Spanish court declines to fine NordVPN over LaLiga piracy blocking order
A Spanish court has refused to fine NordVPN for not complying with LaLiga-driven piracy blocking, highlighting growing backlash against broad IP blocks that disrupt much more than illegal football streams. Commenters describe how Spanish ISPs routinely null-route thousands of CDN IPs (notably Cloudflare, and at times Fastly and others) during matches, intermittently breaking access to developer tools, payment systems, and everyday websites. The exchanges raise wider concerns about a sports league’s de facto power over national internet infrastructure, constitutional and EU law implications, and what practical responses—VPN use, provider changes, or legal and civic action—are realistic.
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.