New controversy due to an antipiratry maneuver of LaLiga. Since the beginning of February, during the broadcast of football matches in Spain, users denounce that thousands of web pages are inaccessible. The reason is that the organization directed That the ball rows.
Football employers’ sources say that these blockages have amparo in a court order, although they have refused to supply it with the requests of this medium. They also avoid clarifying whether this type of mass interruptions will become common. The access problems began on the day of February 2 and 3, they became massive a week later, coinciding with the derby between Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid, they have been repeated this Tuesday and Wednesday, during the European competition matches , those affected complain.
Kill the messenger
The new LaLiga tactics to end the pirate retransmissions aims at Cloudflare and is based on killing the messenger of the contents. Take advantage of an Internet bottleneck to cut it, who falls.
Cloudflare is a CDN (content distribution network, for its acronym in English), one of those services on which the correct functioning of the global Internet depends, but are unknown to the general public. The CDNs act as intermediaries between the user and the web pages and applications, helping the latter to reach users faster regardless from where their servers are, reducing the possibility of service falls and protecting them from cyber attacks, bots networks and Other types of malicious traffic.
In Cloudflare, specifically, it is one of the three largest CDNs in the world. More than 160,000 Spanish websites and digital services use it. Worldwide are more 28 million. LaLiga alleges that among them there are some that are used to make illegal retransmissions, so it has demanded that Internet suppliers block users to access public IP addresses of Cloudflare during the matches, which in practice makes thousands inaccessible thousands of legal websites that use their CDN, among those that are from small pyme pages to critical services.
Although Cloudflare is the most affected, the measure has also been directed against Google, which also offers CDN services. “Google, Cloudflare, VPNS and other agents involved in the consumption of piracy acquire responsibility for the illegal actions that are allowing and from which they profit. LaLiga, covered by Justice, will not stop in the defense of football and the interests of their clubs in the face of criminal actions linked to audiovisual fraud and her money laundering, ”said the employer of football in a statement.
Piracy complicit
In contact with eldiario.es, official Google sources have not wanted to position themselves about LaLiga’s demonstrations, referring to their measures Against piracy. Cloudflare, on the other hand, has openly shaved that the organization led by Javier Tebas knew that his actions were equivalent to turning off a good part of the Spanish internet during blockages, but decided to squeeze the red button equally.
“Although LaLiga clearly understood that the blockade of IP Shared addresses would affect the rights of millions of consumers to access hundreds of thousands of websites that do not violate the law, LaLig To this medium: “This seems to reflect an erroneous belief that their commercial interests must prevail over the rights of millions of consumers to access the Internet.”
However, the key is in another part of its statement, in which it explains how it organizes its service. “As practically all the large cloud service providers, Cloudflare uses shared IP addresses to manage your network, which means that you can access thousands of domains with a single IP address,” he details. This practice is what the company places the company as an accomplice of piracy.
LaLiga says that the digital company “profit from the cause of illegal activities related to live sports piracy and other crimes, such as scam or fraud, since it uses its legal clients as a digital shield to protect criminal organizations and mafias ”. For the employer, Cloudflare uses the grouping of IP addresses to protect the illegal websites and continue charging them for their services.
Cloudflare is a company whose income exceeds 1.5 billion euros a year. Despite the controversy raised by LaLiga’s action, his actions have risen 12% this week. “LaLiga is not positioned against free access to the Internet, but requests measures and carries out controlled actions against companies or organizations that show off illegal and criminal acts using legal companies such as digital shield,” they insist from the employer of football Spanish.
General outrage
LaLiga’s explanations have not convinced almost anyone. Affected and defense organizations of users and consumers claim against the action that has taken thousands of legal services ahead, as well as against the Internet operators that have carried out the indiscriminate blockade. At this time, the most affected customers are those of Movistar, Digi and O2.
“It is a brave thug of school,” denounces Rafael López, cybersecurity expert and technology head of the Spanish Missionir firm. “Block Cloudflare, Google IPS ranges and certain VPN sites, that really is to kill gunshot flies and a barbarity at the technical level. It’s like cutting an entire highway just because sometimes cars that carry drugs pass, ”he continues.
The specialist, one of those affected by the blockages, agrees that Cloudflare “could do more than it does” to prevent cybercriminals from using their services. “There is doubt, at a technical level, whether pirates and cybercriminals are very good doing their own, or if Cloudflare is very slow to eliminate them because while they have an economic benefit. It is true that they could do much more and that the bad prefer cloudflare before other CDNs, ”he says.
“However, what is also true is that there is evidence for a long He did nothing, but now that he plays the LaLiga business, the blockade of thousands of websites is allowed to prevent it. ”
Rubén Sánchez, from Facua, points directly to Movistar and the operators who have carried out the blockade. “We believe that what Movistar has done is a great fudge in which to pursue piracy, people who have absolutely no responsibility in this regard are charged, cutting off freedom of information and freedom of expression,” denounces before Eldiario.es.
In this sense, from Movistar they point to this medium that “as an operator”, they fulfill “any type of court order received against illicit content.” In the same sense, official DIGI sources are expressed. However, they refuse to supply that court order before the request of eldiario.es.
Ofelia Tejerina, president of the Association of Internet users, advances that her organization is valuing to file a joint complaint before the Ministry of Economy for what happened. “The courts should detail in the locking orders that the law allows them, how to be done, how that order should be executed and who can or cannot be affected,” he says. Something that, he points out, is not happening on this occasion, with hundreds of thousands of injured and a court order to justify him that he has not come to light.
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