- The US Freedom.gov was collateral harm of LaLiga’s anti-piracy blocks
- Proton VPN confirmed the block occurred throughout weekend matches
- A Spanish courtroom ordered VPN suppliers to dam unlawful soccer streams
LaLiga’s aggressive campaign towards unlawful soccer streaming has triggered a diplomatic oddity and a digital rights fiasco, with the Spanish league unintentionally blocking entry to a United States authorities web site designed to struggle web censorship.
Throughout the weekend’s match schedule, Spanish web customers discovered themselves unable to entry Freedom.gov, a brand new initiative by the US Division of State and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) meant to assist Europeans evade content material bans.
The blockade was flagged on X by David Peterson, Normal Supervisor at Proton VPN, who confirmed that the positioning had develop into collateral harm in LaLiga’s ongoing warfare towards piracy. The error seems to stem from LaLiga’s tactic of focusing on IP addresses related to Cloudflare, which hosts each pirate streaming websites and bonafide authorities infrastructure.
This newest blunder underscores the volatility of the Spanish league’s “whack-a-mole” strategy to copyright enforcement. By ordering ISPs to dam IP addresses dynamically throughout match occasions, the league dangers taking down harmless web sites sharing the identical server house — a phenomenon specialists have warned about for months.
The “carpet bombing” of Cloudflare
The blocking of Freedom.gov just isn’t an remoted glitch, in actual fact, however a direct results of the technical measures granted to LaLiga by Spanish courts.
The league makes use of “dynamic injunctions” that enable it to replace lists of prohibited IP addresses in real-time, with out requiring a brand new choose’s signature for each block.
As a result of many pirate streams make the most of Cloudflare’s Content material Supply Community (CDN) to masks their origin, LaLiga has resorted to blocking broad ranges of Cloudflare IP addresses. This “carpet bombing” technique doesn’t distinguish between an unlawful stream of El Clásico and a US authorities portal.
LaLiga has been ordering Spanish ISPs to dam ~3000 IP addresses nearly each weekend. As a result of Cloudflare IPs are shared, this has been doing huge collateral harm to hundreds of reputable web sites, apps, and important companies – all on the whim of a personal company. pic.twitter.com/MmonW1BXgjFebruary 17, 2026
Peterson took to X to focus on the absurdity, noting the “huge collateral harm” brought on by the blocks.
Affected reputable websites and companies, Peterson experiences, embrace widespread social media apps, native banking websites, and productiveness apps like ChatGPT, GiftHub, and Microsoft companies.
Now, the irony appears much more palpable — a platform funded by the US authorities to assist residents bypass censorship was itself censored by a European sports activities league.
A historical past of collateral harm
This incident is the most recent escalation in a bitter battle between Spanish soccer authorities and the open web. LaLiga has beforehand discovered itself in a deepening battle with Cloudflare, accusing the tech big of not doing sufficient to take away unlawful content material.
In response, the league has ramped up its technical enforcement, resulting in frequent weekend outages for reputable websites that depend on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
The scenario not too long ago intensified when a Spanish courtroom issued a landmark ruling requiring NordVPN and Proton VPN to dam unlawful soccer streams. Whereas the VPN suppliers have pushed again towards these orders, citing technical impossibility and lack of due course of, the blocking of Freedom.gov demonstrates that ISP-level filtering stays a blunt and imprecise instrument.
As these blocks develop into extra aggressive, Spanish customers are more and more on the lookout for methods to keep up open web entry, with Spaniards reportedly turning to Proton VPN to navigate blocks.
We check and evaluation VPN companies within the context of authorized leisure makes use of. For instance: 1. Accessing a service from one other nation (topic to the phrases and circumstances of that service). 2. Defending your on-line safety and strengthening your on-line privateness when overseas. We don’t assist or condone utilizing a VPN service to interrupt the regulation or conduct unlawful actions. Consuming pirated content material that’s paid-for is neither endorsed nor accredited by Future Publishing.
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