[Dibby053]

Going to play devil's advocate here but I suspect if Cloudflare had been more cooperative about taking down illegal content, LaLiga would not have resorted to blanket blocking individual IPs.

I would really like to understand more about the process that they should follow but didn't / followed but didn't satisfy them / doesn't exist, in order to remove infringing websites quickly from CloudFlare.

[integralid]

I work with actually malicious content (things that make people lose their life savings) and Cloudflare abuse is relatively helpful (compared to most ISPs who just don't care).

They just refuse to take down random things that some media company representatives send their way, without a court order or any oversight. And this is a good thing.

[Dibby053]

Can you qualify "relatively helpful"? If you send them a ransomware site, a person looks at it, and still demand a court order... A company like them should know the scale at which these things are run, and that courts can't keep up with the speed.

>And this is a good thing.

Disagree. Demanding a court order for every single clear-cut case of infringement reported by the rightful owner of ephemeral content that is a infringed upon hundreds of times every day, causing nearly a billion dollar of losses per year... This is what the ISPs were trying to do and LaLiga successfully sued them, creating the modern fast-lane that CloudFlare complains about. Furthermore, unlike CloudFlare, the ISPs were not even profiting from the illegal content! This is a huge difference in the Spanish legal system. This will not end up good for them or for the open Internet they claim to defend (presumably as an excuse for taking their cut from cybercrime.)

[JoshTriplett]

> for every single clear-cut case of infringement

Clear-cut by whose judgement? Surely not the plaintiff, who has demonstrated no care for collateral damage. Witness the many, many fraudulent DMCA takedowns that are regularly sent, for a demonstration of what happens when prospective plaintiffs are given a power of "guilty until proven innocent".

> causing nearly a billion dollar of losses

I thought we were long past people believing the funny-money fake numbers claiming every download is a lost sale.

[JoshTriplett]

LaLiga wanted the right to tell Cloudflare to block specific sites without going through a court.

Cloudflare, rightfully, said that was ridiculous and unreasonable.

A Spanish court, wrongfully, decided to let LaLiga block all of Cloudflare.

[Dibby053]

I assume the problem is Cloudflare wants a court order that mentions the specific infringing domain name. The problem is: what's faster, spinning up a new frontend for a livestream or getting an order from a court?

Courts orders are, rightfully, slow. A court order is a serious thing and we shouldn't be wasting judges' time and resources to determine if hundreds of domains in CloudFlare, during every single match, are infringing on LaLiga. This is why the Spanish ISPs have a fast-lane with LaLiga to block infringing websites quickly. Why is it ridiculous and unreasonable? If LaLiga starts abusing this power to attack competitors or do anything malicious they will lose that power instantly.

Fastly understood the problem and will start running detection software to ban infringing livestreams in real time. https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/fastly-and-laliga-team-up-...

What's CF's solution?

[JoshTriplett]

> If LaLiga starts abusing this power to attack competitors or do anything malicious they will lose that power instantly.

Because everything demonstrated so far has suggested that LaLiga is reasonable and measured? Courts exist for many reasons, among them that we do not trust plaintiffs to always be right or reasonable.

By way of demonstrating that such power is unacceptable, it sounds like LaLiga is also trying to get Spanish ISPs to block all VPNs whenever a game is on.

This is not an entity that can be trusted with power. This is an entity that rightfully should take its whining to a court who can keep its abuses in check. (Unfortunately, the Spanish courts also don't seem willing to keep its abuses in check, which brings us back to the collateral damage problem.)

> Fastly understood the problem

No, Fastly accepted the blackmail that Cloudflare refused.

[Dibby053]

>By way of demonstrating that such power is unacceptable, it sounds like LaLiga is also trying to get Spanish ISPs to block all VPNs whenever a game is on.

What LaLiga did was get some VPN providers (NordVPN and ProtonVPN) to start blocking pirate streaming websites. They're not trying to block VPNs themselves unless there's other news I didn't find.

[JoshTriplett]

And, presumably, if they don't comply with that unreasonable order, they'll next try to get local ISPs to block the entire VPN provider, just as they did with Cloudflare. Repeat as long as there are usable VPN providers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739695

It is not the job of an intermediary ISP or VPN to help construct a country-wide firewall. If a company wants to go after streaming sites, go take down the streaming site. If the streaming site is out of its jurisdiction, talk to the other jurisdiction. If the that jurisdiction does not care, give up and lose.

[lokar]

They will take down anything you get a judge to agree with.