{"id":86391,"date":"2025-12-03T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=86391"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:00:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T09:00:41","slug":"ddos-guard-laligas-piracy-blocks-test-whether-anyone-will-protect-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=86391","title":{"rendered":"DDoS Guard: LaLiga\u2019s Piracy Blocks Test Whether Anyone Will Protect the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"judge-block\"A report published by the European Commission last month assessed whether its Recommendation of May 2023<\/a> had made a difference in the fight against pirated streams. <\/p>\n

No significant improvement<\/a>\u201d was the downbeat conclusion.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of top-tier Spanish football league, LaLiga, new legislation is the only workable solution, and it needs to be implemented in Europe, sooner rather than later. <\/p>\n

LaLiga Claims to Have Slashed Piracy in Half, Give or Take<\/h2>\n

At the same time as urgently calling for new legislation, LaLiga claims to have reduced piracy of its content in Spain by as much as 60%<\/a>. This was achieved under existing legislation<\/em> for the season that concluded at the end of the summer. A 40% reduction, the lower figure previously cited by LaLiga, would still be unprecedented.<\/p>\n

Yet, in the context of LaLiga\u2019s court-ordered authority, which permits aggressive blocking of almost any site or service facilitating access to pirate streams of its premium content, such results are not absolutely<\/em> impossible, at least in measured short bursts. LaLiga regularly laments Cloudflare\u2019s refusal to prevent piracy platforms from using its services and for every week that remains the case, Cloudflare IP addresses \u2013 utilized by pirates and regular customers alike \u2013 are blocked by Spanish ISPs.<\/p>\n

LaLiga reports that in May 2025, 38% of piracy involving LaLiga content \u201cwas distributed through Cloudflare\u2019s infrastructure.\u201d So at least on paper and without considering circumvention and other factors, aggressive yet effective blocking of Cloudflare would in theory be sufficient to claim a ~40% reduction in piracy rates. <\/p>\n

The problem, which has thus far proven impossible to solve, is how blanket denial of service to piracy platforms can be executed without subjecting innocent parties to the same fate.<\/p>\n

Internet Private Security Guard<\/h2>\n

As Head of Web Application Protection at DDoS-Guard<\/a>, a Russian Internet company providing protective online services, Dmitry Nikonov understands the importance of connectivity. Operating in broadly the same market as Cloudflare, DDoS-Guard has been paying close attention to the events playing out in Spain.<\/p>\n

LaLiga\u2019s legal authority allows it to block Cloudflare and in the event that DDoS-Guard\u2019s services also become a concern, there would be no legal barrier to prevent it from being treated in much the same way. The consequences of non-compliance seem to have alarmed Nikonov. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is happening right now, in the fall of 2025, and the scale of this phenomenon is astonishing. It seems LaLiga is beyond control,\u201d Nikonov writes in a column for Forbes Russia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cLaLiga can essentially apply a \u2018piracy\u2019 mask to entire ranges of addresses, often affecting endpoints that are not directly related to illegal broadcasts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Private Regulation\u2019 of the Internet<\/h2>\n

Nikonov believes the authority delegated to LaLiga should serve as a wake-up call for the global internet. He says that the authority to interfere with internet functioning has elevated the company to a powerful position; the big question is whether anyone can do anything about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaLiga is becoming a private regulator: not a state or an independent regulator, but a commercial organization that has delegated authority to interfere with network infrastructure. Football matches have become the pretext for a large-scale experiment on the internet, testing whether there is anyone to protect its freedom,\u201d Nikonov says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the football league has such powers today, then nothing will stop other major players from acquiring them tomorrow. We\u2019re talking about media holdings, streaming companies, and corporations for whom content is not entertainment, but a source of profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trade Barriers, No Legal Recourse<\/h2>\n

In a late October submission to the 2026 National Trade Assessment Report, Cloudflare warned the Trump administration<\/a> that Spanish courts allow rightsholders to request \u201coverbroad court orders\u201d that cause collateral damage affecting tens of thousands of legitimate websites. <\/p>\n

Since the Spanish government has chosen not to intervene, and \u201cno judicial opportunity for remedy\u201d currently exists, Cloudflare said that creates \u201csignificant trade barriers between the countries.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nikonov uses similar terms to those used in a Cloudflare-commissioned report released in the summer<\/a>. \u201cThe internet will become fragmented,\u201d he says, before reminding readers that state institutions won\u2019t be responsible, but commercial organizations shielded by government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis scheme avoids public debate (the Spanish parliament refused to consider the issue, citing a court ruling) and instead considers the proportionality of the measures. Under the guise of copyright protection, a tool is emerging that allows commercial players to directly influence the accessibility of parts of the internet, bypassing legal proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccess to resources will be determined not by technical standards, but by the interests of private corporations with administrative resources,\u201d he warns.<\/p>\n

More Powerful Tools Than Previously Reported?<\/h2>\n

Nikonov suggests that more powerful tools are being deployed in Spain, beyond simple DNS blocking. He claims that a key role belongs to the National Telecommunications Market Commission (CNMC), which, at the behest of LaLiga issues \u201cmandatory directives\u201d to all Spanish ISPs, urging \u201cthe fastest possible compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[This] effectively forces them to implement DNS and BGP filtering. Border Gateway Protocol is the primary dynamic routing protocol on the internet,\u201d he continues. <\/p>\n

A phrase often used to convey the importance of BGP is simple but effective: BGP is the glue that holds the internet together<\/em>. That\u2019s not overblown or alarmist<\/a>; but some would argue that meddling with it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, telecom operators are becoming the enforcers of state anti-piracy policies. What we\u2019re facing is no longer an isolated failure, but a testing of a model that sets a precedent for new internet governance \u2014 a private corporation, through the regulator, gains de facto access to leverage over network infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regulation and Using the Same System For \u2018Something Else\u2019<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s possible that at some point there will be calls for site blocking to be regulated, but according to Nikonov, some may welcome that with open arms.<\/p>\n

\u201c[M]odern digital ecosystems are structured in such a way that anyone who gains access to regulatory levers automatically gains power over the infrastructure used by millions of people. In other words, the internet today is no longer a distributed network, but a set of control points, each of which becomes a juicy target,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if today this point is used to protect football broadcasts, tomorrow it will be used for something entirely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A report published by the European Commission last month assessed whether its Recommendation of May 2023 had made a difference in the fight against pirated streams. No significant improvement\u201d was the downbeat conclusion. From the perspective of top-tier Spanish football league, LaLiga, new legislation is the only workable solution, and it needs to be implemented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}