Spanish court declines to fine NordVPN over LaLiga piracy blocking order

Scope and Impact of LaLiga-Driven Blocking

• Several commenters in Spain report routine blocking of large ranges of Cloudflare (and at times other CDNs’) IPs during LaLiga matches, affecting unrelated services like Docker Hub, GitHub, AWS-hosted resources, npm, crates.io, banks, and payment systems.
• Others in Spain say they have never noticed issues, or only see minor impact; this is widely believed to be ISP-dependent. ISPs named include Movistar, MásMóvil, Orange, Vodafone, with each seemingly implementing blocks differently.
• There is dispute over scale: some describe it as “blocking the whole internet” or “a significant percentage”; others describe it as “a handful” of IPs and note that the situation has improved compared to a year ago. LaLiga itself has cited around 3,000 IPs blocked each weekend.

Responsibility, Workarounds, and CDN Choices

• Some argue affected companies should stop using Cloudflare (or affected CDNs) if they know services go down 2–3 hours per week, calling it a pragmatic fix.
• Others counter that:
  • LaLiga’s behavior should not dictate global CDN choice.
  • CDNs like Fastly have also been hit, so “just move” is not a stable solution.
  • Cloudflare’s refusal to comply with certain takedown demands is precisely why it’s being targeted.
• Some users simply tunnel everything through VPNs (often non-Spanish endpoints) to avoid both censorship and data retention.

Power of Football Leagues and Boycotts

• Strong criticism that a sports league can effectively disrupt core internet infrastructure, with comparisons to regulatory capture and overreach.
• Some advocate boycotting LaLiga and not giving it money as the only effective leverage.
• Others argue people shouldn’t have to abandon their national sport to get basic internet reliability.

Legal, Constitutional, and Political Context

• Multiple comments claim such broad blocking conflicts with EU common market rules and Spanish constitutional guarantees of internet access and free speech, though courts are slow and outcomes uncertain.
• Courts are described as “superuser” institutions that can’t easily be sued; concerns are raised about politicized judicial appointments as a systemic vulnerability.
• Side debate touches on another controversial Spanish law (gender violence legislation) to illustrate how “constitutionality” often depends on the constitutional court’s current interpretation.

Activism and “Fighting for Rights”

• Some urge people to actively defend digital rights, warning that passivity will erode privacy and openness.
• Others ask for concrete steps; suggestions include supporting digital rights orgs (EFF, EDRi and Spanish groups) and documenting outages to fuel complaints and legal challenges.