Spain orders blocks on Archive.today and its mirrors
Spain has ordered major ISPs to block the web archiving service archive.today and its mirrors, using mechanisms like SNI and IP filtering, prompting concerns about state-level internet censorship without full judicial oversight. Commenters link this move to a broader pattern of Spanish and EU interventions in the internet—such as blocking Cloudflare and other CDNs during football matches and pushing identity requirements online—arguing it undermines access to information and civil liberties. Others counter that archive.today is unreliable and legally problematic, but even critics question whether outright blocking by governments is a justified or proportionate response.
Nature of the block in Spain
- Spain has ordered ISPs to block archive.today / archive.is and mirrors, via a copyright-focused administrative commission rather than regular courts in some cases.
- Some users in Spain report no issues yet, suggesting uneven or slow rollout across ISPs and networks.
- A government PDF lists many copyright-related blocked sites; archive.today now appears alongside typical “piracy” domains.
Technical implementation and circumvention
- Blocking is reported via SNI-based filtering, DNS tampering, IP filtering, HTTPS interception, and generic connection failures, varying by ISP.
- Some ISPs only block on mobile, or only certain domains; others apply broader blocking.
- Suggested workarounds include VPNs, alternative/local ISPs, custom DNS, avoiding SNI, or using tools that pipe content through other domains.
- One tool (htmlpipe) is used to have Internet Archive capture archive.today pages as an extra layer of indirection.
Football/IP enforcement spillover
- Spain (and parts of Southwestern Europe) already block large IP ranges and CDNs (including Cloudflare) during La Liga / football matches to fight piracy.
- This causes collateral damage: Docker Hub, image search, blogs, and other legitimate sites can break during matches, sometimes for entire days.
- Some say lists have been refined over time to reduce collateral damage; others still see regular outages.
Trustworthiness and role of archive.today
- Critics cite Wikipedia guidance: opaque ownership, alleged DDoS attacks, and possible archive tampering; they argue it’s not a trustworthy archival source.
- Defenders say it’s uniquely useful for bypassing paywalls (Economist, FT, WSJ, WaPo, etc.) where Internet Archive refuses or cannot capture.
- Some welcome Spain’s block because archive.today already blocks their own countries; others see that stance as “if I can’t have it, no one should.”
- Alternatives mentioned: Internet Archive and paywall-bypass services like unwall, though archive.today is noted as unusually durable.
Access to information, paywalls, and censorship
- Several comments frame access to information as a de facto human right and see the block as state censorship, especially without court oversight.
- Others are more comfortable with blocking when framed as anti-piracy or anti–“untrustworthy” services.
- Broader concerns include: paywalls making “truth” expensive while “lies are free,” EU tendencies toward ID-verification and “chat control,” and foreign vs domestic manipulation of information.
- There is sharp disagreement over who should decide what counts as “misinformation” or “dangerous” content, and whether any such control can avoid abuse.