[HN Gopher] Tell HN: docker pull fails in spain due to football ...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: docker pull fails in spain due to football cloudflare
block
I just spent 1h+ debugging why my locally-hosted gitlab runner
would fail to create pipelines. The gitlab job output would just
display weird TLS errors when trying to pull a docker images. After
debugging gitlab and the runner, I realized after a while I could
not even run "docker pull <image>" on my machine as root: > error
pulling image configuration: download failed after attempts=6: tls:
failed to verify certificate: x509: certificate is not valid for
any names, but wanted to match docker-images-
prod.6aa30f8b08e16409b46e0173d6de2f56.r2.cloudflarestorage.com
First blaming tailscale, dns configuration and all other stuff.
Until I just copied that above URL into my browser on my laptop,
and received a website banner: > El acceso a la presente direccion
IP ha sido bloqueado en cumplimiento de lo dispuesto en la
Sentencia de 18 de diciembre de 2024, dictada por el Juzgado de lo
Mercantil no 6 de Barcelona en el marco del procedimiento ordinario
(Materia mercantil art. 249.1.4)-1005/2024-H instado por la Liga
Nacional de Futbol Profesional y por Telefonica Audiovisual
Digital, S.L.U. https://www.laliga.com/noticias/nota-informativa-
en-relacion-con-el-bloqueo-de-ips-durante-las-ultimas-jornadas-de-
laliga-ea-sports-vinculadas-a-las-practicas-ilegales-de-cloudflare
For those non-spanish speakers: It means there is football match
on, and during that time that specific host is blocked. This is
just plain madness. I guess that means my gitlab pipelines will not
run when football is on. Thank you, Spain.
Author : littlecranky67
Score : 602 points
Date : 2026-04-12 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
| sigio wrote:
| Time to use a VPN in your docker pipelines ;) Or run your systems
| outside of Spain.
|
| Or can this be avoided by using an alternate DNS?
| darkwater wrote:
| They are planning to also block VPN providers during football
| matches, see https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-
| security/la-liga-w...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| They are not "planning" to block VPNs. A technologically
| illiterate judge has ordered it, but there are no plans nor
| mechanisms to enforce it.
| chrismustcode wrote:
| If they can block IPs of cloudflare what extra mechanisms
| would be needed to block VPN IPs?
| chmod775 wrote:
| The only viable way to even get most of them is to shut
| down internet access entirely. It's not a realistic
| solution, unlike blocking a few well known IP ranges
| belonging to a large corp like Cloudflare.
|
| And even if you managed to get them all beforehand, some
| VPN providers will adapt and keep some servers in
| reserve, putting them online just as you managed to block
| the previous ones. Getting around internet censorship is
| a large chunk of their business, and some are _really_
| good at it.
| echoangle wrote:
| You don't really need to block all, you just need to
| annoy the users enough that paying is easier. And I think
| there are enough games to use up the IP reserve pretty
| quickly and getting new ones every time is pretty
| annoying.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I can provision a new VPS in about 5s of active work. I'd
| probably fully automate spinning up new servers and
| failing over because automatically detecting which got
| blocked is trivial. Bonus points if you use providers
| that let you attach multiple IPs to each VPS for cheap.
| Use some censorship resistant decentralized protocols to
| provide the next couple IPs to your client software and
| you're good.
|
| And then they still need to monitor hundreds of VPN
| providers for whether they have new IPs, which is not
| neccssarily as easy as just grabbing a list of them. Once
| they have some, they then need to forward them to the
| ISPs and ask for them to be blocked. Their process is
| significantly less friendly to automation.
|
| No country ever won this fight short of total
| shutdown/disconnects.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| It's a game. The VPN marketplace is huge so it's wack-a-
| mole.
|
| Big companies don't hide their VPN ASNs. Obscure, for
| sure, but getting a good list isn't hard. Usually they
| get blocked.
|
| Smaller companies may pass under the radar, and have
| higher tolerance for risky strategies.
|
| The fringe providers are the problem. They aggressively
| change IP ranges, front-vs-obscure ownership, and play
| dirty. Shady folks will resell residential ranges. End-
| users often get tainted goods.
|
| ... and you still have the collateral damage game when
| VPNs host infra with big cloud providers vs colofarms vs
| self-host, etc.
| darkwater wrote:
| The exact same stupid mechanism they are already using.
| Forcing ISPs to blackhole whole subnets if they belong to
| the VPN provider ASN(s).
| ufocia wrote:
| "A _Sanish_ Court has ordered NordVPN and Proton VPN to block
| IPs transmitting illegal football streams" [emphasis added],
| that is inspain.
| prmoustache wrote:
| When talking about VPNs, it doesn't have to mean "third party
| VPN". You can host your own on any VPN service outside of
| Spain.
| darkwater wrote:
| Yes, but that's not something many can do easily. Also
| already having to use a VPN is not the "right" solution.
| The right so solution is to beat some sense inside some
| politician's head, and force them to write and approve laws
| that don't let stupid (or conniving) judges pass orders
| like this one we are talking about.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I agree it is not the right solution.
|
| But anyone who is pulling docker images in a sunday
| afternoon while the rest of the country is glued to their
| screen to watch a football game or enjoying a sunny
| sunday outside having beers and tapas and what not should
| be capable of setting up wireguard.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Given the context of the HN audience, it's probably
| something you can do.
| msh wrote:
| It takes very light technical skills to deploy algo
| skgsergio wrote:
| Alternate DNS doesn't help, they block at IP level.
|
| Yes, they block IPs belonging to CDNs (CF including R2,
| BunnyCDN, CDN77, Fastly, Alibaba, Akamai even)...
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| It is not a DNS based block, but on the IP level. Once I knew
| what caused the issue, I figured I use one of my Hetzner
| vServers as an exit node in tailscale.
|
| But come on, this can't be true. I wonder how many other people
| in IT wasted hours on issues and tickets to find out it is due
| to a football match taking place. Admittedly, chances are low,
| as football matches are usually outside of office hours.
| gred wrote:
| > run your systems outside of Spain
|
| So much for digital sovereignty :-)
| vaylian wrote:
| This is a know issue and it is completely fucked up:
| https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/cloudflar...
|
| What Spain does is basically censorship and it's very poorly
| executed. The docker image registry is only one out of the many
| collateral victims of this stupid law.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > What Spain does is basically censorship and it's very poorly
| executed
|
| Basically? It is censorship, with huge collateral damage and
| regardless of how much we complain or share evidence that the
| blocks are actually financially harming us, no one seems to
| care as long as La Liga gets to freely block whatever hoster of
| websites as they wish.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's just like the Great Firewall of China, except in service
| of _football profits_ instead of political ideology. I don 't
| know which one is dumber and more disgraceful.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I wouldn't say "instead of", just "also", these "football
| blocks" are not the first cases of censorship of the
| internet in Spain.
|
| womenonweb.org for example was inaccessible for years, just
| unblocked some years ago. During the latest Catalan
| independence referendum, the Spanish government blocked a
| bunch of websites, not the very least the official website
| of the referendum itself.
|
| This is just one of the most recent cases, and so far the
| one with widest regular impact.
| utrack wrote:
| They block the whole of Cloudflare R2, I believe the Docker hub
| is just (heh) a collateral.
|
| When the La Liga match starts, everything that's proxied via CF
| (including zero access reverse tunnels) stops working.
|
| There's even a website made for checking if the match is on:
| https://hayahora.futbol/
|
| You can check if your host is affected:
| https://hayahora.futbol/#comprobador&domain=docker-images-pr...
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Why do they do that? Sorry, I don't speak Spanish.
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| to """"""""""prevent piracy""""""""""
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Here's a good English-language article about it, with a
| timeline: https://daniel.es/blog/cloudflare-vs-la-liga/
|
| Looks like same old regulatory capture.
| maest wrote:
| Also, a classic tweet from the Cloudflare CEO re their
| fight with Italians authorities re censorship:
|
| https://xcancel.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492
|
| Everyone looks bad in this conflict.
| post-it wrote:
| How does this make Matthew look bad?
| encom wrote:
| Matt acting like he's a free speech absolutist.
| Hilarious.
| petcat wrote:
| Italy and Spain are the bad actors here. Not cloudflare.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| On a scale of oppression he certainly leans towards free.
| nslsm wrote:
| HN in 2026: free speech is hilarious.
| encom wrote:
| You have it backwards. I'm the free speech absolutist.
| Cloudflare is not.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Because LaLiga and football in general is what is governing
| Spain really.
| bakugo wrote:
| The website has a language selector on the right just below
| the initial screen, just FYI.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| to stop people pirating football streams while matches are
| on. Insanity
| michaelt wrote:
| The football league would rather not have pirates livestream
| their ~90 minute games.
|
| Pirates would rather not be blocked, so they create a new,
| disposable website for every game. Any blocking must happen
| fast.
|
| Cloudflare would rather not block websites without a court
| order specifying the sites to be blocked.
|
| The courts would rather not create a special fast lane
| through the courts, just to resolve a squabble between two
| huge corporations.
| n6242 wrote:
| > The football league would rather not have pirates
| livestream their ~90 minute games.
|
| Funny enough, I work in IT and I've had to use a VPN to be
| able to do my job when soccer is on, but my two non-tech-
| savy family members that do watch soccer using pirate
| livestreams say that they've never had any issues with
| blocked streams.
| spwa4 wrote:
| But you must realize, the alternative to this is that
| some very wealthy Spanish companies ... lose a small
| amount of money.
|
| Surely you understand now. Go about your business, poor
| person.
| ryandrake wrote:
| They don't even "lose a small amount of money." They
| simply gain less money than usual for a short period of
| time. Think of how rough that is for them.
| necovek wrote:
| I think it's even that they "gain less money than they
| could if everyone watching illegally _would pay_ for it
| when they could not watch illegally " (that's usually how
| companies crying "piracy" calculate "losses" -- "let's
| assume everyone watching illegally would certainly still
| watch it and pay the full price").
| joquarky wrote:
| I once remember reading an article about shareholders
| selling off a stock because the rate of increase in
| profit had slowed.
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| I work in IT and have found that the issue impacts my
| work but not my ability to stream sports from sites of
| questionable legality. Of course, I don't pirate La Liga
| matches but that's primarily because I don't give a shit
| about soccer.
|
| But the point is that the measure does more to block
| legitimate use than illegitimate (in my experience). And
| next they want to go after VPNs. Wonderful.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| But think of the children ... and futbol!
| lentil_soup wrote:
| > Cloudflare would rather not block websites without a
| court order specifying the sites to be blocked.
|
| why would they?
|
| > squabble between two huge corporations
|
| I think this is just LaLiga using it's cultural and
| economical power, don't think Cloudflare or the courts
| should be making exceptions just so they can control how
| people watch football
| gruez wrote:
| >why would they?
|
| Plenty of companies proactively take action against shady
| users, even if not 100% required under law. Youtube has
| content id, social media companies have "community
| guidelines", and ISPs have AUPs.
| mlyle wrote:
| > why would they?
|
| Well, in this case, the alternative is all of Spain
| intermittently blocking lots of Cloudflare.
|
| But if Cloudflare bows to Spain in this case, every
| jurisdiction will want to pile up lots of special case
| rules for Cloudflare to try and implement.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| The US is captured by the Israeli lobby. Spain is captured
| by the football lobby.
| Pay08 wrote:
| So what, do they just block a range of IP addresses and are
| then done with it?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| technically, LaLiga themselves doesn't even do the
| blocking. They have a court order from some years ago
| that allows them to compel all the individual ISPs to
| block any IP addresses they specify, with no oversight or
| review
| bartread wrote:
| This must negatively impact a huge number of businesses.
| Is there no move for them to all get together to take
| legal action against LaLiga to stop them doing this?
| sva_ wrote:
| Ah man, that shader in the background is like a rite of passage
| for people including a shader on their website.
|
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lscczl
| aftbit wrote:
| Ah the irony, I'm blocked from viewing that page by
| Cloudflare
|
| Performing security verification
|
| This website uses a security service to protect against
| malicious bots. This page is displayed while the website
| verifies you are not a bot. Incompatible browser extension or
| network configuration
| jimaek wrote:
| Off topic but I wonder when Cloudflare is going to launch their
| own Docker registry as a product.
| vaylian wrote:
| What would the business case be?
| jimaek wrote:
| Capture developers and funnel them to the Workers platform
| ImJasonH wrote:
| It's pretty easy to write your own. I made this one a while
| ago: https://github.com/chainguard-dev/crow-registry
| wqtz wrote:
| Well, Cloudflare does not launch anything. They acquire to
| build products. Look into all their recent product launches.
| They acquired a relatively small company and converted the
| founding team to a product team.
|
| So, if you want them to build stuff, ask yourself, are there
| any "Docker Registry" startups out there. If
| jsdelivr/globalping is not keeping you busy enough... there is
| an idea
| jimaek wrote:
| Honestly I would build it if I knew how to properly market it
| to quickly get users.
|
| Globalping and jsDelivr took years to gain a meaningful user
| base
| wqtz wrote:
| I do not think that is the issue. The recent acquisitions
| from all these big tech companies did not have any
| "meaningful" user base to begin with.
|
| I think your name alone carries significant weight in the
| industry and you have built a very large community.
|
| If you even vibe code something with, you will get a stupid
| amount of money thrown at you and a contract that bounds
| your existing projects and the next 3-5 years to a
| particular company as project lead.
|
| Here is a list of acquisitions Cloudflare made recently:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/tag/acquisitions/
|
| Most of these companies did not have a half dozen paying
| customer or even a fully fleshed-out product before they
| were acquired.
| jimaek wrote:
| I wish I had as much faith in myself as you have in me :)
| ai_slop_hater wrote:
| https://github.com/cloudflare/serverless-registry
| jimaek wrote:
| I've seen it but it's buggy and lacking in features. Feels
| like an afterthought instead of a real product
| ahachete wrote:
| Yeah, I know. Welcome to the club :(
|
| https://x.com/ahachete/status/2035783292549755228
| mathfailure wrote:
| Cloudflare is cancer. And the tumor is now too big.
| Cpoll wrote:
| You've got it backwards. Spain's ISPs are blocking Cloudflare
| and other CDNs because of LaLiga/football piracy. CloudFlare
| isn't doing anything here.
| sph wrote:
| You are correct, but Cloudflare is still a cancer on the
| Internet.
| petcat wrote:
| Rampant bot traffic and scrapers are the real cancer. Until
| that goes away everyone is going to need cloudflare or some
| other bot firewall service.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| It won't. Some people are perfectly happy to destroy and
| destroy as long as they get some small portion as profit
| for themselves.
| sph wrote:
| That, ironically, includes Cloudflare. Without rampant
| bots making the internet worse for everybody, they
| wouldn't have as much work. And their portion of profit
| is anything but small.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Perhaps that is true, but the Cloudflare anti-bot
| protection is too stupid and annoying.
|
| They should have used a cookie or something else that
| does not require asking me every few minutes to prove
| once more that I am not a bot.
|
| There was a time when Cloudflare had become less
| intrusive, but for the last months it has begun again to
| intervene almost each time when opening some pages.
|
| There is no doubt that anti-bot protection can be
| implemented in a better way than Cloudflare does, but
| presumably the alternatives would consume more resources
| on their servers, so probably they choose whatever
| minimizes their costs, regardless if that ensures maximum
| discomfort for Internet users.
| post-it wrote:
| You're getting frequent verification requests because
| you're behaving like a bot. Are you modifying your user
| agent string or using a VPN?
| encom wrote:
| Who knows what upsets ClownFlare? I'm using Vivaldi on
| Linux on IPv6 in Denmark with every uBlock filter enabled
| and Cookie Auto-delete. That seems to confuse and anger
| CloudFlare and I get CAPTCHA tarpitted constantly.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| So you know why.
| encom wrote:
| No, it could be any, or other, totally normal and
| reasonable factors. Or maybe I posted too much Cloudflare
| hate on HN and they singled me out.
|
| _They 're in the walls!_ NO CARRIER
| +CREG: 0,0
| post-it wrote:
| > They should have used a cookie or something else that
| does not require asking me every few minutes to prove
| once more that I am not a bot.
|
| > every uBlock filter enabled and Cookie Auto-delete
|
| Hmm
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Those are easy enough to dissuade with readily available
| PoW solutions. People use CF & co. out of convenience,
| the exact same reason that most websites load resources
| from _at least_ half a dozen third parties instead of
| self hosting.
| jbxntuehineoh wrote:
| cf is failing to comply with Spanish law and as a result is
| being blocked in Spain
| otterley wrote:
| I know this is an unpopular opinion among freedom
| maximalists, but:
|
| It's precisely because CloudFlare isn't responding like other
| CDNs to reasonable demands to cut off pirate origin sites
| that this mess exists. If they reacted quickly to remove
| configurations that are obviously facilitating copyright
| infringement, Spain wouldn't resort to full scale ASN
| blocking.
|
| How do we know it's CloudFlare? Because other CDNs like
| CloudFront, Akamai, Fastly, etc. respond to takedown demands
| and aren't being blocked. (Those also cost money and require
| customer identification.)
|
| In an escalating war between the state and a corporation, the
| state will always prevail if they have the public's backing.
| In Spain it's clear that most people are happy to watch the
| match through legitimate channels even at the cost of
| blocking CloudFlare.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > It's precisely because CloudFlare isn't responding like
| other CDNs to reasonable demands to cut off pirate origin
| sites that this mess exists. If they reacted quickly to
| remove configurations that are obviously facilitating
| copyright infringement, Spain wouldn't resort to full scale
| ASN blocking.
|
| Apropos of anything else, CF is (reasonably) requiring a
| court order to remove offending material rather than just
| "well, company said so, so eh, just do as they say". La
| Liga complains that "oh, that's too slow for what we want"
| and just got a blanket ruling.
|
| I am not a fan of CF but your argument seems to be "CF
| should just roll over any time someone says "hey, delete
| this", because, obviously, everyone _knows_ it 's
| problematic, right? Right?".
| otterley wrote:
| At least the DMCA in the U.S. has guardrails: not just
| anyone can send a takedown demand for everything. The
| requester has identify the works and declare under
| penalty of perjury that they are operating on the behalf
| of the owner. I imagine the equivalent EU law has similar
| requirements.
|
| CloudFlare uses legal chicanery to try to subvert the
| DMCA by claiming that because they're not the origin
| server, they're not subject to takedown demands. So far
| no court has told them to knock it off. I expect that day
| will eventually come. Every lawsuit against them to date
| has ended in a settlement because CloudFlare would rather
| pay up than get an unfavorable ruling on the books.
|
| CloudFlare has consistently treated loss of DMCA safe
| harbor protection as a material business risk; it's been
| cited in every SEC filing from the 2019 IPO S-1 through
| the FY2025 10-K.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > At least the DMCA in the U.S. has guardrails: not just
| anyone can send a takedown demand for everything. The
| requester has identify the works and declare under
| penalty of perjury that they are operating on the behalf
| of the owner.
|
| You'd think so, but no.
|
| DMCA came into effect 28 years ago. All those decades,
| all those billions of takedowns, and you don't even need
| the fingers of one hand to count those who've been hit
| with perjury for a false takedown request, because the
| number is ... zero.
| willdr wrote:
| Nobody cares about the DMCA guardrails and they are never
| meaningfully enforced. Case in point, Anthropic DMCAing
| thousands of repositories that simply mentioned the word
| "claude".
| petcat wrote:
| Spain is mandating their ISPs block cloudflare to stop people
| from illegally streaming soccer games. Cloudflare isn't the one
| doing the blocking.
| ufocia wrote:
| How so?
| StrLght wrote:
| You made a few typos in "LaLiga"
| skgsergio wrote:
| I can agree on how much power on the global traffic they have,
| but this blocks affect many other CDNs like Fastly, Akamai,
| CDN77, BunnyCDN, Alibaba...
| anthk wrote:
| Yea, La Liga it's crapping out as always. Docker needs either
| some I2P gateway, or a Tor service.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| The pirate streams need an I2P service that way LaLiga might
| give up.
| anthk wrote:
| CF could just sue LaLiga and the judge as interrupting and
| intercepting telecomms it's a really serious crime in Spain. Call
| the AEPD too because of consumers' right against both ISP and
| LaLiga's snooping. Another huge fine.
|
| This is not an issue under the civil code (civilian issues), but
| something to be dealt under penal (criminal) code.
|
| In Spanish
|
| https://www.fiscal.es/memorias/memoria2020/FISCALIA_SITE/rec...
|
| Oh, and BTW, LaLiga has just partnered with a CF rival.
|
| Now CF can just sue both like hell because of unfair competition:
|
| https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/xataka/status/2042658662850724...
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Looks like they already tried to appeal the block, and lost:
|
| https://x.com/jaumepons/status/1904906677335245294
| buzer wrote:
| They could potentially file the suit against Spain in
| European Court of Human Rights if they have exhausted
| national remedies. ECtHR has previously ruled some blocks to
| be illegal, but generally in the context where country sought
| the ban. Of course in both cases Court is the one that
| actually orders the ban.
|
| One relevant would be Yildirim v. Turkey where court ordered
| blocking access to all Google sites because there was one
| that where someone insulted the memory of Ataturk. This was
| due to request from Telecommunications Directorate. This then
| caused the appellant's website to get blocked as well.
|
| Another one would be Vladimir Kharitonov v. Russia.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think they are doing it already.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is why technology businesses and professionals need to take
| a little bit of an active role in local politics. Otherwise you
| get nonsense.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| That's an interesting euphenism for 'spend a massive amount of
| money on ~~corruption~~ lobbying',
| lentil_soup wrote:
| not necesarilly, any government will make decisions, if
| there's no one to speak up and inform them why the decision
| is stupid, like the one from LaLiga, then we end up in this
| situation
| afh1 wrote:
| This is incredibly naive.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| ok, then what do you suggest? we don't get involved and
| decisions at the government level are made for us? I
| might be naive, but let's not be restrained by the
| cynicism of any involment in politics and governance is
| corruption
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What? This is how governance and public opinion happen,
| at least in Spain. Government does something bad?
| Everyone out on the streets to complain, and calling
| politicians to change their mind.
|
| Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, but doing
| nothing is never an option if you disagree with what
| they're doing. To think that doing nothing is better than
| something, that's incredibly naive.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Doing nothing can't be better, but it's entirely possible
| that doing nothing has exactly the equal effect as doing
| something.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > but it's entirely possible
|
| You're right, it possibly has the same effect. How could
| we figure out what's the actual answer in practice?
| danirod wrote:
| Heh, lucky you, at least you get a message. My ISP just drops
| traffic to the affected IPs. No ping, no traceroute, just a
| spinner in the browser until it says "page not found".
|
| Every response and comment from LaLiga, the football organization
| responsible for this, has been so far that this is a minor issue
| that only affects a few bunch of nerds who talk about "docker
| images" or "github repositories" or "whatever that means".
|
| Meanwhile, there are testimonies of smart home devices like anti-
| theft alarms or automatic doors, that stop working whenever there
| is a football match, because their backends rely on Cloudflare.
|
| Last week, a woman asked for help on social media, as the GPS
| tracking app she uses to see where her father with dementia is,
| went offline during a match. It was getting late and he still
| wasn't back home, and she couldn't locate the tag he was wearing
| to find him:
| https://www.infobae.com/america/agencias/2026/04/05/laliga-d...
|
| It's hard to say this, because no one should experience an event
| like this, but as stressful as these are, it's the only way to
| make the mainstream people care about this censorship. "I cannot
| pull a docker image" will never be on nightly news, but safety
| and personal security is a more powerful driver for discourses.
| freetanga wrote:
| All people affected should file a complaint with your ISP and
| with Oficina de Atencion al Usuario de Telecomunicaciones
| claiming financial loss for arbitrary service censorship.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, flood them with complaints.
| bakugo wrote:
| Sadly, it won't accomplish anything. La Liga seems to have
| enough political power in the country to bury all of that.
| Probably bribing everyone involved.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Corruption at that level could mean organized crime. Is
| there a culture of betting through illegal bookies, are
| they fixing matches, or ?porque no los dos?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Well, I think when the organized crime is registered as
| proper businesses and they have the judges on their side
| even if the law isn't, I think we just call that "for-
| profit capitalism" nowadays.
| dualvariable wrote:
| penalti para el real madrid!
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I've been filing complaints since a year ago, told others to
| do the same too, nothing happens. There been moments I've
| meant to deploy fixes to issues but I cannot, because some
| tooling goes offline.
|
| I've claimed financial loss, claimed sanity loss and
| everything in-between, but I'm afraid unless something
| reaches the European/EU courts, Spain will continue to be in
| the pocket of the La Liga owners.
|
| Straight up fucking censorship with wide collateral being
| completely accepted in a Western country in 2026, beyond
| comprehension how this is allowed.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| how do you make claims, here:
| https://usuariosteleco.digital.gob.es/? Can't find a way of
| doing it with Cl@ve
| GranPC wrote:
| I think this is it: https://reg.redsara.es/#login
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I've used this: https://usuariosteleco.digital.gob.es/rec
| lamaciones/telefoni...
|
| Used my digital certificate (which is installed in the
| browser), but AFAIK, you can use Cl@ve on that page above
| too.
|
| In the past, I've cited BOE-A-2022-10757
| (https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2022-10757),
| done a reclamacio for the repeated loss of lawful access
| on my connection, and a denuncia about a broader
| overblocking practice affecting access to lawful
| services.
|
| Also, supposedly, we should be able to make claims to
| CNMC as well, but haven't figured out how. Also of
| course, been complaining to my ISP every time it happens
| too.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Whenever I get a little down over how much power unelected
| corporations have in my country, I can at least cheer
| myself up a little by being thankful that something as
| stupid as _football_ doesn 't have enough power here to
| control whether or not I have internet access.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Ignorance is a bliss, agree :) Sometimes we all need to
| force ourselves into that so we can get a bit more joy.
| sneak wrote:
| It would if it were bigger business in your country. Try
| torrenting an MCU movie and see what happens to your ISP
| account.
| bombcar wrote:
| Someone in Texas torrenting an MCU slop doesn't
| disconnect me from half the Internet.
| necovek wrote:
| La Liga is basically operating like an "unelected
| corporation" as well.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Because the EU as a whole is quite happy to censor and
| generally wield the same tricks as "non-Western" countries
| in their desires to combat misinformation (however our EU
| bureaucrats define it), child abuse materials (see Chat
| Control that thing is not going to go away), and hatred (oh
| boy).
|
| We've never guaranteed the right to free speech and because
| we haven't it's a slippery slope all the way back down to
| the furnaces of autocracy we sprang from.
|
| The Spanish president has come out on record saying we
| don't deserve anonymity on the internet.
| rock_artist wrote:
| If anyone who's capable in Spain set a petition or the
| relevant steps and put it on HN. I'm pretty sure any
| Spanish resident in HN would be more than happy to take
| part even if it means to send a Bizum for the cause.
|
| (Sadly as living in Spain for about a year I'm still not in
| such place to raise this or understand the full steps
| needed)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| It would be great if there was a webpage with clear
| instructions on how to do this, maybe fill out a few
| questions and get a printable pdf you can mail, or at least
| telling you how to file an online complaint. Making
| complaints very low friction will lead to more of those and
| perhaps more attention to the issue.
|
| Snail mail uses up physical space so it might get more
| attention, it would be hilarious to see news reports of
| truckloads of complaint mail being dumped in front of the
| whatever office.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It would be great if there was a webpage with clear
| instructions on how to do this, maybe fill out a few
| questions and get a printable pdf you can mail, or at least
| telling you how to file an online complaint. Making
| complaints very low friction will lead to more of those and
| perhaps more attention to the issue.
|
| This is a great idea, we definitively should make this
| happen! If people are curious on collaborating on
| something, reach out, email in profile (English or Spanish
| emails welcome!).
| estebarb wrote:
| At this point the protests should be against the matches
| themselves. But let's be honest: nobody cares anymore.
| pxc wrote:
| > Heh, lucky you, at least you get a message. My ISP just drops
| traffic to the affected IPs. No ping, no traceroute, just a
| spinner in the browser until it says "page not found".
|
| This is generally how the GFW works in China. Instead of an
| overbearing nanny like a school or corporation's DNS blocker,
| you're left with a sense that you're on a version of the
| Internet that is just intermittently and somewhat mysteriously
| broken.
|
| And indeed, in China, a lot of things that probably aren't
| fully intended to be blocked are not reliably accessible.
| Implementation varies, so you get strange routing and peering
| issues. It feels like an Internet that isn't fully formed, that
| hasn't finished coming together yet.
|
| Nation states and corporations obviously gain some things
| sometimes by having Internet censorship/blocking frameworks in
| place. Maybe, sometimes, ordinary people even benefit, too, if
| it helps shut down illegal and genuinely harmful businesses.
|
| But it feels like the whole world is gradually trending towards
| more and more Internet censorship without realizing that we are
| _un-building_ a miraculous thing that took enormous effort and
| cleverness and expense to build. I wish we could think about
| this not only in terms of freedom (and we absolutely should
| think about it in terms of freedom), but how we are
| _disintegrating the infrastructure_ of communication and
| computing.
| nrds wrote:
| > a version of the Internet that is just intermittently and
| somewhat mysteriously broken.
|
| That's actually just how the Internet is. Nothing to do with
| the great firewall.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Your last paragraph: it is sad. But we had successful global
| networks before the Internet (the PSTN, telegraph) and we'll
| certainly have global networks after this at some point in
| human history. Perhaps in the the time between the Internet
| and what's next, the world will become a bit more mature
| about a few things.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > But we had successful global networks before the Internet
| (the PSTN, telegraph)
|
| These were ripe with espionage, wiretapping and sabotage.
| Access to it used to be highly restricted as well, up until
| the 90s for example you were only allowed to connect
| government-licensed modems to the German PSTN directly.
| sneak wrote:
| There was also no way for a normal person to easily and
| cheaply communicate with 20 million people in realtime.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| > These were ripe with espionage, wiretapping and
| sabotage.
|
| Just like today's Internet. BGP spoofing, CALEA, DDoS.
|
| > Access to it used to be highly restricted as well ...
|
| And this is where the regression or "downfall" is
| beginning. Access to the Internet (as in ability to
| send/receive arbitrary data to the wider Internet) is
| something I bet is going to be increasingly restricted,
| but most people won't notice because they don't
| understand the difference between apps and the Internet.
|
| I'd be surprised if direct access to the Internet is
| possible for consumers in the next 10 years. Everything
| will have to be through approved apps (age assurance is
| going to be the catalyst) that work over registered
| tunnels contracted through ISPs, if there isn't an
| outright blurring or merger between the concepts of
| phone/CPE, ISP and CDN. Your non-tech layperson will not
| know any difference whatsoever if all they use are their
| phone plan, streaming/banking apps and Facebook.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Surely this was simply the nature of Deutsche Bundespost
| / Deutsche Telekom? Like, of course you had to use
| hardware they had approved to connect to their network.
|
| This was the same in many places. The cost of hardware
| and connection time limited connections, and no one had
| cryptography except the government and ultra nerds.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| this is teleological thinking. it's not necessarily the
| case that things get better over time.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Those predecessor networks weren't problem free. Many
| conversations to "interesting" places were monitored.
|
| The counter-reaction to this era will include additional
| communication control.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| It's ridiculous and wrong what LaLiga does. But it's also a
| weakeup call to consider ditching cloudflare's centralization.
| estebank wrote:
| The companies relying on cloudflare won't be in Spain. If you
| buy a GPS tracker by a Canadian company, developed in India,
| manufactured in China, they are unlikely to know, even it
| they cared, that a single country that accounts for a tiny
| percentage of their sales breaks fundamental internet
| infrastructure on the regular "because futbol y dinero".
|
| And when purchasing a product, there's no "bill of materials"
| telling you about the services it relies on, beyond "internet
| connection" at best.
| encom wrote:
| >fundamental internet infrastructure
|
| I'm not saying this situation isn't bullshit, but the
| bigger problem is that CloudFlare is now "fundamental
| internet infrastructure". This is precisely the situation
| that the internet was designed to prevent.
|
| Yesterday I got stuck in endless CloudFlare CAPTCHA's,
| trying to access theretroweb.com. I had to give up. Many
| such cases. I hate CloudFlare so much, it's unreal.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > This is precisely the situation that the internet was
| designed to prevent
|
| Right, but on the other hand, our constitution and laws
| are supposed to give us the rights to access a internet
| where the government cannot block entire companies who
| host websites, because a few bad websites are hosted
| there.
|
| Not to mention all us freelancers, contractors and just
| in general computing users, who sometimes want to
| continue working although 90% of the country is watching
| football, we should be able to do so even if pirates use
| Cloudflare for shitty stuff.
|
| I agree that Cloudflare sucks, people should avoid
| defaulting to putting Cloudflare in front of absolutely
| everything they do and I too get stuck at the CAPTCHAs
| sometimes. But that doesn't remove the fact that
| Cloudflare, just like every other lawful company, should
| be allowed to be visited during La Liga matches.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd love for a way to put all my sites behind Cloudflare
| _only_ during La Liga matches.
| trailheadsec wrote:
| I agree with this take (that it's a wake up call). Makes one
| question their entire app design and if using Cloudflare is
| "good enough" for managing CDN, tunnels, etc. for their apps.
| boredatoms wrote:
| Perhaps its time to put a VPN into all your CI jobs
| tryauuum wrote:
| You can't fight political issues with clever technical
| solutions
| psychoslave wrote:
| That's actually part of rebellion modus operandi, so
| totally something realistic. But not within the frame of
| law and not in the sweet position of someone away from the
| "I'll die for the just cause" mindset.
| tryauuum wrote:
| can you rephrase your idea please. What's realistic,
| fighting stupid laws or corporations with a VPN? Yes, but
| not for long. They are always stronger than you, they can
| switch from blacklisting to whitelisting and your VPN
| becomes useless.
|
| What is this "sweet position" you talk about?
| psychoslave wrote:
| Sorry for being unclear.
|
| I was trying to refer to an actual rebel position, which
| is actors which use illegal practices to achieve their
| goals agaisnt institutions in place. Which might have the
| cool attitude imagery attached to it, but which is
| certainly not an easy one in reality.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| Yes you can. Fight with clever technical solutions and the
| politics will follow once the solution becomes common or
| displays its usefulness. It is in fact the most effective
| way to fight dumb political issues.
| tryauuum wrote:
| In my country (Russia) the politics followed, now the
| ISPs block the OpenVPN and wireguard packets. And
| sometimes the white list mode is enabled, so you cannot
| connect, with your clever custom VPN solution, to a host
| outside the country
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| And eventually even a worm will turn.
| necovek wrote:
| You should be able to use things like sshuttle or even
| tunnel through HTTPS whatever you want, right? As you can
| control both sides of the tunnel with encryption (comes
| by default), no MITM-ing unless you are forced to use
| solutions that install and eavesdrop on your secure
| traffic too.
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| 1) they do protocol sniffing, and any inconsistency
| (including statistical) gets you blocked 2) "white list
| mode" which engaged sometimes (poorly implemented atm),
| means nothing goes outside of country at all (means 99.9%
| of everything is broken). They really want to become
| North Korea soon
| toast0 wrote:
| It depends on what the political system is trying to do.
|
| A VPN won't help against government blanket outages, where
| the target is complete control of communications, and
| attempts to circumvent may result in extreme penalty. In
| this case, where the government policy is to stop
| unauthorized streaming, and collatoral damage is
| acceptable, a VPN hosted in a more favorable location is
| likely to work enough. Afaik, I don't think Spain has the
| political appetite to block VPNs and such during football
| matches.
|
| You can still fight the political issue with political
| means, but in the mean time, you can also get work done.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Afaik, I don't think Spain has the political appetite
| to block VPNs and such during football matches
|
| Unfortunately nobody is quite sure what appetite they
| have, because LaLiga is doing this all on the back of a
| relatively narrow judicial ruling that hasn't been
| reviewed in a long time
| logicchains wrote:
| You totally can, that's why bittorrent still exists and
| works fine.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| That became a popular refrain at some point but the truth
| of it varies. In fact many political issues are brought
| about by technical changes so obviously the reverse must be
| possible as well.
|
| What technical solutions can't change is the underlying
| social dynamics.
| necovek wrote:
| Even that is IMO untrue: "technical solutions" have
| indeed changed society at large quite significantly; eg.
| "social media" is one very influential example, "smart
| phone" is another, "internet" itself, etc.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Aren't you agreeing with me? None of those things changed
| the underlying social dynamics that humans exhibit but
| they nonetheless affected widespread social and political
| change.
| tobz1000 wrote:
| > there are testimonies of smart home devices like anti-theft
| alarms or automatic doors, that stop working whenever [...]
| because their backends rely on Cloudflare.
|
| The fault here lies 100% with horribly designed IoT devices
| that turn into bricks when they lose internet connection.
| mrvaibh wrote:
| This is a great example of why blanket IP blocking is such a
| terrible enforcement mechanism. Cloudflare hosts hundreds of
| thousands of services behind shared IP ranges -- blocking one IP
| to stop a piracy stream takes out everything else on that IP,
| including Docker registries, API endpoints, and CDNs that have
| nothing to do with football. The real fix on your
| end until Spain sorts this out: set up a pull-through registry
| cache (e.g. registry:2 with proxy.remoteurl) on a VPS outside
| Spain, and point your Docker daemon's mirror config at it. Your
| GitLab runner pulls from the cache, the cache pulls from Docker
| Hub via a non-blocked IP. Also insulates you from Docker Hub rate
| limits. But yeah, the fact that a court order about
| football streaming can break docker pull for an entire country is
| genuinely absurd.
| tom1337 wrote:
| just wait until they block Azure as well so the official La
| Liga site also stops working
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hmmm. Don't they have a reporting form or something like
| that? Down with those filthy Azure pirates on IP
| 52.166.113.188.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I wondered how they actually managed to have their own
| business to be unencumbered by that. At a certain corporate
| level, you have to have some piece of tech in your portfolio
| that relies on cloudflare. I hope one day there companion or
| "2nd screen" apps stops working during a game, because using
| cloudflare.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Dumb question but why don't the pirate sites all host on
| Azure if Cloudflare is blocked and Azure isn't?
| tom1337 wrote:
| i have no data to back this up but in the past cloudflare
| was much more lax with piracy sites and I can imagine that
| Azure is stricter with blocking them
| kjs3 wrote:
| I would imagine they do. The people running the pirate
| sites know what they are doing. Noone who really wants to
| stream pirated games is stopped. Blocking CF is
| performative, not effective.
| joquarky wrote:
| Sounds like the answer here is to host alt streams on Azure.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > This is a great example of why blanket IP blocking is such a
| terrible enforcement mechanism
|
| AFAIK, they're not doing "blanket IP blocking", they're
| intercepting requests based on DNS and IP, and try to serve
| their own certificates and their own content. Obviously, in
| most cases it fails, as the certificate doesn't match the site,
| so the browser rejects it, but as far as I can see and tell,
| there is no "blanket IP blocks", more like "DNS and IP
| interception".
|
| The difference doesn't really matter in practice, sucks
| regardless, but I thought I'd clarify for the ones who are not
| experiencing these blocks themselves at least.
| richwater wrote:
| Spain is a failing country. Their economy is in shambles and the
| government has ceded internet control to a private corporation
| who runs football games.
| gruez wrote:
| >Their economy is in shambles
|
| But it's among the fastest growing in the EU? Granted, part of
| this is starting from a low base, but it's hardly "in shambles"
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat...
| nslsm wrote:
| They are doing this by artificially inflating the numbers,
| destroying the country forever:
| https://i.imgur.com/0MAeFaF.jpg
| gruez wrote:
| >total population change in EU countries
|
| The figures I cited are for GDP per capita, which accounts
| for population growth. Moreover immigration should have the
| opposite effect of depressing per-capita GDP, because
| immigrants typically take lower skilled jobs, dragging
| overall productivity down. So if anything, the figures are
| artificially depressed, not inflated.
| estebank wrote:
| To note that this isn't the executive or legislative but the
| judiciary doing the bidding.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Spain isn't a perfect country, I don't think any is. But the
| economy isn't in shambles, only someone who doesn't know what
| they're talking about would say anything like that. It does
| suck that La Liga can wield so much power, agree, but this is
| not related to the economy at all...
| chrz wrote:
| Are you spanish and never went to another country? I only heard
| such things from never-stop complaining locals that never
| traveled anywhere. Yeah La Liga is a religion here, but Spain
| is one of the worlds top of life quality mate
| Jare wrote:
| It's a disgrace, but apparently all relevant forces still
| consider soccer the most important thing in the country.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| This is the moral equivalent of shutting the water off for a
| whole city because one dude's house has a leak. The harms to
| society clearly and obviously outweigh any possible benefits to
| society. But if that one dude has the power to shut it all off,
| and doesn't care...
| spwa4 wrote:
| If you think that's even remotely close to the worst the
| Spanish government has done, don't look up "Catalunya".
|
| https://int.assemblea.cat/civil-and-human-rights-abuses/tool...
| Ikatza wrote:
| Just so everyone here has the full picture: the source linked
| -- Assemblea Nacional Catalana -- is not a human rights
| watchdog, an international observer, or a journalistic
| outlet. It is the main pro-independence criminal activist
| organization in Catalonia. Citing them as evidence of Spanish
| human rights abuses is a bit like citing the murderer's wife
| as an impartial witness.
|
| For context, Spain is a full constitutional democracy,
| subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human
| Rights, with a free(ish) press, independent judiciary, and
| regular elections -- none of which Assemblea itself disputes,
| because it participates in all of them. The events OP is
| referencing (the 2017 independence referendum aftermath) were
| reviewed by European courts, and the outcomes were, shall we
| say, not quite the narrative Assemblea sells on its website.
|
| If there are genuine, documented human rights concerns, I'd
| welcome impartial sources from the Supreme Court or the ECHR.
|
| What I'd push back on is treating a political lobby's own
| press releases as neutral reporting. You should do better
| than that here, OP.
| torben-friis wrote:
| As a Spaniard, I would be very happy it cloudflare stops serving
| Spain. The situation is beyond stupid and I know without
| international pressure and shaming we're not getting rid of this
| abuse.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| They should at least do a single "awareness day" during which
| they block the same IPs and sites they are ordered by court, as
| if there was a football match on. Ideally with a 7 days public
| notice announcement. Probably won't happen though, as their
| contractual obligation won't allow for voluntary suspension of
| services.
| pier25 wrote:
| As a Spaniard I couldn't agree more. This situation is just
| absolutely ridiculous.
| yangm97 wrote:
| Maybe it's time to reflect upon the reliance on centralized
| services? Not long ago docker hub started rate limiting access
| and we all turned to blanket solutions like the GitLab registry
| cache. I wonder if the IPFS distributed docker registry thing
| still exists/works.
| tabwidth wrote:
| This isn't really about centralization. ISPs are blocking at
| the IP level, not Docker Hub specifically. You could self-host
| a registry behind Cloudflare and still run into the same thing.
| Magnets wrote:
| BT used to block the entire streamable.com site during football
| matches
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Here in Brazil sometimes my ISP goes into a weird state where I
| can't SSH into a remote machune. Got two ISP links here and still
| sometimes I need to resort to Mullvad to get stable internet
| giorgioz wrote:
| POSSIBLE FIX:
|
| I think changing your default DNS servers to Google 8.8.8.8 or
| Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 might bypass the spanish sunday ban on
| Cloudlflare.
|
| macOS + Cloudlfare 1.1.1.1
| https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/setup/macos/
|
| Google 8.8.8.8 https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
| dns/docs/using
| echoangle wrote:
| I don't think it's a DNS ban, it looks like they actually ban
| connections to the IP range.
|
| But you can just use a VPN.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Nope, it's IP ban. At least for Vodafone and Telefonica.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Good. Cloudflare is the next evil entity on the internet.
| breppp wrote:
| Vote early, vote often
| jjcm wrote:
| Barring an Internet giant suing them in court, it really feels
| like this is unlikely to change as most just don't understand the
| why or the effect.
|
| Someone needs to write a heist movie set in Spain where a key
| part of the plan is they steal something while La Liga is
| blocking some key security route.
| Dibby053 wrote:
| Going to play devil's advocate here but I suspect if Cloudflare
| had been more cooperative about taking down illegal content,
| LaLiga would not have resorted to blanket blocking individual
| IPs.
|
| I would really like to understand more about the process that
| they should follow but didn't / followed but didn't satisfy them
| / doesn't exist, in order to remove infringing websites quickly
| from CloudFlare.
| lokar wrote:
| They will take down anything you get a judge to agree with.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| LaLiga wanted the right to tell Cloudflare to block specific
| sites without going through a court.
|
| Cloudflare, rightfully, said that was ridiculous and
| unreasonable.
|
| A Spanish court, wrongfully, decided to let LaLiga block all of
| Cloudflare.
| integralid wrote:
| I work with actually malicious content (things that make people
| lose their life savings) and Cloudflare abuse is relatively
| helpful (compared to most ISPs who just don't care).
|
| They just refuse to take down random things that some media
| company representatives send their way, without a court order
| or any oversight. And this is a good thing.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| The last sentence of this submission makes no sense. You are in
| Spain. Allegedly, the country has a representative government.
| That means that you should have a way to influence the government
| to fix this idiocy. If, in fact, you don't, then it is not a
| representative government and ...ahem... further steps may be
| warranted to remind the government whom they work for.
| pfortuny wrote:
| > instado por la Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional y por
| Telefonica Audiovisual Digital,
|
| (The trial was initiated by LaLiga and Telefonica...).
|
| "Telefonica" is the (exclusive) distributor for the rights of
| streaming the matches, and is only (of course?) the main consumer
| (and business) Telco in Spain: they are in a game they cannot
| lose. This is such an abuse and no government (this, past,
| whichever) has done anything about it.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| It is also educational to look up the overlap between
| Telefonica directors, LaLiga directors, and the government
| officials who granted the defacto monopoly
| ordersofmag wrote:
| Interesting alternative. Cloudflare (market cap $58B) buys La
| liga (market value $5 billion), drops suit.
| outside2344 wrote:
| Less headaches, free futbol matches!
| lokar wrote:
| Set an example. Buy them, fire everyone, shut it down and
| liquidate the property.
| msully4321 wrote:
| I'm not sure where that number comes from but I don't think
| it's right, and I don't think that's how La Liga is structured
| anyway. It's governed by an association of all of the teams in
| the top two flights of spanish football.
| Kamshak wrote:
| I'm in Spain as well and it sucks a lot. What I do now is I go
| thorough Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 VPN (set up on my router). Fixes the
| issue and there is practically no latency or bandwidth impact.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You mean 1.1.1.1. DNS? Or do they also serve a VPN through that
| IP?
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Thankfully, Adamo hasn't implemented the blockade yet (if ever).
| Myzel394 wrote:
| Just use a VPN
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Cloudflare _could_ resolve this without negatively impacting
| fundamental services... just place all newly registered sites
| (e.g. <30 days) on a dedicated block of IP addresses. That way,
| Spain's government-ordered censorship could be limited to
| (mostly) pirate sites. Or they could invest money in vetting
| customers properly.
|
| But of course, Cloudflare rather prefers to hold their actual
| large customers (who don't have much of an alternative to CF) and
| everyday Spaniard users hostage.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| What would prevent a pirate site operator from registering a
| domain a few months in advance and sitting on it in the
| meantime?
|
| How do you propose customers ought to be vetted? Why should a
| host be expected to take on the duties of a hall monitor? Isn't
| that the judiciary's job?
|
| I think it is actually Spain using their residents as hostages
| in an attempt to extort Cloudflare and other large providers.
| The current situation is best described as blatantly corrupt
| regulatory capture.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What would prevent a pirate site operator from registering
| a domain a few months in advance and sitting on it in the
| meantime?
|
| It's driving up the cost and expenses. Operators of
| legitimate sites don't have to worry during that probation
| time about anything with the exception of customers in Spain
| during LL match hours.
|
| LL has ~10 matches / weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon), that means
| pirates have to have about 40 domains/CF integrations per
| month plus more in standby - and more, for longer probation
| periods.
|
| > How do you propose customers ought to be vetted?
|
| I dunno... stuff like basic KYC measures would be a good
| start. Copies of ID cards. Government business licenses.
| Private entities (credit bureaus). Even phone number
| verification is a serious hurdle for malicious actors, and it
| ties activities to real world identities that can be held
| accountable.
|
| Dangerous stuff (e.g. streaming) could only be made available
| upon a security deposit.
|
| > Why should a host be expected to take on the duties of a
| hall monitor? Isn't that the judiciary's job?
|
| No, and that we let ISPs get away with ignoring abuse@ emails
| is part of why the Internet is such a nasty place these days.
| You need a license to drive a car on public roads, you need
| an expensive license to fly a small plane, and you need a
| goddamn massively expensive license to fly a widebody
| aircraft. So why shouldn't you need to pass some set of
| verification before you get access to inarguably the
| Internet's most powerful data pipes?
| amarant wrote:
| I had to Google why this happens, blocking cloudflare during
| football games seems.. Arbitrary, to say the least. Maybe
| something to do with hooligans trashing entire cities when their
| team loses? I could almost get behind that, if I thought it would
| work..
|
| But no, it's apparently to stop piracy!? Turning off half the
| internet, and mostly the legitimate parts at that (since when do
| pirates use cloudflare?) seems like probably the worst method to
| go about it.
|
| Someone ought to start streaming those games illegally without
| using cloudflare just to demonstrate how stupid this policy is
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Someone ought to start streaming those games illegally
| without using cloudflare just to demonstrate how stupid this
| policy is
|
| Oh, the icing on the cake is that they already do. While my
| whole dev stack gets shut off every weekend, my neighbour
| watches pirate futbol streams just fine - not only is it a
| stupid policy, it's an ineffective one, and the pirates
| bypassed the bans ages ago
| amarant wrote:
| Makes you wonder why they keep the ban up? Are more people
| watching more football now that everything else stops working
| during matches?
|
| Talk about unfair business practices!
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Pirates use cloudflare because it solves their biggest problem,
| DOS attacks. Rights owners figured out that they can shut down
| these sites by DDOSing them which bypasses the courts and can
| be done instantly, so the pirates put their sites behind
| cloudflare ddos protection.
| jesuslop wrote:
| Just to confirm it is true. This is LaLiga bringing down
| essential country-wide infrastructure on soccer hours if your
| internet access is through main ISPs.
| blurb4969 wrote:
| Welcome to the club, buddies! Here, in Russia, the government
| doesn't care about collateral damage at all when shutting down
| whole Internet in cities. They turn on white list mode, when only
| approved sites and IPs work. Businesses stop working and start
| losing money? They don't care. Important IT systems stop working?
| They don't care. People can't communicate with each other? Don't
| care. And seems like it will happen everywhere else. Sad to see
| the whole world goes down apart.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I think perhaps there's a difference in expectations between
| wartime versus a country at peace going after pirates.
| blurb4969 wrote:
| I wanted to say that Internet freedom dismantlement is a
| global trend.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Fair enough, I completely agree. However in the case of
| Russia specifically, I understand that at one point
| Ukrainian drones were making routine use of mobile internet
| within the county. Temporary internet whitelists seem like
| a reasonable alternative to complete blackouts in that
| scenario. There are plenty of historic examples of malware
| using just about any communication platform for the C&C
| transport.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Why are you working instead of watching the match?
| userbinator wrote:
| That's what crossed my mind too: It's like a nationally-
| mandated break to watch football.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Hah. I have had to use a US-based VPN to access GitHub pretty
| much every weekend lately. La Liga's efforts to curb pirate TV
| streams are basically undermining the internet itself at this
| point.
|
| This is also not new behaviour - Theo posted a YouTube about it
| nearly a year ago[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-geGEYEw7g
| thomasjudge wrote:
| Could you bypass this with a VPN?
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Yes, and all of Spain is learning how to use VPNs
| Chrisszz wrote:
| LOL this is so hilarious, blocking a portion of a web infra for a
| football match
| sva_ wrote:
| It is somewhat funny until you realize the amount of power some
| copyright mafia knuckleheads have over the (local) internet.
|
| It isn't even an authoritative regime censoring something, but
| much more silly.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Ah, so that's why my site is "down" there:
|
| https://hayahora.futbol/#sobre-los-bloqueos&domain=taoofmac....
|
| They're blocking the CDN too, not just R2.
| samgranieri wrote:
| This is inexcusable. Just because sports right holders are
| worried about piracy doesn't give them license to break normal
| internet operations. Spain, get your act together and put your
| equivalent of the content cartel in the penalty box.
| genericacct wrote:
| same thing happens in italy
| aftbit wrote:
| What's the current state of the art for VPN'ing through deep
| packet inspection firewalls? I have imagined building something
| around TLS and Websockets that connects to a popular cloud
| provider which is "too big to block". Of course, if they'll block
| Cloudflare, or all connections outside of the country, maybe
| _nothing_ is too big to block. I remember some solutions to this
| in the 2010s, like obfsproxy and shadowsocks, but are there any
| newer or better options?
| rmonvfer wrote:
| As a Spaniard, this also happens to me. You can either use a VPN
| or just switch DNS servers to one that doesn't have anycast nodes
| in Spain.
|
| Cloudflare's authoritative DNS uses EDNS Client Subnet (ECS) to
| return different IP pools based on where the query originates.
| Spanish resolvers get IPs from a range that La Liga blocks. If
| your recursive resolver is physically outside Spain (or you use
| DoH/DoT to tunnel to one), Cloudflare returns a different,
| unblocked pool.
|
| AdGuard DNS works well for this.
| zeafoamrun wrote:
| I don't even like televised sport but this makes me want to
| figure out how to pirate it at scale
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