Spanish court declines to fine NordVPN over LaLiga piracy blocking order

https://torrentfreak.com/spanish-court-declines-to-fine-nordvpn-over-laliga-piracy-blocking-order/

by gslin • 2 months ago

225 117 2 months ago

swiftcoder9• 2 months ago

“Inside Spain, the consequences of indiscriminate IP blocking have become almost impossible to ignore,” NordVPN writes

Too fucking right. It is beyond tiresome to fire up the laptop and wonder whether I'll need a VPN to access GitHub today

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

When the blocks happen, does it take GitHub with it for you? I'm on Vodafone (in Spain) and it's just a few Cloudflare IPs that get blocked during the matches, never had GitHub unavailable, as Microsoft doesn't use Cloudflare for GitHub, AFAIK.

swiftcoder9• 2 months ago

Cloudflare seems to be the most common victim, but I've seen Fastly get banned out as well (which seems to be what GitHub uses as their CDN in the EU)

isodev• 2 months ago

I hope there is a secondary effect to all this - that websites, operators and web apps look for alternatives instead of always using Cloudflare (who themselves are a kind of LaLiga just in a different vertical).

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

The blocks been going on for around/almost two years now, the ones who cared about remaining online for their users during the La Liga matches they do the blocks (not all of them anymore it seems) already moved, the only ones left on Cloudflare seems to be some people that refuse to move away regardless of how their users are impacted by it.

I think it's the same group of people who experience AWS downtime while having all their infrastructure there then go "Well, we're tried nothing and we're all out of ideas, guess we'll blame upstream".

anonzzzies• 2 months ago

I do not say it is not true because too many cases pop up here, however, I live in Spain and so does my company and we had this 0 times. Provider dependent? We have domestic fiber in Malaga.

wolvoleo2• 2 months ago

Possibly. I'm on Orange fiber and I haven't noticed anything weird either.

However all my torrent traffic already goes through VPN and I don't watch football or any kind of live Spanish TV, I have zero interest in any sport.

troad3• 2 months ago

I just permanently live on a US VPN these days. [0] Not Spanish, but my own country has started overregulating the web, and it seems prudent to develop a long track record of appearing as a US based user to the various online fiefdoms, rather than needing to do it all at once once they pass some digital ID mandate or other nonsense.

Not that there's any complete guarantee that the US web will forever remain open and free (no such guarantee is possible), but it's significantly more likely there than here. The state of the open web worldwide is pretty depressing. :(

[0] Mullvad, not the bad ones. Though with mandatory ISP-level retention of browser history here, pretty much anything is an improvement for privacy.

rollulus• 2 months ago

Mullvad is Swedish, right?

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

Though with mandatory ISP-level retention of browser history here

Huh, how would that even work? At most they get the host, at least unless you're still mostly using http sites, only the Host header should be visible to your ISP.

nubinetwork3• 2 months ago

I'll repeat what I said the last time about laliga...

Foot egg is so ingrained into the countrymen that nothing else matters.
There wouldn't be so much of a forced monopoly if more people would stop watching games and stand up to laliga.
Complaining on the internet every time laliga shuts down github etc isn't going to change anything, we can't solve your problems, the change has to come from within.

Props to the court for telling laliga to go away.

JrProgrammer• 2 months ago

Refering to football as foot egg when it’s actually a ball as opposed to the hand egg in the US is weird to me.

OT: La Liga shouldn’t have this kind of power and it’s good to see the court take a stance

nubinetwork3• 2 months ago

They call American football handegg, we should be able to do the opposite. :P

swiftcoder9• 2 months ago

There wouldn't be so much of a forced monopoly if more people would stop watching games

I don't think giving up one's national sport is really the right response here. We should absolutely be able to enjoy sports without bowing down to regulatory-capture-by-former-government-ministers

nubinetwork3• 2 months ago

We should absolutely be able to enjoy sports without bowing down to regulatory-capture-by-former-government-ministers

You're right, you absolutely should... but the only way to tell them that you don't like their policies is to stop giving them your money.

breppp3• 2 months ago

[flagged]

ktallett7• 2 months ago

You mean other than Berlin, Malmö, Paris, London, Munich, and many others. Europe doesn't have so many huge companies but that's not a bad thing. We do have a lot of companies doing key work that may benefit society as a whole.

breppp3• 2 months ago

While there are outliers, most of the European economy is Spain rather than Sweden

The European economy is still largely the same as pre-WW2, heavy machineries, cars, chemicals and these are becoming less relevant with Chinese competition. However, the move to tech never materialized like in the US, so no surprise when soccer becomes more important than anything else, it's the only long term viable export in bleak places like Spain

ktallett7• 2 months ago

Considering web addresses are easily changed, it was a futile suggestion to say block LaLiga streams. Good on Nordvpn. As a football fan, the owners of the leagues have too much power. Like in the UK people have gone to jail for piracy, which should never happen.

chadgpt33• 2 months ago

That is why they blocked the whole internet. You can't avoid a block by changing your address if the whole internet is blocked.

ktallett7• 2 months ago

They didn't mean to, just they were incompetent. Also considering Spanish league is spread over the full long weekend a waste of time.

However this is why infrastructure and connection method is needing to be removed from the government by creation and adoption of alternatives such as mesh.

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

Who blocked the whole internet? Doesn't happen here in Spain, which is the context for this submission, is "blocked the whole internet" what they do in the UK?

squiffsquiff• 2 months ago

I am not defending the current situation but I am not aware of any case where anyone in the UK has gone to jail for piracy. Invariably what actually happens in such cases is:

1. See headline 'movie pirate goes to prison' which implies a link between the activity and the event 2. Actually read article based on industry press release and learn that the defendant was actually convicted for counterfeiting because they were running a business selling set-top boxes with preinstalled unauthorised streaming software or running their own third party unauthorised streaming service with paid subscriptions or something.

ktallett7• 2 months ago

There have both been fraud, which I find is more often the case recently along with money laundering. However, one of the Woodward brothers was charged and convicted with distributing copyrighted material, hence piracy.

wmf• 2 months ago

If pirates "have to" use Cloudflare then blocking Cloudflare does work.

anthk• 2 months ago

Sue the courts for telecomms interruption and tampering from LaLiga.

chadgpt33• 2 months ago

You can't sue a court in a court for doing court stuff. Courts are superuser. They can do anything they want to. The recourse is vetting people before they become judges.

picsao• 2 months ago

This seems dysfunctional and a API for institutional subversion. If you can subvert the machinery that creates judges, you can basically take over a democracy without having any way to fix that except for institutional repair and waiting out the working lifespan of judges (which can be 1.5 generations)

mdlxxv2• 2 months ago

Finally, some common sense in this utterly absurd situation. I'm so glad this year's "fútbol" season ends this weekend. AFAIK, they don't break the Internet for Segunda División matches (yet!).

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

Oh boy do I have news for you; they're thinking of doing the same for other sports now too, not just football :) At least the blocks only been for a small amount of Cloudflare IPs, but still sucks big time.

mdlxxv2• 2 months ago

Sigh. As if I had not enough reasons to hate professional sports ...

thomastraum• 2 months ago

fantastic work.

PSA: if you still think its not the time to fight for your rights for the status quo in privacy you will come to regret it. If you are the type of person who reads this type of news and thinks: "cool the system is working, it'll sort itself out" you will come to regret it.

you will need to become more active or it will be taken away

embedding-shape27• 2 months ago

Literally it'll sort itself out, as the bans are unconstitutional and more, law just takes long time and we have other shit to sort out before starting to panic about 3-5 Cloudflare IPs getting banned for 2 hours a week...

swiftcoder9• 2 months ago

about 3-5 Cloudflare IPs getting banned

You missed a few zeroes there buddy

According to LaLiga itself, around 3,000 IP addresses are blocked every weekend[1]

[1] https://cybernews.com/news/cloudflare-spain-laliga-piracy-bl...

nekzn2• 2 months ago

In Spain we have a domestic abuse law that is unconstitutional (different prison terms for men and women) and it has been there for a very long time.

What do you think are your chances of winning this in the constitutional court?

dfxm122• 2 months ago

"Constitutional" is a matter of opinion. Don't take for granted that opinions can be bought. Don't take for granted that fighting for your rights in court is cheap. In this case, La Liga has more money then you.

selfhoster1312• 2 months ago

Law enforcement killing citizens is also unconstitutional, and so was slavery in many countries. What a piece of paper says is far from reality.

iLoveOncall• 2 months ago

I wish people who state "you have to fight" also said how.

The extreme majority of people has no fucking clue about how to act about anything, and it's definitely the biggest blocker.

jlaternman• 2 months ago

One of the biggest forces is simply the voice of the people, as demonstrated in threads like this. Note how NordVPN cited growing public sentiment against taking half the internet down in Spain in an attempt to stop streams during games.

fsflover3• 2 months ago

One way is to support https://eff.org or https://edri.org.

DANmode• 2 months ago

I wish people who state "you have to fight" also said how

Same way you “how” any problem - educate yourself.

Start reading, start asking and talking about it.

40four• 2 months ago

I’ve been thinking about exactly this for a while. Non-technical people just don’t understand all the moving pieces, let alone what action they should take. I agree with you, we need more conversation and guidance detailing what easy steps people can take to harden their security posture, and why that matters.

ChocolateGod• 2 months ago

Your messaging I'm afraid actually does the opposite of what it intends to do. Telling people what they should or shouldn't care about tends to turn people off your cause.

lifestyleguru• 2 months ago

Fuck European football and everything about it. Hopefully this year's world cup will be absolute unpopular failure.

regexorcist• 2 months ago

No, fuck LaLiga. UCL always delivers for us fans and so does the world cup. It'll be extremely popular as always, for good reason.

Ylpertnodi• 2 months ago

$3k to go to the WC to see portugal play. $799 to see portugal. Throw in ice, trump, border controls, socials exposed, the fifa peace prize...

Who's going?

theendisney2• 2 months ago

If any unrelated ip is blocked they are in violation of the EU common market regulations. Its simply not allowed.

bamboozled• 2 months ago

Football would be way more popular if it wasn’t so exclusive. f1 is same.

Spanish court declines to fine NordVPN over LaLiga piracy blocking order

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