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Here, in Spain, internet access is cut off for many websites during football matches because La Liga, the association football league, is in war against cloudfl
by create-username 2y ago
Here, in Spain, internet access is cut off for many websites during football matches because La Liga, the association football league, is in war against cloudflare for not blocking their allegedly offending websites. Or something like that.
Today, I tried to look up a word on a dictionary and I got an error message. “There must be a football game going on right now”. I thought
- somedude895 2y agoThat sounds insane! Do you have a source?
- joey_spaztard 2y agohttps://torrentfreak.com/laliga-blocks-cloudflare-again-new-pirate-iptv-providers-anything-in-the-way-250218/ https://torrentfreak.com/laliga-blocks-cloudflare-again-new-...
- oefrha 2y agoPreviously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43157000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43157000
- nextts 2y agoAh the old misunderstood IP address. It's not a street address guys!
- sickofparadox 2y agoEven if it were, you still need to prove the person you are accusing is in the building!
- yard2010 2y agoThis is wild - thank you for the rabbithole
- briandear 2y agoI have Starlink and it doesn’t seem to be affected in Spain, but I could be wrong. I just haven’t noticed it.
- nextts 2y agoWhy would it? That's a network in space. Could the Spanish league force a US company to block specific satellites covering some part of Spain and some part of not Spain? Seems a stretch.
- matwood 2y agoStarlink does come back to earth often in the same country or region as the user. Then it would fall under all the same blocking.
- haneefmubarak 2y agoI imagine that the blocking is semi-voluntary by the local ISPs, not at a transit or peering level. Anyhow, I flicked through the tables for Starlink's Spain IP address blocks and they directly peer with Cloudflare, so short of Starlink agreeing to perform similar blocking itself or worse yet de peering with Cloudflare, I'd expect availability through them.
- generalizations 2y agoI think the relevant quote here is, "they can shake their fist at the sky".
- perihelions 2y agoSatellite internet isn't a philanthropy project. Whoever's selling it is operating a retail front in the client's country, running payment processing and delivering or shipping physical satellite dishes. Even if the satellite vendor is aligned with your interests (I'm not touching that third-rail topic)—if your government doesn't want you to have satellite internet, you won't have it. Satellites aren't, in practice and for the time being, a technological end-run around sovereignty and the practical ability of governments to censor internet access. It's been discussed on HN before, that even first-world democracies, such as the UK [0,1], feel comfortable enacting laws banning satellite internet. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 ("Starlink in the Falkland Islands – A national emergency situation? (openfalklands.com)", 225 comments) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 ("Saint Helena Island Communications (sainthelenaisland.info)", 145 comments)
- mixermachine 2y agoTruly a case where VPNs do make sense.
- throwaway894345 2y agoIf they’re blocking all of Cloudflare I would think they could also be able to block popular VPN gateways. It’s wild that a sports league has power to dictate to ISPs like this.
- dylan604 2y agoAre you just stuck on it being a sports league? Just s/sports league/entity with lots of money/
- throwaway894345 2y agoNo, it's wild that any private entity has the legal censorship authority. My own country is catapulting into authoritarianism, but as far as I'm aware, we haven't gotten to the point yet where private entities are unilaterally disconnecting users from broad swaths of the Internet.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- VHRanger 2y agoVPNs would not make sense if the actual ISP if blocking you. Apart from something like starlink and even then they're not playing nice with geographical access most of the time based on politics, whims of a narcissist, or just business.
- sebmellen 2y agoStarlink is the only massively global ISP and (as far as I’m aware) has not cut off access for anyone based on their politics or location.
- lenerdenator 2y agoI'm beginning to think Europe needs to just dry out from soccer for a year or two. Like, we're impacting communications now.
- globular-toast 2y agoOr, alternatively, we consider whether doing our communications via the same few huge American corporations is actually a good idea. The internet was literally designed to be resilient to enemy attack and look what we've done to it. Decades later, still on IPv4 and using ridiculous hacks to keep it all just barely working.
- outime 2y agoI know the current situation isn't the most optimal but barely working is an extreme hyperbole.
- globular-toast 2y agoYou're replying to a thread where people lose internet connectivity when a bunch of men are kicking a ball around a field.
- alexvitkov 2y agoThis has nothing to do with ipv4/ipv6 and the "ridiculous hacks" we do to keep ipv4 going. Those work just fine. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one.
- globular-toast 2y agoIf we want to use the internet as a communication network then we need peer-to-peer connectivity. We can't get than on IPv4. Resilience is pointless if everyone needs to connect to the same (few) middlemen before they can establish any kind of connection to a peer. It's no better than the old telephone system that needed an exclusive physical link between correspondents. We almost had this in the early 2000s, but then we regressed. People were excited about meshnets, when was the last time someone mentioned those? Too many people have forgotten and now many have been raised in this current form of the Internet thinking it's the only way. We need to think bigger. We need to push for IPv6 and basic internet connectivity (meaning ability to connect to any peer in the world) as a human right. Otherwise we build our lives around something that can be taken away on a whim over something as silly as grown men kicking a bladder around a field.
- crest 2y agoMaybe DDoS their fax machines? "Toner or paper is empty!!!", white on black, 999 copies. sigh
- dylan604 2y agoDid anyone actually ever attempt the faxing a piece of black construction paper on an old sheet fed fax machine where you tape the top to the bottom prank? Was that even possible, or just urban legend?
- mysteria 2y agoI've never heard of anyone making a paper roll with tape but I've definitely seen pranksters fax sheet after sheet of full black to waste paper and ink.
- wkat4242 2y agoHuh? I live in Spain and I've never had any issues with internet or any websites being cut off. I'm not sure when these matches are on though because I'm not interested in sports. Spain does have a problem with the legal system though. Last year they almost cut off telegram and the government had to intervene.
- flkenosad 2y agoSpain could build thier own cloudflare.
- basisword 2y agoThought you must be exaggerating but after reading further I’m shocked. I know the courts can be a tech illiterate but why are the Spanish courts this bad? Surely they see the consequences of the decision and immediately realise it’s stupid? The UK can be pretty bad with this stuff and the Premier League is huge but I have no concern of something this idiotic happening here.