalties to a particular piece of content for 70+ years after the original creator dies (at least that's the law in the US, I assume similar elsewhere), and that the creator can unilaterally name his price for licenses to that content (you can't even know if you want the content without first paying for a license to consume it) and then if you want to put the content into a different format (for example, if you own an HD Blu-Ray and want to put it on a hard drive) you effectively have to pay for a _new license_ for the same content. This is just scratching the surface of the ethical bankruptcy associated with intellectual property.

DangitBobby2• 10 months ago

And this is how free markets result in dystopia.

throw0101d• 10 months ago

In addition, it uses the geolocation of the phone to locate exactly where the establishment is located.

How much do GPS/Galileo/GNSS jammers go for nowadays?

inasio• 10 months ago

In days of prison time?

distances2• 10 months ago

- Bars, pubs and other public establishments have to pay around 200€/month in order to show football on their TVs while the household package goes between 10 and 30€/month.

This is common in Europe in general, also for copyrighted music. If your establishment wants to play recorded music, even just playing the radio or Spotify on the background, a copyright royalty fee has to be paid.

Applies to all venues and events. Bars, restaurants, grocery shops, barbers, sports events, concerts, taxis, lounges, everything with an audience.

I don't want to say it's the same everywhere in the EU, but I have always assumed it's a common concept in most western countries at least.

Aurornis2• 10 months ago

This is common in many countries around the world.

I’m sure the prices have gone up since that comment, but 200€/month actually seems very reasonable for a commercial bar that shows sporting events. That’s let’s than 7€/day and would be more than covered by the first group of people walking in the door and buying a round of drinks.

I don’t approve of the microphone activation spying stuff or the ridiculous internet blocking. However it’s also kind of bizarre that it reached this point when the monthly fees for bar owners were such a trivial amount.

NooneAtAll3• 10 months ago

is it different from turning on radio?

prophesi• 10 months ago

On its own, nothing seems out of the ordinary. It's the extremes that La Liga takes to ensure they're getting that 200€/m that makes it insane.

wodenokoto• 10 months ago

Do bars in the US just show matches on a residential cable tv connection?

ta126534213• 10 months ago

What about this music from these free pages which are flooding the internet? There is plenty of royality free music? (e.g. used by youtubers?)

veeti• 10 months ago

In most EU countries private copying levies are paid to the copyright mafia any time you purchase a hard drive, printer or even a blank cassette. Because you know, you might copy something using it.

scyzoryk_xyz• 10 months ago

It's not the same everywhere in the EU, but here in Poland as an establishment owner you have to pay this fee to an agency that purports to represent the musicians. As you describe eg. Spotify in background.

This agency pays out proportionately to registered licensed musicians, but the proportions are calculated in some ridiculous way that doesn't really factor in who's music is played. It means that the only folks who get reasonable payouts from this agency are, like, stars and old hits authors. The ones who's music gets played a lot in radio and other places. Winners take all.

The reality is that a lot of that cash is really for some chums who's job it is to be controllers.

AFAIK the entire scheme is a result of that one and only legacy industry that needs to protect it's interests: football and sports in venues, and maybe music clubs. In practice it means you rarely see TVs in bars the way you do in the US.

Idk it's a shitty concept imho.

raxxorraxor• 10 months ago

I think the outrage should be directed at an app secretly recording everything to look for "pirated content".

matheusmoreira2• 10 months ago

Private corporations acting like police, engaging in illegal wiretapping and eavesdropping at massive scales to detect and punish crimes as defined by themselves.

We truly are living in a cyberpunk dystopia.

kulahan• 10 months ago

It's clearly not illegal.

create-username2• 10 months ago

of course you can tip your favourite bar to the football police https://laligabares.com/denuncias/

diego_moita• 10 months ago

As a Brazilian I say: the world would be a much better place without football.

It seems that being a crook is a requirement to be on the management of any national football league, from Brazilian CBF to FIFA and La Liga.

NickC253• 10 months ago

anything that encourages the youth to get outside and play makes the world a better place almost by default.

god forbid they exercise, they should be indoors studying or playing on their phones 100% of the time. </s>

maybe the world would be a better place without football hooligans, sure. but without a sport that billions love and play? no.

gloosx8• 10 months ago

Football is wild. Imagine countries and governments collect taxes.

Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.

Then Qatar spends €262 millions on a single football player and gazillions on a European club, which is at €889 million loss over the last five years

In the end, who is paying for it all? Ordinary people ultimately foot the bill – whether through higher energy prices, taxes, or the opportunity cost of that money leaving the productive economy – while the football circus rolls on.

philipwhiuk• 10 months ago

Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.

This isn't how the energy market works.

gloosx8• 10 months ago

Fair point, governments don't literally wire tax money straight to Qatar for oil.

But whether it is at the pump or through subsidies, it is still ordinary people who end up carrying the cost — and that money gets recycled into football vanity projects.

bluecalm• 10 months ago

Sounds like a good deal for Europeans and a terrible for Qataris. Europeans get the oil, Qataris get to brand football stars and make decisions at some clubs.

qingcharles• 10 months ago

A lot of what Qatar does is a branding exercise, though. They are awash with cash and are trying to improve their image on the world stage through whatever means possible to them. They bought Harrod's for the lulz basically. I doubt you would find a single native Qatari that would complain, though.

casey2• 10 months ago

Obvious corruption. Shameful

yeasku• 10 months ago

Ipv6 is not blocked. O2 gives me ipv6.

otikik• 10 months ago

Love the sport, hate the business.

bashy• 10 months ago

Will be very similar to this type of abuse report someone got on their Hetzner server (even though it had no piracy activity);

On 27 Nov 23:27, operations@friendmts.com wrote: To whom it may concern:

Our reference: PRB-XXXXXX Security Code: 2x364371x-x45x-59x2-8760-32x46276790

Access to the IP address detailed below has been blocked in the United Kingdom by court order.

The block will apply to: IP Address: 95.217.118.31 For all Premier League Match Periods Until: 07 Dec 2020

Further notifications will not be sent about this IP address unless and until further infringements are detected after the date and time indicated above, though the IP address will remain subject to blocking until then. If your organisation is planning to reallocate this IP address to another customer before the date listed above, please notify us at ipallocation@friendmts.com with the appropriate information so that we can consider releasing the IP from subsequent blocking.

A copy of the court order, which was obtained by the Football Association Premier League Limited is available here: https://www.fmtsoperations.com/HC-2017-002013-ORDER.PDF

Any affected server operator or hosting provider has the right to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the Order.

ericzawo• 10 months ago

This is the most Spanish thing of all time.

barbazoo• 10 months ago

Mandatory siesta.

hyperman1• 10 months ago

I see 2 nasties here:

On one hand, this is a clear overreach of the courts: They gave a private party the right to censor random sources without judicial oversight.

On the other hand, the courts still need to judicate in their respective countries. If cloudflare says: We're in another country so the courts cant make us block illegal things, well, the courts have to overblock or they lose the ability to enforce their decisions.

dmitrygr• 10 months ago

Some decisions do not need to be possible. No amount of court judgements will make pigs fly. Perhaps it is about time we took the decisions of what may or may not be on the internet outside the reach of idiots.

We. You, me, readers here, are the people who are in charge of design decisions for future systems and networks. When designing them, favor reliability, resilience, decentralization! Make it impossible to take things down! Let them pass useless judgements and make toothless rules. Design so that those judgements and rules apply no more to the internet of tomorrow than they do to the sun, moon, and stars.

polski-g• 10 months ago

Lots of these sorts of European problems could be fixed if Cloudflare+Google+Apple+Microsoft colluded to block an entire country from all their services at once until it is resolved. And then move on to the next country, and the next.

charcircuit2• 10 months ago

they randomly ban cloudflare IP ranges.

It's not random. Many pirate sites use Cloudflare and Cloudflare does not do a good enough job of taking them down which enables pirating of the sport broadcast.

Routing your game traffic through a CDN is not normal anyways.

EIREXE• 10 months ago

The game traffic is a drop in the water compared to the website itself, it's mostly there for leaderboards, the web frontend and game backend are compiled into a monolithic native executable.

ChrisArchitect• 10 months ago

[dupe]

LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

Fire-Dragon-DoL2• 10 months ago

And this,people, it's insane. Rome would get entirely stuck during soccer matches and they found a way to make the same happen on the Internet in Spain. Italy will follow.

As an Italian who hated soccer and all the toxicity around it, this is a nightmare.

FearNotDaniel• 10 months ago

I've read this and many of the comments and still don't quite understand what is being blocked. Nobody has quite stated it explicitly, and what seems to be being implied seems too absurd to be true, but I'm assuming it must be true hence all the outrage against La Liga, their media partners and the government.

So just to really spell it out for an idiot like me: this means that _all_ internet users in Spain are blocked from accessing _any_ of the IP ranges that La Liga doesn't like, while a football match is in play, regardless of whether the services they are trying to access have anything to do with pirating football matches? Is that the actual situation?

Edit: thanks @npteljes for providing context from a previous HN post...

"LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

bastard_op• 10 months ago

It ought to be a useful indicator to Spain/Italy and their population that the only thing they're good for is football and causing misery for everyone else. Maybe some self-reflection is due.

They shut down the internet because they're poisoned peoples minds to crave watching football, and then overcharge the hell out of them to the point they seek any and all alternatives. You will watch our goddamn football and pay us for the privilege whether you like sports or not, or well shut down the internet!

Imagine if the MPAA/RIAA had this sort of authority in 2003 with Kazaa.

It's almost like Disney ran government, which even the US isn't far from.

My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

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