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I was unaware of this controversy so in brief: 1. La Liga (Spanish Football) finds pirates streaming their games objectionable 2. They notice that many of the
by vessenes 1y ago
I was unaware of this controversy so in brief:
1. La Liga (Spanish Football) finds pirates streaming their games objectionable
2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing.
3. They appear in court in Spain and get an ex-parte TRO blocking all Cloudflare IPs. (Ex parte TRO: restraining order granted without Cloudflare being summoned to court)
4. Based on this, they tell ISPs to block pretty much all of Cloudflare in Spain.
5. Cloudflare goes public in frustration, noting that they could just send take down requests for infringing content like every other rights holder in the world, and that many Spanish utilities and civil resources use Cloudflare.
Interesting. My gut is that it’s hard to beat La Liga on their home turf, as evidenced by not even being invited to the court hearings which shut you down across all of Spain.
Long term, I’d guess CF wins this one? Probably they will have to escalate in some way to Eurozone courts, although I have no idea how this might work. No cloud business could meet the standard put forward by La Liga; but also there are only so many CDN companies. Meantime I guess illegal streamers can move to Google and see which legal group wins that battle.
- cinbun8 1y ago[flagged]
- moffkalast 1y agoThe EU should be sanctioning Spain the same way we're sanctioning Hungary for this sort of authoritarian behaviour. What's next, they're banning Google cause pirates use it to search for streams? I don't know how this doesn't count as a net neutrality violation.
- briandear 1y ago[flagged]
- twixfel 1y agoWhy put Hungary in scare quotes? It's right wing nationalist and undermining our (Europe's) defence against the ultrafascist Russian hordes invading from the East. It's not the same.
- zpeti 1y ago[flagged]
- genewitch 1y agoSame thing this time around, Germany is oiling the war machine to march through Poland and fight Russia again, as we comment.
- myko 1y agoAm I missing a joke here? Putin is quite literally involved in a war of conquest he started in the European continent. America is, as usual, not coming to help anytime soon (America may eventually, but right now the government looks more likely to cheer Putin on than help Europe prevent this).
- throwawaythekey 1y agoNot sure but molotov-ribbentrop provides an interesting precedent.
- johnisgood 1y agoHow did you come to this conclusion? By Hungary's refusal to send weapons and money to fund the war?
- twixfel 1y agoNo. I don't care if Hungary doesn't want to defend Europe, but it shouldn't get in the way of others doing do. It shouldn't block sanctions, it shouldn't block funds going to Ukraine. Europe is under attack and Hungary is implicitly helping Russia.
- arp242 1y agoLook, I don't like these blocks, but comparing it to the situation in Hungary is hysterical and ignorant. And the EU going around sanctioning every member state at the drop of a hat if it does something the other member states don't like would mean the end of the EU, as support for this kind of EU is extremely thin.
- candiddevmike 1y agoCloudflare becoming Too Big To Block. Sounds like it should become a utility.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Beijinger 1y ago[flagged]
- jfengel 1y agoUsually, they call that "nationalizing". For a worldwide company, would it be "globalizing"?
- Slava_Propanei 1y ago[dead]
- haiku2077 1y agoThis situation also applies to any hosting provider which doesn't give every website a separate IP address. (The newest versions of TLS encrypt domain names, so the ISP only sees the IP.)
- moralestapia 1y agoWhy? There's no rationale behind that.
- mystified5016 1y agoWhen a thing or technology becomes so large and so relied upon that removal of that thing causes real physical harm to unrelated citizens or indeed the government itself, you should think about the risk and benefits of allowing that thing to be controlled entirely by a private entity with no oversight or responsibilities.
- 1y ago
- fidotron 1y ago> 2. They notice that many of these streamers use Cloudflare for something, presumably CDN and load balancing. And DDoS protection. Sports broadcast piracy has a history of serious organized crime involvement, and then some, such as https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/13/murdoch_company_cracked_our_smartcard/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/13/murdoch_company_crack... where the allegation was NDS did the hacking and leaked the keys of the rival tech to various mob groups for exploitation.
- Yeul 1y agoBack in the 90s when most people didn't have broadband internet or CDROM burners piracy was very big business.
- cassianoleal 1y agoIf you mean bootlegs, then it's been big business for way longer than the 90s.
- ranger_danger 1y agoElectronic bootlegs, most likely they meant.
- cassianoleal 1y agoIn my hometown there used to be at least 2 shops (yes, shops) that sold bootlegged/pirate software. Mostly games but they had all sorts of business software as well. This was earlier than the 90s. The shops themselves were not in the software business. One of them was specialised in turntable needles, and it was pretty popular. You had to go to the counter and specifically ask for "the menu" in order to access the "other side" of the business. It was an open secret though, as there was a lot of traffic in the shop for "the menu". You'd choose what you wanted, paid for your copy and leave with a bunch of floppy disks with it. They charged extra for the actual disks but you could also bring your own and only pay for the service. If you mean electronic music bootlegs, then I don't see why the media or the format is that relevant. It's still just regular bootleg, and it's been popular since whenever copying and selling music was made possible.
- im3w1l 1y agoThere is a new factor in the equation: Rising anti-american sentiments. This ties in with point 5 especially. Forcing Spanish websites off Cloudflare could seem like an additional benefit.
- briandear 1y agoThe “anti American sentiment” is overblown. Average person doesn’t care. I live in Spain and I’m not seeing much anti-American anything. Anti-Israel has reached hysterical levels on the other hand — at least in the media, though the average person really doesn’t care about that much either. In my circles of high level Spanish/European motorcycle racing, we continue to have a very positive reception as Americans in the paddock. The (Spanish) TV announcers have been positive towards our riders, the teams and crew are positive and helpful. We have more people wanting to talk about Route 66 than trade policy. Most Spaniards I know tend to roll their eyes at their own government more than anything happening in the U.S. The only exceptions are hysterical US expats on Facebook groups acting like the sky is falling. But they do that reliably every time a Republican gets elected. Anecdotes aren’t data of course, but vocal people online don’t represent broader thought.
- 13_9_7_7_5_18 1y ago[dead]
- sillyfluke 1y ago>Spanish/European motorcycle racing Yeah, you're in a bubble and you're likely misreading their politeness. I don't know any Spainards who would want to get into pointless political arguments with Americans who they guessed to be right of center in the off chance they were supporters of the current US government. Unless of course they were Vox affiliated, but even then I'm not sure they would bother engaging. They'd probably prefer to stick to talking about common interest stuff (like motoracing). "Anti-American sentiment" in the European context usually means being Anti-American government, not being dicks to individual Americans. The few cases where it actually crosses into Anti-Americanism the way you describe it seems to happen when the US militarily attacks a country they consider to be "brothers" or very close to. One example would be Greeks during the NATO bombing of now Serbia. Definitely one of the worst times to visit the Acropolis for an American. I think your error is that you are gauging "Anti-American sentiment" by measuring how much you witness them bitching about Americans or Israelis. Whereas you should measure it by their actions. Tesla sales dropped signifcantly in Spain as it did in the rest of Europe. BYD sales are up 644%. See what they think about taking family vacations to the US. Spanish people often end up buying local alternatives when available anyway but don't mind buying whatever when there are no alternatives (iphones, sneakers etc) You ask the Spaniards if you want to send ammunitions to a country convicted of war crimes, the majority will most likely say no. And if your government is actually acting in accordance with that position and pushing the rest of Europe on that front, there's even less reason to bitch about Israelis to random foreigners. > Most Spaniards I know tend to roll their eyes at their own government more than anything happening in the U.S. This we can agree on. As it should be. Why bother with things out of your control?
- AtNightWeCode 1y agoI might be out of date but. I think the article is incorrect. It is the same corp that owns both the streaming rights and the ISPs. The court order allows those ISPs to block IP-addresses of sites that hosts illegal streaming. I find it hard to see how CF could have a case here.
- michaelt 1y ago> Cloudflare goes public in frustration, noting that they could just send take down requests for infringing content like every other rights holder in the world, Live sports piracy has the unusual property that you have to be able to get the block in place within the ~90 minutes of a football match, even at weekends and across time zones. Otherwise there’s no point. If the courts let Cloudflare slow roll this, at the legal system’s normal snail-like pace, the law would be effectively useless.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoHow are streaming sites registering new domains and getting the site info out to the audience in that time frame? I suspect they're not and there's actually a period there's a window of weeks or longer for enforcement actions to be taken.
- haiku2077 1y agoPreregister domain names, distribute then via chat apps like signal or whatsapp or telegram.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoWhatsapp has mechanisms to prevent this kind of thing by blocking the messages from being sent, but I guess I'm confused about how this works financially. Sports streaming (especially something like La Liga) is the textbook example of a mass market product. The vast majority of the audience isn't technically sophisticated, and live streaming infrastructure is expensive. Pirate sites need a reasonably large audience to make money. I find it hard to believe that there's enough reach for people waiting to click on random links in private signal chats to make pirate streaming a viable business when people can just go to a bar or a friend's house. Is that really happening at any meaningful scale?
- alwa 1y ago> Is that really happening at any meaningful scale? Anecdotally: oh yes. I don’t know anybody who pays, although that may say more about the populations I work with and hang out with. I hear there’s plenty of headroom for the direct economics to work, if you’re reselling for less than the ~EUR100/month range the commercial providers charge [1]. Gross median income in Spain is on the order of EUR27000 annually, for reference [2]—so I’m not sure how many of the pirate viewers would be able to afford the legit product if the pirate channels dried up. I also hear [0] there’s a robust side trade in exploiting pirate viewers’ machines though malware-style techniques while they’re there and feeling enticed to click yes to things… [0] https://www.webroot.com/blog/2021/05/12/we-explored-the-dangers-of-pirated-sport-streams-so-you-dont-have-to/ https://www.webroot.com/blog/2021/05/12/we-explored-the-dang... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LaLiga/comments/1fksf3i/how_much_does_la_liga_cost_to_watch_in_spain_on_tv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LaLiga/comments/1fksf3i/how_much_do... [2] https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736177025&idp=1254735976596&menu=ultiDatos https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadist...
- m3drano 1y agoone extra thing to mention is he role of Telefonica here. they are both an ISP that needs to apply the blocks, but also its subsidiary "Telefonica Audiovisual", who holds rights for the football, is a plaintiff. one of the claims were that this is somewhat a procedural fraud since the plaintiff (Telefonica Audiovisual) and the defendant (Telefonica Spain) is technically the same thing. the order was granted after the defendants admitted, and therefore there wasn't any hearing with CF.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoWhat’s even more confusing is how can a Spanish court just order a legitimately registered taxpaying Spanish business (assuming cloudflare has done so) to shut down their services without even a chance to provide an argument?
- cr125rider 1y agoWelcome to China! Or America Or Europe… wait where is this again?
- arielcostas 1y agoThey didn't order Cloudflare to shut down, they ordered ISPs to block any IP LaLiga claims is hosting pirated football. The president of LaLiga "Javier Tebas" also called Cloudflare a criminal organisation for enabling and making a profit off anything including child pornography (without any evidence of this, of course, just his word). Now, there is also a conflict of interest, because Telefonica (the main telecom provider here, think Deutsche Telekom in germany or any formerly-public ISP) is also a rights holder to some football, meaning their interest is to block everything instead of their internet users, who suddently can't work on Github, visit Twitter or many other large sites; or even can't buy in many places online because Redsys (the largest payment processor here) also uses Cloudflare to protect their infra, and Cloudflare IPs were being blocked indiscriminately. All of this while being able to force other ISPs to block those IP ranges too, and without any possible recourse by either Cloudflare or the sites themselves, which according to Tebas "are only used by 4 nerds who like to complain".