- Cloudflare claims La Liga’s “arbitrary blocking” is illegal
- La Liga accuses Cloudflare of “prioritizing commercial interests” over law
- Spain’s crackdown on piracy also reportedly affected legitimate domains
The escalating tension between Cloudflare and La Liga has moved from the server room to the courtroom, with the US tech giant filing an appeal against what it describes as “arbitrary blocking practices” by the Spanish soccer league.
As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the dispute centers on La Liga’s aggressive campaign to stamp out illegal streaming. The league employs about 50 analysts who scour the web for pirated matches and send notifications to intermediaries like Cloudflare to shut them down.
However, Cloudflare has been pushing back legally since last summer in hopes of correcting Spain’s blocking of illegal soccer streams ahead of the next LaLiga season. The company appealed to the Spanish Constitutional Court to “demonstrate that La Liga’s overblocking practice is illegal.”
The US-based CDN and DNS resolver company claims the current approach is overly broad, preventing Spanish users from accessing legitimate websites while the games are on. There were incidents last year where Spaniards had to turn to the best VPN apps to avoid such restrictions.
Cloudflare claims that La Liga’s enforcement measures, designed to curb piracy, inadvertently interfere with access to non-infringing content hosted on the same servers or networks. It warns that La Liga operates under the belief that its commercial interests “trump the right of ordinary Spanish users to browse legitimate websites.”
“Bullying” vs “Digital Shield”
The war of words between the two organizations has become remarkably personal.
According to the AP report, La Liga president Javier Tebas stated that Cloudflare is “fully aware that a significant portion of sports audiovisual piracy relies on its infrastructure.”
Tebas went further, accusing the company of acting as a “digital shield for organized piracy networks” and “prioritizing its commercial interests and financial gains over the law.”
Cloudflare’s response was just as sharp. The company denied the allegations, telling the AP that La Liga is trying to “bully itself into having complete control over what Spanish users see online.” The company accused the league of overstepping its authority by pushing intermediaries to enforce broad, sweeping blocks that go far beyond the intended scope of copyright protection.
Cloudflare insists it is a “long-standing champion of a free and open internet” and claims the Football League is making “unsupported claims and threats” rather than seeking genuine cooperation.
The firm maintains that it fully complies with legal takedown requests, but refuses to enable actions that could stifle legitimate expression or limit open access to information across Spain’s digital infrastructure.
A history of collateral damage
This lawsuit follows months of disruption for internet users in Spain. We previously reported how La Liga soccer streaming was behind Cloudflare’s weekend outages, with the “arbitrary” nature of these blocks removing completely unrelated websites and services.
The frustration has led to a digital migration, with many Spaniards turning to Proton VPN to bypass the restrictions and access the open web.
The situation in Spain reflects a wider European trend. In France, similar orders to block illegal streaming sites have raised alarms as they have also extended to VPN providers, while Britain is also cracking down on piracy, often catching innocent users in the crossfire.
Cloudflare is now urging Spanish users who notice legitimate sites being blocked to contact their lawmakers, underscoring the need to fight “internet censorship.”
As the AP notes, Cloudflare faces similar pressure in Italy, where it was recently fined 14 million euros ($15.2 million) by the communications watchdog, a sanction the company is also likely to contest.
For now, experts warn that using DNS resolvers as censorship tools remains a risky strategy that threatens the stability of the online world.
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