Yes, we know. Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches.
It would be more interesting to know if something is getting done about this. Other businesses must work, people must communicate, the very same Spanish state must keep working. Is there any protest with at least a slight amount of hope?
> Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches.
There's a distinction between the above statement and the truth, which is that CloudFlare and other large CDNs do not work in Spain when there are football matches.
Yes, it's not CloudFlare's fault in this instance, since I believe CloudFlare is not being notified to take action in real time. The blocking needs to happen quickly to block access to illegal streams of a live event. My understanding is that CloudFlare is largely out of the picture when this decision is happening, and CloudFlare is only taking the blame since that's what Twitch uses, which also can't react as quickly as La Liga wants.
That being said there is a solution to this that helps protect from collateral as well as the decentralized open nature of the internet: moving away from those large CDNs
In Italy something similar is happening: they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly (that's very high for our economy).
To this, add the facts that there has been a major hit to illegal streaming piracy and that football games are getting extremely boring in our country (compared to the Premier League or our Serie A of twenty years ago).
The major effect of this is that newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents.
These people are trying to milk a cow that will be dry in less than 5 years, unless a major revolution happens in FIGC (Italian Football Federation).
What pisses me off is that they've said (in Germany) that they are trying to avoid monopolies and the rights need to go to multiple rights owners. Instead of giving the same rights to multiple broadcasters as would be normal for real non-monopolies, they split up the rights and gave each part to a single broadcaster. Which means, the full broadcasting rights are held by multiple parties, e.g. it's not a monopoly, but each broadcaster has a monopoly over his part of the cake. Which means if you want to have the whole cake as a fan, you need to pay the cartel, i.e. all broadcasters at once.
The main reason I don't watch any one it is because it's all locked away under expensive subscriptions and I don't really live in a place with great football matches, so yeah...I'd actually be into it if it was accessible, I just couldn't be bothered figuring out how to watch it, nor can I afford 100 euroes a month.
I obviously don't agree with spain doing this, but I also have trouble feeling sorry for cloudflare, since they're also in the business of randomly blocking certain IPs from accessing half the internet
And I thought things were bad in my country where all "sports" shows are about football and you can have 3 different FM stations broadcasting the same game and they'll discuss football even when there is nothing going on.
It's a monothematic sporting desert.
I'm glad I raised my kids oblivious to this football religion.
It's not only Cloudflare, but also other not so tiny CDNs are being blocked - currently an entire Backblaze B2 region is blocked in 3 out of 5 ISPs (!).
Particularly hurtful, the entire Cloudflare R2 is blocked during football matches so you can't pull Docker images or Ollama models.
I find it interesting that cloudflare is okay with those piracy sites getting its shared IPs blocked, while a couple of years ago they forced a casino to shell out for the enterprise plan and dedicated IPs to contain the fallout of banned IPs.
In the reddit there's a link to another article related and there's response from Laliga (If I got it right):
> Desde LaLiga también advierten que "aquellos clientes de Cloudflare que puedan sufrir bloqueos en sus webs, pueden dirigirse al email afectadoscloudflare@laliga.es con el fin de hacer llegar a Cloudflare que el contenido ilegal alojado en la IP de su misma web no tiene su autorización".
So they eventually made an email to report if you're being affected by their blocking.
I might be naive, but this is absolutely outrageous. What laws allow a private company dictate what IPs can be banned across an entire country? Are the ISPs voluntarily cooperating or are they now all obliged to follow LaLiga requests?
- Bars, pubs and other public establishments have to pay around 200€/month in order to show football on their TVs while the household package goes between 10 and 30€/month.
- The official app, with over 10 million downloads, asks you for microphone and GPS permissions.
- La Liga remotely activates the microphone and tries to detect if the sound matches with that of a football match. In addition, it uses the geolocation of the phone to locate exactly where the establishment is located. That way they can locate bars and other establishments where football is being pirated or showed without paying for the bar package.
Still amazes me this just sort of went by and no one really seemed bothered. Absolutely insane.
> - Bars, pubs and other public establishments have to pay around 200€/month in order to show football on their TVs while the household package goes between 10 and 30€/month.
This is common in Europe in general, also for copyrighted music. If your establishment wants to play recorded music, even just playing the radio or Spotify on the background, a copyright royalty fee has to be paid.
Applies to all venues and events. Bars, restaurants, grocery shops, barbers, sports events, concerts, taxis, lounges, everything with an audience.
I don't want to say it's the same everywhere in the EU, but I have always assumed it's a common concept in most western countries at least.
Private corporations acting like police, engaging in illegal wiretapping and eavesdropping at massive scales to detect and punish crimes as defined by themselves.
Football is wild. Imagine countries and governments collect taxes.
Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.
Then Qatar spends €262 millions on a single football player and gazillions on a European club, which is at €889 million loss over the last five years
In the end, who is paying for it all? Ordinary people ultimately foot the bill – whether through higher energy prices, taxes, or the opportunity cost of that money leaving the productive economy – while the football circus rolls on.
Sounds like a good deal for Europeans and a terrible for Qataris.
Europeans get the oil, Qataris get to brand football stars and make decisions at some clubs.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadIt would be more interesting to know if something is getting done about this. Other businesses must work, people must communicate, the very same Spanish state must keep working. Is there any protest with at least a slight amount of hope?
There's a distinction between the above statement and the truth, which is that CloudFlare and other large CDNs do not work in Spain when there are football matches.
Yes, it's not CloudFlare's fault in this instance, since I believe CloudFlare is not being notified to take action in real time. The blocking needs to happen quickly to block access to illegal streams of a live event. My understanding is that CloudFlare is largely out of the picture when this decision is happening, and CloudFlare is only taking the blame since that's what Twitch uses, which also can't react as quickly as La Liga wants.
That being said there is a solution to this that helps protect from collateral as well as the decentralized open nature of the internet: moving away from those large CDNs
These are good news, tbh.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1np6kyn/my_games_s...
Edit: commenters below made me realize that my extension StopTheMadness messed up old Reddit. Sorry
It's a monothematic sporting desert.
I'm glad I raised my kids oblivious to this football religion.
https://hayahora.futbol https://tinyuptime.sconde.net
It's not only Cloudflare, but also other not so tiny CDNs are being blocked - currently an entire Backblaze B2 region is blocked in 3 out of 5 ISPs (!).
Particularly hurtful, the entire Cloudflare R2 is blocked during football matches so you can't pull Docker images or Ollama models.
Thanks Tebas.
Spanish are surprisingly quiet about that or they bought vpn en masse.
"LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
> Desde LaLiga también advierten que "aquellos clientes de Cloudflare que puedan sufrir bloqueos en sus webs, pueden dirigirse al email afectadoscloudflare@laliga.es con el fin de hacer llegar a Cloudflare que el contenido ilegal alojado en la IP de su misma web no tiene su autorización".
So they eventually made an email to report if you're being affected by their blocking.
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/8q1j0o/la_liga_uses...
- Bars, pubs and other public establishments have to pay around 200€/month in order to show football on their TVs while the household package goes between 10 and 30€/month.
- The official app, with over 10 million downloads, asks you for microphone and GPS permissions.
- La Liga remotely activates the microphone and tries to detect if the sound matches with that of a football match. In addition, it uses the geolocation of the phone to locate exactly where the establishment is located. That way they can locate bars and other establishments where football is being pirated or showed without paying for the bar package.
Still amazes me this just sort of went by and no one really seemed bothered. Absolutely insane.
How much do GPS/Galileo/GNSS jammers go for nowadays?
This is common in Europe in general, also for copyrighted music. If your establishment wants to play recorded music, even just playing the radio or Spotify on the background, a copyright royalty fee has to be paid.
Applies to all venues and events. Bars, restaurants, grocery shops, barbers, sports events, concerts, taxis, lounges, everything with an audience.
I don't want to say it's the same everywhere in the EU, but I have always assumed it's a common concept in most western countries at least.
We truly are living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
It seems that being a crook is a requirement to be on the management of any national football league, from Brazilian CBF to FIFA and La Liga.
Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.
Then Qatar spends €262 millions on a single football player and gazillions on a European club, which is at €889 million loss over the last five years
In the end, who is paying for it all? Ordinary people ultimately foot the bill – whether through higher energy prices, taxes, or the opportunity cost of that money leaving the productive economy – while the football circus rolls on.