European ISPs Want Rightsholders Held Accountable for Overblocking Damage
European internet providers are pushing back against court-ordered copyright blocking, arguing that rightsholders should be liable for the collateral damage caused when entire services or unrelated sites are swept up in anti-piracy measures. Commenters highlight Spain’s extreme football-driven blocking—sometimes affecting Cloudflare-backed services and everyday work—as an example of how overreach and weak penalties for false or broad claims waste citizens’ time and disrupt legitimate use. More broadly, the debate ties this to DMCA takedowns and growing censorship and surveillance powers, with many calling for stronger safeguards, economic disincentives for abusive claims, and a better balance between enforcement and digital rights.
Scope of the Problem: Overblocking & Sports Piracy
- Many comments focus on Spain, where anti-piracy measures around soccer reportedly cause broad outages (e.g., Cloudflare-hosted services, even Docker images, intermittently failing during high-profile matches).
- Italy is described as similarly influenced by top-tier soccer leagues and rights holders; some link this to entrenched interests and even organized crime.
- Several see this as symptomatic of governments prioritizing sports revenues and public spectacle over basic connectivity and other public needs.
Censorship, DMCA, and Liability
- Multiple commenters note parallels with the U.S. DMCA: platforms face no real liability for taking down lawful content, and “penalty of perjury” is seen as mostly toothless.
- There is support for making rightsholders financially liable for wrongful blocks to create counter-incentives against spammy or overly broad takedowns.
- Others warn that requiring court judgments before any action would make enforcement prohibitively slow and expensive, favoring wealthy litigants.
Is Censorship Ever Justified?
- One strand rejects “censorship is always bad” as too absolute, citing child sexual abuse material, revenge porn, doxxing, and serious threats as content most people agree should be suppressed.
- Others stress difficulty of correct classification, risk of overblocking (e.g., mislabeling LGBTQ content as pornography), and the tendency of censorship tools to be repurposed for political control.
- There is debate over whether resources should prioritize catching creators of harmful material versus widespread takedowns; some argue these goals compete for limited enforcement budgets.
Cloudflare, ISPs, and Technical/Policy Responses
- Cloudflare is defended for not “policing” customers too aggressively; doing so is seen as a slippery slope and technically costly, though critics say it could at least segregate obvious piracy sites by IP.
- Examples from the UK show how once a blocking system exists (e.g., for child abuse material), courts and rightsholders quickly repurpose it for copyright enforcement.
- Some ISPs deliberately avoid censorship infrastructure to avoid being drafted into enforcement; others comply under court order and face user backlash.
Proposed Reforms & Broader Concerns
- Suggestions include: small per-claim fees, automatic penalties or damages for invalid takedowns, and keeping content up during disputes in non-urgent cases.
- Several commenters see a global trend toward heavier internet control (age verification, surveillance, “great firewalls”) and worry about the loss of an open, anonymous internet.