La Liga vs. Cloudflare war and what you can do about it

Introduction

In the past few months there’s been a war over internet censorship in Spain.

Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga (the Spanish football league), in his atempt to fight illegal football streaming sites, asked a judge to pass an order for all ISPs in Spain to instantly block any IP’s the company (La Liga) wants, at any given time, with the sole condition that they shouldn’t affect third parties (forshadowing…).

This means that the La Liga team, when there’s a football match, identify a list of IPs from known piracy sites and passes them to all Spanish ISP’s to block said IPs.

In principle this is all ok. The issue comes when the La Liga team has (or pretends to not have) any IT knowledge and sends over a list to block most Cloudflare IP’s, effectively blocking half of the internet in the country.

There’s been a lot of outroar online:

• Many people (including myself) complaining they haven’t been able to use some online services while the block is active.
• Cloudflare, together with RootedCon (a Spanish cybersecurity organisation) had presented an appeal to this order to the same judge and got rejected.
• Vercel got majorly affected by this and their CEO spoke out.
• Many businesses and government sites are being actively blocked like this, this and this.

Even with all this, they have doubled down and won’t budge. Javier Tebas said in a public interview that only “4 freaks” were complaining about it and only piracy sites are affected.

Spanish politicians are not doing anything either and have not spoken out about this matter.

Worst part? This isn’t even true. A simple VPN can bypass this and people can continue to watch illegal streams just fine.

What does this mean?

Apart from third parties being affected by this, there is a bigger issue:

People with influence can actively pass illegal measures and there is nothing the public can do about it.

This type of unjustified, country-wide internet censorship should not be possible or tolerable. Especially when so many businesses are being affected.

It’s not that they are doing it, it’s that they CAN do it

How to check if your site is affected by La Liga IP block

Alejandro has made a super useful site to track the blocked IPs and added a cheker where you can input your site or app and see if it’s affected:

Hay Ahora Futbol

What can you do about it?

Seeing how the judge that passed the order and refused the appeal from Cloudflare might be corrupted and influenced by Javier Tebas, there are two routes:

• Elevate this case to the consitutional court of Spain (hard)
• Complain en-masse to the European Commission (easy)

The first one has not yet been carried out by anyone due to the energy, money and time that it requires.

The second one can be done by anyone:

How to send a complaint to the European Commission

1. Go to https://ec.europa.eu/law/application-eu-law/report-breach/es/check-your-criteria

2. Check if your complaint is valid - You will be asked a series of questions to confirm if the Commission is competent in your case. For example:

   • Is the complaint against an EU country? ✅ (Yes, in this case Spain).
   • Is it against an incorrect application of EU law? ✅ (Yes, for possible violation of Regulation 2022/612)

3. Click on “Make a complaint” - Once you confirm the criteria, you will see a button that allows you to start the process.

4. Fill in the form - You will have to fill in the following:

   • Your personal details (you can keep them confidential)
   • The national authority involved (e.g. Ministry of Culture, CNMC, courts or even internet providers)
   • A clear description of the facts: explain how the massive IP blocking affects legitimate sites that you use, without being related to piracy.
   • Cite the regulation you consider violated: Regulation 2022/612, articles on net neutrality and non-discriminatory access to the internet.

5. Attach evidence if you have it - If you can, include screenshots, lists of affected IPs, communications with your provider, etc.

6. Submit the complaint - After reviewing everything, you can submit the form and you will receive a reference number. The Commission will assess whether to initiate infringement proceedings against the Member State.

(Visit revistacloud.com for more details on the process)

Conclusions and notes

We shouldn’t let high ranking people, corrupt judges/politicians or any other person with power pass illegal measures like these.

If you want to follow the latest news on this I recommend following Jaume on X as he’s actively speaking out and tracking all the IPs and services being blocked.