Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times • Hacker News Board

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#201

Post by kelsey98765431 » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #175

quacked wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a service problem. Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when, deal with their bullshit when they add ads onto an ad-free plan that you bought only because it was ad-free, yadda yadda yadda. The suits could have had 10x as much money out of…

> Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when I just don't find these arguments convincing after watching my friend spend cumulative hours upon hours jumping between pirate streaming services trying to find a stable feed for every game. This feel…

it's shocking to me that you refuse to see that the "awful experience" your friend has is not better than what they give people who pay. are you a billionaire literally out of touch with reality and the cost of living?

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#202

Post by otterley » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

calgoo wrote: post #162

otterley wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare loves pirates so much that they disclose loss of DMCA safe harbor protections as a material business risk on all their SEC filings. Piracy friendliness is key to their business model. It’s a risky position that no other large-scale CDN is willing to take. Forcing piracy consumers to use Tor or other proxies is unlikely to be popular. They’ll still be used, for sure, but so long as CF makes pirated content…

But cloudflare has no issue blocking the content if they receive a court order. The issue here is that La Liga wants to be able to get content blocked because they say so, and it has to be done right now. I also don't support these organizations that destroy the sports that people love, force you to subscribe to different services as each game and "liga" has made their own deals to make as much money as possible. Unt…

DMCA notices (and whatever the EU equivalents are) are designed to avoid the need for court orders. Every service provider that sends content is obligated by law to cease sending the content upon receipt of that notification. CF ignores them because they believe (mistakenly in my view) that the law doesn’t apply to them.

And every time they are sued for facilitating piracy, instead of letting the case to proceed to trial, they settle out of court.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#203

Post by gspr » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #44

gspr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when businesses will start suing ISPs for the losses they incur while they're cut off from half the internet.

No one here is being "cut off from the internet" during the blocks, you grossly misunderstand what's happening here. If you're on a residential connection, during play of the matches, you can't access any of the Cloudflare IPs, but everything else keeps working as-is. Most businesses already migrated away from Cloudflare once these blocks started happening, so most of the affected people are the ones using services t…

Ok, I'm sorry for the hyperbole of saying "half the internet" if it's in fact 10%. But come on, that's still massive.

It's not a stretch for small businesses to be reliant on residential connections either.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#204

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

keybored wrote: post #52

abirch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pass stupid laws with impunity here in America. Sadly, an alien viewing our behavior would deduce a rule such as: as long as the voter is the same tribe as the candidate, the voter must vote for candidate no matter how corrupt.

If they pass laws “with impunity” you can’t blame the voters that hard.

the voters don't vote on issues, and there are no consequences for breaking campaign promises. and direct democracy is le bad, of course (since Brexit).

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#205

Post by gspr » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #71

gspr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when businesses will start suing ISPs for the losses they incur while they're cut off from half the internet.

ISPs are following the law. You want to sue the government.

Then I'm mistaken. I thought the law only demanded that piracy sites were blocked, and then ISPs made life easier for themselves by blocking all of Cloudflare.

At any rate, this behavior isn't befitting a serious country like Spain.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#206

Post by bluecalm » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #39

Can Spaniards work around this with a VPN? I know that causes other issues though. To what degree is it feasible for a startup to move around in Europe? This is the sort of heavy-handed, tech-illiterate, authoritarian activity that might make me seriously consider moving my infrastructure or headquarters if I was a Spanish startup.

I spend a lot of time every year in Spain. VPNs work but sometimes you are forget about those Internet outages and are wondering why some services suddenly stop working. Some of them stop working in mysterious ways as well (for example if they host just some resources on Cloudflare).

It's frankly ridiculous because it's very easy to use a VPN and stream w/e anyway. I don't watch football, tennis or golf but I use VPN regularly to watch Australian TV.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#207

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #175

quacked wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a service problem. Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when, deal with their bullshit when they add ads onto an ad-free plan that you bought only because it was ad-free, yadda yadda yadda. The suits could have had 10x as much money out of…

> Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when I just don't find these arguments convincing after watching my friend spend cumulative hours upon hours jumping between pirate streaming services trying to find a stable feed for every game. This feel…

[deleted]

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#208

Post by nemomarx » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #92

llbbdd wrote: post #30

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so prevalent as to warrant this? It seems like a no-brainer to expand stream availability and charge appropriately for it vs. scheduling daily kneecaps of other economic activity.

> "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" I never buy into this. If copyright law doesn't exist, pirate sites will eventually always provide better service than the official channels. One example is scanlation manga. Chinese scanlation sites have reached the theoretical ceiling of service: just serve images fast with a little nonintrusive ad. No login required. No way the official Japanese apps can provi…

Can they try providing equal service to that? Ie, localized into English at the same time as the fans group, fast loading site, etc. In my experience they're usually noticeably behind in those areas even with a subscription active.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#209

Post by catlikesshrimp » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #144

llbbdd wrote: post #30

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so prevalent as to warrant this? It seems like a no-brainer to expand stream availability and charge appropriately for it vs. scheduling daily kneecaps of other economic activity.

> Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom I don't have experience with broadcast media (in Spain, especially) but I a little experience on the software side: I could not believe the lengths some people would go to in order to avoid paying even $5-10 for useful software. Hours of work, sketchy cracks, downloading things from websites likely to compromise their…

Netflix was ok when it was the only platform. Now that there are 10(?) platforms, and each of them has tiers, it is a service problem

Remember when a directtv subscriber bought the annual sports pack because they wanted to watch their team's matches, and just when the game was about to start the transmission was interrupted showing "not availabe in your area", and they called support to ask and were told for the first time by the rep that someone else has the airing rights, and to read TOS?

It is the same thing you are going towards.

Your friend exists, and he is not alone. But the vast mayority of people just want to watch what they were told they paid for, and not paying 10 different people either.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#210

Post by themafia » Tue, Apr 14, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #197

themafia wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is completely ineffective. It simply increases the cost of "piracy," as well as legitimate actions like home backup, to about $200 USD. The worse they make it for legitimate users the more likely they are to just buy the necessary device and move on. The technical battle is not some limitless option that IP owners get to use, it eventually impinges on their core interests.

DRM is somewhat effective. I'm lazy enough about entertainment that I don't even bother with piracy. If content providers don't want to make it cheap and easy for me to watch then fuck 'em, I'll watch something else. I have a zillion other options.

The article is about sports leagues. I assume you're not as fungible with your choices there? Or at least, you'd agree, it isn't for the majority of the actual audience in question.

See old school satellite piracy for a clear example of where this is headed.