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Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

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21–30 of 283 posts

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#21
post #2

Very telling how the article ends with a snippet about how the previous season had record-breaking revenues and how La Liga is one of the most profitable sports competitions in the world. It is never enough.

Football leagues are in a bit of a weird position here where one league (English) being drastically stronger in pure monetary terms than the rest means the others can't really let up.

Similarly there's quite a lot of push from the most powerful teams in some of these leagues to break off and form a European Super League; with Spain's two biggest teams being the biggest backers of the project.

ETA: not agreeing with how aggressive they are exactly, but do think long term they're probably in a lot of trouble if/when money starts to properly force a European Super League into existence.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#22
post #5

I live in Spain, while I find the whole "life-threatening" narrative a tad overblown: I agree these obnoxious blocks are unacceptable. Incredible how much power LaLiga is capable of wielding.

Also Serie A, in Italy we had people losing everything this winter due to floods, and clubs were still trying to not postpone matches, it's so crap that there are so many people following football

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#23
post #18
post #6

sounds like centralising most of the the internet behind a single easy target (Cloudflare) is a bad idea

All systems seem to converge to these monopolies. Google, X, Facebook, Cloudflare. All minor player are absorbed or eliminated.

This is what happens when everyone is incented to trade low-probability risk for short-term profits. Because who would bet that a giant CDN would be blocked like this?

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#24
post #18
post #6

sounds like centralising most of the the internet behind a single easy target (Cloudflare) is a bad idea

All systems seem to converge to these monopolies. Google, X, Facebook, Cloudflare. All minor player are absorbed or eliminated.

It is the result of lack of regulation. They are all allowed to buy their competition.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#26

He's been complaining a lot about Portugal on Twitter too. https://x.com/eastdakota

It's really weird to vent on socials like this without specific asks. Makes him look whiny (ie https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1926750112757273065 )

These countries all have the same problem: older generation has sufficient power to say "we don't need immigration or jobs or anything; we're fine" while Americans who visit say "wow this place is great; such good food for so cheap!" and young people are desperate to emigrate for jobs.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#27
post #18
post #6

sounds like centralising most of the the internet behind a single easy target (Cloudflare) is a bad idea

All systems seem to converge to these monopolies. Google, X, Facebook, Cloudflare. All minor player are absorbed or eliminated.

I think we are partially to blame for this too though. For the last 10-20 years the whole goal of a founder was to grow a business, get acquired then exit. If founders instead focused on building a sustainable business maybe we would have a more diverse tech landscape.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#28
post #5

I live in Spain, while I find the whole "life-threatening" narrative a tad overblown: I agree these obnoxious blocks are unacceptable. Incredible how much power LaLiga is capable of wielding.

Didn't one of the major ISPs in Spain go down like a weeek ago (movistar) and that caused some emergency numbers to not function properly for some time? I wouldn't be surprised if critical (digital) infrastructure would rely on Cloudflare. If Liga is banning blocks of IP addresses without distinction, then anyone is at the mercy of being shutted down in Spain.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna argue that piracy is the only thing keeping platforms somewhat in check to not get completely enshittified. I stopped pirating stuff when content platforms gave a compelling easy to use product, I’m back to pirating because it’s genuinely a better product compared to the endless hoops you have to jump through to use streaming services

What hoops? Payment? I pay to stream La Liga and it's about as easy as hitting 'Watch Live'

Yeah, split payments across multiple streaming services can get tedious. Though I agree with you for the most part, piracy comes with more hurdles even with a fancy automatic setup.

But really the most important benefit of piracy is the one you're already taking advantage of. The cost would be significantly higher if they had a true content monopoly, instead they have to price with the idea that should the cost be too high, the inconvenience of piracy becomes increasingly worthwhile.

Re: Cloudflare CEO: Football piracy blocks will claim lives

#30
post #6

sounds like centralising most of the the internet behind a single easy target (Cloudflare) is a bad idea

Yeah. I think this is the elephant in the room. I keep stumbling upon "We need to verify you are a human" by Cloudflare in many sites around the web. Crazy.
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