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My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

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Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#81

Post by chii »

maeln wrote: post #46
Krssst wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair for anime you can get pretty good coverage with only crunchyroll and a minimal price. Though some significant shows often end up locked on random services unfortunately.

> To be fair for anime you can get pretty good coverage with only crunchyroll and a minimal price Depending on if crunchyroll is available in your region :) . And they have some truly awful subtitles for some shows.

those pirated anime (esp. speed subs) mostly also just steal the crunchyroll subtitles as well, so if it was awful there, it will be also awful in the pirated version!

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#82

Post by piltdownman »

Phemist wrote: post #80
dabeeeenster wrote: post #65

Related (7 years ago): 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…

Wait, does that also mean bars have to police what people are watching on their phone, otherwise risking big fines? E.g. I go to the pub, have a drink and watch some random LaLiga match on my phone?

No, the bar pays something like 10x the price of a normal subscription to be able to publicly show live Sports as a draw for their customers.

In UK/Ireland you can easily identify if the venue in question is paying for the commercial package as it will intermittently display a pint glass symbol in a bottom corner of the screen. Indeed, Sky investigators, who do spot checks, use it to quickly ensure that the pub has a valid pub contract and not a residential contract.

https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/668952/why-pub-TV...

La Liga are presumably muxing infrasonic audio into their residential streams to try and:

(a) watermark the residential account(s) used to provide the streaming services so they can prosecute the providers

(b) Detect commercial usage of residential accounts used in piracy to prosecute the venues, by listening out via the App.

They could presumably get around GDPR by virtue of the fact they're only listening and recording audio out of human audible range, and only for identification of copyright infringement as per the TOS of the La Liga App.

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#83

Post by gloosx »

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.

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#84

Post by piltdownman »

xg15 wrote: post #43
pfortuny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the problem is that you want to watch football live, and LaLiga is harming lots of unrelated businesses with this approach.

Couldn't they sue LaLiga for damages? Only because a court grants you some power you aren't absolved from the responsibilities that come with that power, or are you?

Cloudflare are https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-...

What complicates it is that the ISP, Telefonica, is also a Soccer rights-holder.

How they haven't sued La Liga for defamation is beyond me though; publicly condemning Cloudflare's role in enabling piracy by knowingly protecting criminal organisations for profit.

https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/official-statement-in-rela...

Traditionally all soccer organisations from FIFA down are absolutely rife with corruption and other criminal activity. Best to view current events through that lense. For example, Fifa in 2015 were done for bribery, fraud and money laundering to corrupt the issuing of media and marketing rights for FIFA games in the Americas, estimated at $150 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#85

Post by aosaigh »

erremerre wrote: post #79
aosaigh wrote: post #57

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?

ISP with the right to football goes to court to report themselves (not a joke) about piracy happening in their networks. An old man judge which understand technology as much as I understand biochemistry (nothing) decides that they need to stop piracy, His solution is to give laliga the power to block those illegal streams, that all ISP must comply for the time that a match exist. The judge covers himself by saying, t…

Thanks for the summary. I assume this will go up the chain of appeals etc. and on to the EU courts if needed?

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#86

Post by addandsubtract »

nromiun wrote: post #49

That is wild. Which other country gives a private body the power to ban any IP address for the entire country?

I mean, the power was given by the court, so you could argue that the ISPs are just following court orders.

On the other hand, there's SpaceX which has the power to block an entire country from accessing the internet.

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#88

Post by philipwhiuk »

gloosx wrote: post #83

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 opportun…

> Then they use the taxes to buy petroleum products from Qatar.

This isn't how the energy market works.

Re: My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

#89

Post by pjmlp »

Hendrikto wrote: post #6
Lucasoato wrote: post #5

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…

> 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 Same in Germany. > newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football Also the same in Germany. But I am not sure which direction the causality goes. Maybe people are less interested in football because of the shenanigans they are constantly pulling. Or maybe they…

What pisses me off over here, is that for some strange reason, well not strange rather the whole thing that is being discussed, we hardly get any matches on the radio, whereas in the south this is a given, even in Spain.

It is always some streaming service like Magenta Sport, and that's it.

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