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by pjc50 50 days ago
Maybe someone can explain, but I don't understand why such an order isn't applied to cloudflare themselves?
4 comments

It was. La Liga isn’t satisfied with the response time of Cloudflare. Cloudflare would not commit to content being taken down during while the match is still going.

La Liga wants to be able to point to a URL hosted by Cloudflare and demand it taken down that instant while the match is still on. It would require dedicated staff at Cloudflare to deal with La Liga stream takedowns.

Cloudflare said they created a dedicated hotline for LaLiga, and apparently it wasn't enough for them
More so, La Liga wants Cloudflare to take it down for the entire world, not just block it from Spanish IPs, regardless of whether the host resides in Spain. Cloudflare has refused to do so.
Presumably the Cloudflare network resources in question were not located in Spain and thus not under Spanish jurisduction. Or even if they were, it may be procedurally simpler for the Spanish government to compel ISPs to block IPs.
> it may be procedurally simpler for the Spanish government to compel ISPs to block IPs.

The Spanish government is not the ones enforcing the ban here. La Liga and Telefonica went to the judges, who are the ones making ISPs to enforce these blocks, as an intermediate "fix" essentially.

This appears to be using "government" in American English sense, where "government" refers to anyone who works for the state in any capacity, including courts, not just the executive.
Do you have an English word you can recommend that refers to what (in American English) I call the entire government of a nation?
The state.

“The government” (what we would call “the executive”) being equated to the state as a whole is a uniquely American concept, likely because the word “state” already has a different meaning in the federalist sense.

> went to the judges

Which are part of the Spanish government.

> Which are part of the Spanish government.

Judges in Spain are not part of the government ("Gobierno"). They are part of the Poder Judicial, the judiciary. The Spanish Constitution separates these clearly, give it a skim if you haven't already.

The judiciary is part of the government. Being an independent branch doesn't change that. Government doesn't just mean legislative.
That's not what the constitution says though. "Government" ("Gobierno") is what an American would understand "executive branch" to be, I'm guessing this is why it's confusing. I tried to make it easier by adding the translations, but maybe that's just making it more confusing :)

I guess broadly in English you'd say the judges are part of the state, but they're not a part of the Spanish Government.

That’s true in America, but the word government is applied more narrowly elsewhere, including in the UK.
The judiciary is part of the state. The government is also part of the state. They are different parts.
Government means precisely just the executive branch in international English across most polities with institutions.
In many countries, the word “government” only refers to the executive branch
The rest are often called civil servants.
CF would pretty much need to monitor this live in that case which is impossible. The pirates sometimes even create new domains for specific games.

This is a risk with shared IP addresses. I sold CF to many customers and I would say the risk in general is minimal. At least outside Spain. But people should stop whining and use a better service if needed.

> But people should stop whining and use a better service if needed.

A better service that the Spanish government will also block?

Cloudflare is not the bad actor here. The Spanish government is.

The state hasn't setup processes to enable that. It will happen