Network experts harshly criticize the censorship model being applied in Spain during football matches, comparing it to strategies typical of authoritarian regimes.
The controversial blocking of IP addresses during football broadcasts in Spain, driven by LaLiga and executed by major telecommunications operators, has transcended national borders and reached the world’s most influential technical forum on Internet infrastructure: NANOG (North American Network Operators’ Group).
In an email sent on April 14, Spanish engineer Raúl Martínez warned the international community about the collateral effects of this measure, which has caused the temporary inaccessibility of thousands of websites by applying blocks to entire IP ranges of CDN providers like Cloudflare, GitHub Pages, Vercel, or BunnyCDN. The message was clear: “These blocks not only affect pirate websites but also legitimate users and global services, including one that hosted ChatGPT.”
A censorship model based on mass blocking
The trigger has been LaLiga’s use of court rulings that allow urgent demands for ISPs to block domains and IPs that broadcast matches without rights. However, the technical impossibility of blocking individual domains behind CDN services has led operators to resort to extreme measures: null-routing entire blocks of IPs, affecting thousands of innocent websites.
This model mirrors what is already used in Italy with the “Piracy Shield” platform, which allows rights holders to directly insert domains to be blocked without prior judicial supervision. As expert Brian Turnbow recalls, “legitimate content, educational services, and websites of public entities have been blocked there.”
Chain reactions: “Spain has decided to go nuclear”
Responses at NANOG came swiftly. From irony (“LOL! I’m sure there’s a fee for that,” said Mel Beckman) to technical and political outrage. [email protected], another forum participant, stated bluntly: “Spain has decided that it’s okay to block half of the Internet to stop a pirate site. This is typical of dictatorships. Even Italy acknowledged the mistake and backed down.”
Other participants, like Constantine A. Murenin, were even more critical of CDNs and technologies such as Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) or DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). In their view, these advancements prevent selective censorship and force governments to choose total blocks. “Cloudflare has designed its network for all or nothing,” they argued.
Cloudflare responds with legal action
According to sources cited by Raúl Martínez, Cloudflare has already initiated legal action in Spain to halt these practices that infringe upon net neutrality and severely impact their free users and business clients. Additionally, various media outlets like TorrentFreak and Bandaancha.eu have documented how hundreds of IPs are blocked during each football match, affecting over 13,000 .es domains, according to analysis by engineer Jaume Pons.
A troubling precedent
Beyond the specific case of football, what concerns the international community is that these measures could set a precedent in other sectors and countries. “Today it’s about football, tomorrow it could be about politics,” warn several experts. Furthermore, there are fears of a fragmentation of the Internet if such aggressive national policies continue to be applied, which would break the fundamental principle of global interoperability of the network.
Meanwhile, technical forums like NANOG are already calling for a coordinated response from the international community to halt the expansion of this “improvised” technical censorship that already affects millions of users in Spain and threatens to spread across Europe.
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