Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Context & Legal Setup

  • LaLiga obtained court orders allowing Spanish ISPs to block any IPs it designates during matches, leading to broad blocking of Cloudflare and other CDNs.
  • Some see this as effectively giving a private sports league quasi‑regulatory power over core internet infrastructure, aided by courts and conflicted ISPs (e.g., an ISP that also owns football rights).

Impact, Collateral Damage & “People Will Die”

  • Spanish commenters report many unrelated services intermittently failing during match windows: company sites, payments (Redsys), GitHub, Twitter, even home-automation used to open garages/houses.
  • There are claims of medical/health devices being disrupted; others say the “people will die” framing is exaggerated but accept that the risk to critical services is real.
  • Several argue this should be treated as a net‑neutrality / fundamental rights issue, with some comparing Spain’s behavior to broader authoritarian trends; others call that comparison overblown.

Piracy, Pricing & UX of Sports Streaming

  • Many say piracy is driven by fragmented rights and poor service: expensive bundles, regional blackouts, multiple subscriptions, ads on paid streams, and confusing coverage (e.g., different leagues on different platforms, partial NHL/F1 coverage).
  • Multiple users describe abandoning paid services for pirate streams that are simply easier: one site, one interface, worldwide access.
  • View expressed: “piracy is a service problem”; lowering price and improving availability would convert many pirates.

Cloudflare, Centralization & Captchas

  • Broad concern that putting huge swaths of the web behind a few CDNs (especially Cloudflare) makes the net fragile: one injunction can break thousands of sites.
  • At the same time, Cloudflare’s free/cheap, feature‑rich offering (DDoS protection, WAF, cheap static hosting, unmetered pricing) explains its dominance.
  • Some blame Cloudflare for serving phishing, piracy, and other shady sites and for being slow or reluctant on abuse; others say they’re no worse than any cloud host.
  • Many complain about Cloudflare/Google captchas and “are you human?” loops that silently lock out legitimate users, which undermines its claim to be protecting critical services.

Responsibility & Possible Fixes

  • One camp: this is mainly LaLiga + courts + ISPs abusing overbroad injunctions; CDNs/hosts shouldn’t be forced into granular content policing.
  • Another camp: Cloudflare could mitigate by separating “vetted/critical” customers onto distinct ranges or systems, or tightening onboarding for abuse‑heavy segments.
  • Some argue live‑sports piracy is time‑sensitive, so traditional takedown workflows are too slow; others respond that pirates adapt anyway, while ordinary users bear the brunt.
  • Suggestions include: regulation against mass IP blocking, treating large CDNs as regulated utilities, more CDN competition, or restructuring copyright/remuneration so leagues aren’t driven to maximalist enforcement.