[michaelt]

The football league would rather not have pirates livestream their ~90 minute games.

Pirates would rather not be blocked, so they create a new, disposable website for every game. Any blocking must happen fast.

Cloudflare would rather not block websites without a court order specifying the sites to be blocked.

The courts would rather not create a special fast lane through the courts, just to resolve a squabble between two huge corporations.

[n6242]

> The football league would rather not have pirates livestream their ~90 minute games.

Funny enough, I work in IT and I've had to use a VPN to be able to do my job when soccer is on, but my two non-tech-savy family members that do watch soccer using pirate livestreams say that they've never had any issues with blocked streams.

[KAMSPioneer]

I work in IT and have found that the issue impacts my work but not my ability to stream sports from sites of questionable legality. Of course, I don't pirate La Liga matches but that's primarily because I don't give a shit about soccer.

But the point is that the measure does more to block legitimate use than illegitimate (in my experience). And next they want to go after VPNs. Wonderful.

[fc417fc802]

But think of the children ... and futbol!

[miohtama]

Think of all political donations

[cdelsolar]

soccer is awesome and it is incorrect to not "give a shit" about soccer

[spwa4]

But you must realize, the alternative to this is that some very wealthy Spanish companies ... lose a small amount of money.

Surely you understand now. Go about your business, poor person.

[ryandrake]

They don't even "lose a small amount of money." They simply gain less money than usual for a short period of time. Think of how rough that is for them.

[necovek]

I think it's even that they "gain less money than they could if everyone watching illegally would pay for it when they could not watch illegally" (that's usually how companies crying "piracy" calculate "losses" — "let's assume everyone watching illegally would certainly still watch it and pay the full price").

[shiroiuma]

This isn't quite right either. It's "they gain less money than they might potentially gain if piracy weren't physically possible". If the piracy avenues didn't exist, how many people would actually pay full price to the legitimate sources, and how many people would simply go without?

[joquarky]

I once remember reading an article about shareholders selling off a stock because the rate of increase in profit had slowed.

[fireant]

There is nothing wrong with that. Stock price is based on perceived future value , not current company profits.

[array_key_first]

Arguably they even gain more money in the long run, because more people have access to their entertainment and they have more opportunities to form life long connections with consumers.

[hunterpayne]

In all fairness, the Spanish economy is a mine, a farm and a soccer league in a trenchcoat. Better than Ireland which is 2 tax shelters in a trenchcoat, but not by much. Not surprisingly, they are the 2 most left leaning countries in Europe. To be fair, they had an actual fascist government in Spain for several decades and there were atrocities committed.

[cool_dude85]

Ireland, the country with 2 center right parties that differ with regards to patronage networks and political history from 1940, is one of the most left-wing leaning countries in Europe?

[mghackerlady]

Eh, ireland is unique in that it has a centre-right coalition making it de facto one party. The main opposition, Sinn Fein, is about the same size as Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and might overtake Fine Gael at some point

[cool_dude85]

Right. So, no left wing party, not even a center left party, has been in power in Ireland in its history. But I'm supposed to believe that it's one of the most left wing countries in Europe?

[lentil_soup]

> Cloudflare would rather not block websites without a court order specifying the sites to be blocked.

why would they?

> squabble between two huge corporations

I think this is just LaLiga using it's cultural and economical power, don't think Cloudflare or the courts should be making exceptions just so they can control how people watch football

[mlyle]

> why would they?

Well, in this case, the alternative is all of Spain intermittently blocking lots of Cloudflare.

But if Cloudflare bows to Spain in this case, every jurisdiction will want to pile up lots of special case rules for Cloudflare to try and implement.

[pxc]

LaLiga isn't Cloudflare's customer. They have no relationship. So why would Cloudflare rework their infrastructure just to instrument rapid blocking at their own expense as a favor to LaLiga? And if they don't, ISPs just break the Internet for each soccer match? This is a kind of coercion that makes no sense. Cloudflare has no obligation like this to LaLiga (and neither would a Spanish domestic CDN!).

[mlyle]

The reason why entities comply with the wishes of courts is because there's consequences if they don't. Consequences like being filtered.

[pxc]

Cloudflare has not in fact refused to comply with any court orders! The very thing at issue is that LaLiga wants Cloudflare to do censorship on their behalf that Cloudflare, who has no contractual relationship with LaLiga, is not required to do by any legal framework in Spain or the US.

Cloudflare literally wasn't even a party to the ruling by which LaLiga has been compelling Spanish ISPs to do the IP-level blocking. They're just an affected third-party because the blocking scheme the courts have allowed LaLiga to impose on ISPs is on a per-IP basis.

Spain hasn't asked Cloudflare to do anything. Only LaLiga has acted like Cloudflare owes them a huge, expensive rework of their CDN's architecture for the purpose of censoring things for LaLiga purely as a favor to LaLiga. What LaLiga has over Cloudflare isn't a court order. It's a protection racket, or maybe a hostage situation, where court orders involving other parties are the gun held to the hostage's head.

[mlyle]

> Cloudflare has not in fact refused to comply with any court orders!

Nor did I say they did.

The question was asked, "why would they [without an explicit order]" The answer is they probably shouldn't, but there's still an obvious incentive here.

[drob518]

So, lawsuits against LaLiga from parties with affected sites would be the path forward, right? Those might be difficult in Spanish courts.

[forty]

I'm not sure why it shouldn't be cloudflare job to make sure they don't host illegal content. If my super market keeps distributing illegal goods, even if they remove it after a court order, they will end up having to close the whole market.

Either they should police the content they serve themselves or they accept the right holders to do it (which sucks for everyone).

Also they certainly willing take all their customers as hostage, as they could certainly split their network into legitimate customers and shaddy ones so the blocking is not so impactful, but I guess they prefer to make it as impactful as possible to be able to complain.

[gruez]

>why would they?

Plenty of companies proactively take action against shady users, even if not 100% required under law. Youtube has content id, social media companies have "community guidelines", and ISPs have AUPs.

[teaearlgraycold]

The US is captured by the Israeli lobby. Spain is captured by the football lobby.

[Pay08]

So what, do they just block a range of IP addresses and are then done with it?

[swiftcoder]

technically, LaLiga themselves doesn't even do the blocking. They have a court order from some years ago that allows them to compel all the individual ISPs to block any IP addresses they specify, with no oversight or review

[bartread]

This must negatively impact a huge number of businesses. Is there no move for them to all get together to take legal action against LaLiga to stop them doing this?

[hunterpayne]

This is the country that takes a 2 hour nap every day. They also have a sleeping contest every year with a winner and everything. And Spain isn't hot like Mexico where folks take 2 hours off in the topically heat and make it up for it in the evening because that's more efficient.

[doetoe]

Have you ever spoken to a person from Spain?

[swiftcoder]

or been to the south of Spain in summertime - it may not be Mexico-hot, but it's no picnic

[miohtama]

Think of the all political donations this would lose