- Cloudflare claims La Liga’s “indiscriminate blocking” is illegal
- The League accuses Cloudflare of “prioritizing commercial interests” over the law
- Spain’s anti-piracy crackdown reportedly hit legitimate domains too
The growing tension between Cloudflare and La Liga has moved from the server room to the courtroom, with the American tech giant filing appeals against what it describes as “indiscriminate blocking practices” by the Spanish soccer league.
As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the dispute centers on La Liga’s aggressive campaign to crack down on illegal streaming. The league employs about 50 analysts who scour the web for pirated matches and send notifications to intermediaries like Cloudflare to shut them down.
However, Cloudflare has been backtracking legally since last summer in hopes of fixing Spain’s blocking of illegal soccer streams ahead of the next LaLiga season. The company filed appeals before the Spanish Constitutional Court to “demonstrate that La Liga’s excessive blocking practices are illegal.”
The American CDN and DNS resolution company maintains that the current approach is too broad and prevents Spanish users from accessing legitimate websites while playing games. Last year there were incidents where Spaniards had to resort to the best VPN applications to avoid these types of restrictions.
Cloudflare maintains that La Liga’s enforcement measures, designed to curb piracy, inadvertently disrupt access to non-infringing content hosted on the same servers or networks. It warns that La Liga operates under the belief that its commercial interests “prevail over the right of ordinary Spanish users to browse legal sites.”
“Bullying” versus “Digital Shield”
The war of words between the two organizations has become remarkably personal.
According to the AP report, La Liga president Javier Tebas stated that Cloudflare is “fully aware that a significant portion of sports audiovisual piracy depends on its infrastructure.”
Tebas went further and accused the company of acting as a “digital shield for organized piracy networks” and of “prioritizing its commercial and economic interests above the law.”
Cloudflare’s response was equally sharp. Rejecting the accusations, the company told the AP that La Liga is trying to “intimidate to have complete control over what Spanish users see online.” The company accused the league of overstepping its authority by pressuring intermediaries to impose broad, sweeping blocks that go far beyond the intended scope of copyright protection.
Cloudflare insists it is a “long-standing champion of a free and open internet” and claims the football league is making “baseless claims and threats” rather than seeking genuine collaboration.
The firm maintains that it fully complies with legal requests for removal, but refuses to allow actions that could stifle legitimate expression or restrict open access to information across Spain’s digital infrastructure.
A history of collateral damage
This legal action comes after months of disruption for internet users in Spain. We previously reported on how La Liga football streaming was behind Cloudflare’s weekend outages, where the “indiscriminate” nature of these blocks brought down completely unrelated websites and services.
Frustration has led to a digital migration, with many Spaniards turning to Proton VPN to bypass restrictions and access the open web.
The situation in Spain reflects a broader European trend. In France, similar orders to block illegal streaming sites have raised alarm bells as they have also extended to VPN providers, while the UK is also cracking down on piracy, often catching innocent users in the crossfire.
Cloudflare is now encouraging Spanish users who notice legal sites being blocked to contact their legislators, highlighting the need to fight “Internet censorship.”
As the AP notes, Cloudflare faces similar pressure in Italy, where the communications watchdog recently fined it 14 million euros ($15.2 million), a sanction the company will also likely challenge.
For now, experts warn that using DNS resolvers as censorship tools remains a risky strategy that threatens the stability of the online world.
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