← Back to context

Comment by Foivos

4 months ago

Can the service providers somehow block illegal streaming themselves? That way no third party services would be affected?

9 comments

Foivos

Reply
michaelt  4 months ago

As I understand it, the only organisation that can block the streaming websites without collateral damage is Cloudflare, and they have not chosen to do so.

The situation is a bit irregular, as the streaming providers set up a new website for each game, and the legal system isn't fast-moving enough to issue a court order banning a website within the 90 minutes of a football game. Instead La Liga got a 'dynamic blocking injunction' so they tell ISPs what to block, and ISPs have to block it.

  • jopicornell  4 months ago

    That makes LaLiga look as if they were the victims, but they are not. They don't want to notify Cloudflare nor have done it any time since they started blocking it. LaLiga says that this blockings affects "hundreds" of people, and that they a rightful by doing that. Truth is, they are abusing their power and the spanish legal system to do whatever they want, as usual.

    Cloudflare is not ignoring LaLiga and they are open to collaborate, but LaLiga refuses to do so, and are battling legally over it.

  • jowea  4 months ago

    The next question is, why doesn't cloudfare cooperate instead of suffering disruption? Or why doesn't laliga ask cloudfare to cooperate if that's the issue? Surely cloudfare could block their own users more effectively.

    • hsbauauvhabzb  4 months ago

      Cloud flare have a pretty long history of not acting as the Internet police, including kiwifarms. That’s a GOOD thing. A private company is not responsible for acting in that way, and when they do it results in fascism. VISA and Mastercard have recently threatened steam over games a bunch of Karen’s didn’t like, and have also put pressure on onlyfans and pornhub. VISA and Mastercard have no business telling other companies what they can and can’t do, that’s the job of police and the courts. Otherwise, how long until visa, Mastercard, cloudflare etc give in to pressure and stop doing business with websites deemed ‘unacceptable’ by some invisible party. Abortion advice? Lgbtiq health issues? Options which dissent from government? Legal/‘illegal’ protests?

  • Foivos  4 months ago

    I imagined a solution where authorities would notify the hosting company of the IPs that are streaming. It should be obvious for the hosting company which customer is using these IPs for streaming illegal content just by studying the traffic pattern, no need to actually look inside the packets.

    Then they can just ban this customer. That way the authorities will not have a reason to ban IP ranges affecting the other customers.