LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain

https://reclaimthenet.org/laligas-anti-piracy-crackdown-triggers-widespread-internet-disruptions

165•akyuu•3h ago

Comments

righthand•3h ago

Why do they not pay for streams? Is this a “cable sub cost is too high” or a “broadcasters want to blackout stream so only locals and the right networks can see the game” situation?

EDIT: “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” explained Newell [0]

[0] https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...

ACCount37•2h ago

It really doesn't matter.

The issue isn't "some people don't pay for sports streams". The issue is that some corporate fucktards have managed, through the power of lobbying, backroom deals and blatant corruption, to get an engine of country-wide internet censorship to be created - and then abused on their behalf.

This isn't the first, or the tenth, time it happens. People should have been sued, fired and jailed after the first time they blocked the entirety of Cloudflare for inane "copyright" reasons - and yet, nothing was done, and the censorship persists.

righthand•51m ago

Perhaps take some of the emotion out of it? I’m asking for perspective and history on the issue, not clueless as to why the situation is bad. This is a US hosted forum, the issue is happening in Spain. Perhaps clarity is called for that’s not specified in the article?

riffraff•2h ago

I can answer for Italy which has the same issue, and a similar "solution",and it's the first option.

Watching football has become really expensive in the last decade and people are fed up.

Also, sometimes you need different subscriptions to watch all the games of your team.

Meanwhile, piracy is cheap and convenient.

qingcharles•2h ago

Is it a cultural thing? Computers and copyright are fairly recent innovations in some parts of Europe such as Spain and Italy. Certainly well into the 90s you could still buy pirated media, especially video games, from every mom and pop store.

amarcheschi•2h ago

At least in italy is more of a "people with economic interest in football are also in politics and thus are able to shape policies for their profit"

ioteg•2h ago

Computers and copyright are fairly recent in Spain and Italy? This is astonishingly ignorant, if not simple ragebait.

anthk•41m ago

Ah, yes, the ZX Spectrum arcade games and text adventures from the 80's in Spain, 'fairly recent'.

https://base.speccy.org/ProyectoBASE_Historia.html

The parent comment confuses Spain and Italy as if they were the same... as if Spain didn't had French and UK influences from the North at all since the 1600's and before... yeah sure.

Spain had and has picaresca as the Italians, of course... but we aren't 100% the same and it shows off. We used to buy legal games in the 80's because the prices plumetted down because of the piracy, and between the shaddy game loaders and having to wait 15 minutes per load, everyone wanted at least to buy one or two original games in order to play something without losing literal hours trying to tweak the casette player.

Italy in the meanwhile just resold foreing games as if they were local. Some Spaniards did the same too; but it had small powerhouses as Aventuras AD, Erbe Software and such, not just a few by any means.

tecleandor•1h ago

Fairly recent innovations? Lol.

anthk•33m ago

The Jupiter ACE manuals in Spanish must had to came from another dimension. The same with the books for the ZX Spectrum in Spanish and such. And banks and big corporations owning IBM PC's, yeah, sure, there was no software in Spanish in the 80's, sure...

Even my elementary school had DOS PC's with 5,25 floppies with Spanish and Basque translated games, even Logo... that in mid 90's.

On Copyright... I'm pretty sure Spain was bound to the Berna convention.

And, on piracy, in the 80's (in Spanish, your browser can translate it): https://www.retrogameshistory.com/2021/03/la-pirateria-espan...

EbNar•1h ago

> Computers and copyright are fairly recent innovations in some parts of Europe such as Spain and Italy

LOL, what did you smoke, man?

anthk•43m ago

Man, Spanioards bought LEGAL ZX Spectrum games on book stores and such in the 80's as a solution for the rampant piracy. The companies themselves pushed down the prices for convenience.

edgineer•32m ago

I'm interested in hearing more about the evolution of copyright law wrt computer media in Spain. I see an article from 2001 describing how compiled software was not copyrightable in Spain at that time. [0] From [1] I see that individual file sharing, except for software, is allowed there.

Having seen how Sweden changed their copyright law in response to the Pirate Bay website [2], I wish everyone knew that it wasn't always this way, and that states maintain their own rules. The idea that "no one shall copy any corporation's media, ever" is a recent propaganda success.

[0] https://www.mondaq.com/copyright/14472/technology-protection...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7978853.stm

jonplackett•2h ago

Football is just ridiculous in general. They sell off different parts of the competitions to different services so you need to subscribe to multiple companies to watch them all. It’s just tremendous corporate greed at the expense of fans. Players are being bought for hundreds of millions - that money is all coming from increasing subscription costs and rinsing fans around the world.

amarcheschi•2h ago

At least here in italy, for some people it's just too expensive to care about paying, for some people it's just that they don't want to pay for it even on cheaper plans which were launched recently at a reasonable - well, more or less - price.

We have a similar anti piracy shield and once we got some Google cdn down for half an hour. Imagine not being able to use Google drive because the football league is trying to block football piracy streams - which are trivially searchable online anyway

Phemist•35m ago

In the Netherlands, live streaming of Premier League matches is done by Viaplay (I'm guessing in other countries too?). Their service is very spotty, lots of buffering, especially during highly dynamic (e.g. important) parts of the matches, and they stream at very very low bitrate, often dropping down to 360p.

As a result, people cancel their subscriptions. To recuperate some of the losses, Viaplay now licenses one match every weekend to a third party streaming service, this year it is on Amazon Prime.

So, now besides the high cost and shoddy service, you suddenly need an additional streaming subscription to be able to view every match. Granted, the streaming on Prime is excellent though.

This weekend, the Prime match was Liverpool v Everton, which as a Dutchie is the most interesting match of the weekend (given Liverpool's title win last season, the Dutch trainer and several outstanding Dutch players).

Several friends of mine who are into football immediately quit their Viaplay subscription, so who knows how many matches will not be streamable through Viaplay next season?

As a legit customer you are constantly chasing an ever shifting landscape of poor quality and overpriced services. Meanwhile with an IPTV subscription you pay little, get high quality streams and have access to _all_ content.

Bairfhionn•2h ago

La liga wants to get rid of illegal streams so they can ask for more money for the licenses.

Paid Streaming or TV is quite expensive. It's mostly because you have to buy the whole package which includes everything else the company provides. Like Golf or Nascar or whatever they find on ESPN 8.

Also paying for a stream only really benefits the rich clubs. The money la liga earns for tv rights is split between professional teams with Barcelona and the two Madrids receiving about 30% of the money. The other 17 teams get the rest. Some fans don't want to see them getting more money (small percentage but never underestimate fans)

pfortuny•2h ago

You can't imagine how much you have to pay in Spain for the right of seeing a single La Liga match.

Oh wait, you cannot do that. You have to pay for all the championship together with the Champions League and what not.

matheusmoreira•2h ago

The reason is irrelevant. Only the private censorship perpertrated by the copyright industry matters.

righthand•2h ago

The reason is relevant because I asked what the reason was. I asked this because I wanted to know how the people of Spain and Laliga got here, the history is relevant.

You may only want to focus on the rights violations but that doesn’t make the history and reasons irrelevant.

mschuster91•2h ago

Sky in Germany was infamous for not providing nearly close to enough servers to support streaming of high profile games. And their cable TV box used extremely sub-par SoCs which made for an atrocious user experience.

In addition the cost only went upwards while the offering reduced every season as Dazn and other players entered the field. I said goodbye to soccer a few years prior to Covid.

krelian•1h ago

If you want to watch all of your team's games you need to a) purchase an expensive monthly cable subscription from the company that holds the football rights. b) pay a sizeable sum on top, I think it's about 50 euros per month to be able to watch the actual matches.

This is just for La Liga games, you'll need to pay extra if your team plays in other competitions.

gausswho•1h ago

For personal viewing. How much do bars pay?

pxndx•1h ago

Does this matter? I want to watch the games at home, with my friends.

gausswho•57m ago

Sure. Me too. But I also sometimes want to watch the games at a bar, with my friends. And the rate they charge bars in Europe is extortionately high. I wouldn't be surprised if those are the primary targets in this crackdown.

MSFT_Edging•1h ago

Rights holders can, at any time, make the distribution of games smooth and affordable.

Their choice to infinitely segment sports broadcast results in piracy.

ascorbic•23m ago

The main issue isn't that they're blocking the streams: it's that the blocks are so broad they're blocking huge swathes of other parts of the internet. Instead of blocking somepiratesite.futbol they're blocking Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify, AWS, etc

GardenLetter27•2h ago

This has been going on for years. A VPN is practically mandatory nowadays.

fivekarots•2h ago

In 2019, LaLiga mobile app turned on the mic and location to track bars showing matches without a license [1]. Protection data agency fined them with 250k EUR, but was overturned by the Supreme court in 2024 [2].

[1]: https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/06/12/inenglish/15603... [2]: https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2024-07-27/el-supremo...

okanat•2h ago

It seems like the EU courts need to be involved in this case. Limiting internet to millions of people to make some people rich also flies too close to an human right violation in 2025 so maybe even ECHR can be involved.

klabb3•1h ago

They need to lecture these guys very seriously. La Liga is disrupting completely legit and business critical (probably in some cases safety critical) infrastructure, to.. combat piracy of entertainment content? The Spanish government is seemingly complicit. Feels like 2010 in some corrupt pseudo-democracy.

anthk•47m ago

Tebas and PSOE in the same league? (no pun intended). I doubt it.

AJ007•41m ago

Lecture? They should be stripped of their intellectual property rights.

tbrownaw•14m ago

Sounds like the ISP shouldn't be blocking hosting providers that are known to honor narrower takedown orders?

alecsm•2h ago

Right now if you want to use internet on weekends you need to pay a VPN.

Even some online games on Steam stop working. I've seen also a several Twitch streamers who can't stream, startups down, etc.

We're basically hostages of this stupidity. And you know the funny thing? Football streams are working just fine. Now I feel morally obligated to watch pirated football and never pay them for it.

pell•2h ago

They could also make the sport more affordable to watch again.

EbNar•1h ago

They are stupid enough that they block almost no ipv6 range. So if your provider has ipv6, you're relatively safe.

sandworm101•11m ago

Shhh. The lawyers barely know that ipv6 exists. They havent learned how to write out ipv6 addresses yet. Dont give them a reason to.

SilverElfin•17m ago

That’s insane. Do citizens not have a recourse

cogogo•1h ago

It easier for me to watch La Liga in the US than it is for my brother in-law in Spain. Thank goodness we don’t have the reckless anti-piracy actions here but we do have some of the same BS going on because the same is true for him in reverse. Its easier and cheaper for him to watch the Red Sox in Spain than it is for me in Boston. 1yr of MLBtv is 30 bucks but local blackouts. 1 month of NESN the local broadcaster is the same price. Streaming all sports is a fragmented and extremely expensive mess for the fans and it only seems to be getting worse. I don’t blame people for cheating. Especially in Spain where incomes are significantly lower than the US.

Foivos•1h ago

Can the service providers somehow block illegal streaming themselves? That way no third party services would be affected?

michaelt•1h ago

As I understand it, the only organisation that can block the streaming websites without collateral damage is Cloudflare, and they have not chosen to do so.

The situation is a bit irregular, as the streaming providers set up a new website for each game, and the legal system isn't fast-moving enough to issue a court order banning a website within the 90 minutes of a football game. Instead La Liga got a 'dynamic blocking injunction' so they tell ISPs what to block, and ISPs have to block it.

konraditurbe•1h ago

Sucks to have to spin up the VPN anytime there's a match. Wonder how much money are Spanish companies losing out on online sales over this crap.

Have this: https://hayahora.futbol/ on my bookmarks every time some site doesn't respond.

bastard_op•1h ago

Imagine if the MPAA/RIAA knew about this during the 2000's to use against the Kazaa, Limewire, etc during that era anywhere/everywhere. It is so overreaching the Internet would have been stalled at the time.

It is astonishing the court systems for those countries to allow this if, other than maybe football factors into their GDP (which says something about the nation, maybe they should find something more useful to produce). Just for some silly sports event watching man-children kicking balls around.

I grew up in the US as sports were just something on tv, but this is practically holding the nation hostage as though it were a religion, and the world should stop just so they can sell tickets for the only one god, theirs.

whitehexagon•52m ago

I ordered a new 4G router here, I've been having so many failed connections, now it all makes sense, in a non-sense kinda way. Anna also gone dark, just when I was traveling and missing a book.

Scoundreller•41m ago

If you get a non-Spanish EU SIM, it should route all your traffic through that other country, no?

Not sure if roaming always tunnels your traffic back to SIM’s country of origin or not.

whitehexagon•16m ago

I wasnt sure if 4G/mobile has the same 'open internet' rules that telcos usually have to follow for cabled connections.

But good idea using foreign SIM, although I'll probably need residential proof or probably have to give a blood sample at this rate.

anthk•48m ago

I had to use i2pd plus some mirror to update my BSD systems...

gausswho•44m ago

I can't intuit moral reasoning for why a media rights holder has the right to restrict a rebroadcast. They put it out there to reach a wide audience. Why can't I receive it and share it?

I can play physical copies of music and movies wherever I happen to bring them. Why can't I do it with the digital variant?

Largely I feel like the response to this is a rephrasing of 'because no one will be able to monetize the creation of entertainment'. But that's not a moral reasoning, that's a choice of how to foster a market. Which undermines the explanation of this being about piracy. We can try other ways of growing a market that doesn't inhibit an intuitive natural urge to share.

salviati•38m ago

> I can play physical copies of music and movies wherever I happen to bring them

Wait, can you? In the US and EU, physical copies are for personal use only. Where are you that this would be legal?

gausswho•25m ago

You're right, I should have qualified that this is a limited use. But the limit is, in practice, quite fluid. They won't make a lawsuit over a slumber party. Probably not for a meetup. I expect they will for a theatre. Will they for a dive bar with a bunch of old CD's and DVD's? Or for a funeral?

The selective enforcement exposes to me that it doesn't really have a ethical leg to stand on.

ragnarel•13m ago

A few months ago I cancelled my subscription to watch LaLiga. I won't pay a single euro to these tyrants who impose censorship on innocent people.

ajsnigrutin•13m ago

Why is there no responsibility for that? And not just LaLiga, but everywhere?

You can claim copyright on anything anywhere, things get taken down, zero responsibility if it was wrongful, be it laliga streams, be it youtube copyright strikes or whatever?

If there was a law, that if you took down something that you shouldn't have taken down (eg. hundreds of pages), you should be liable for all the damages and income loss for those pages. Same for youtube... copyright strike, proven fair use.. now pay for the lost income of the creator, the creator (webmaster, ...) did nothing wrong, you should be liable for that.

Al-Khwarizmi•7m ago

I'm from Spain, never watch football or pay any attention to it at all, and this year I noticed the day that the Liga started due to the internet suddenly working like crap. After various websites failing to respond I thought "I bet the football season has started again", I googled it and indeed, it started that day. I resubscribed to my VPN right there and then.

This situation (which has already been going on for a year or so) has made my attitude towards football change from "I don't like it, but live and let live" to outright hate.

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