a respite for affected services

There are weekends when the problem does not start when someone tries to watch a game through an unauthorized means, but when a perfectly legitimate website stops loading or a store loses sales because people cannot access its website. This is what several companies and platforms have been denouncing in recent months: IP blocks associated with the strategy LaLiga against unauthorized emissions that many times end up reaching services that had no relationship with that content. And that is the bottom line: protecting rights should not turn third parties into collateral damage.

Now Congress has taken a first step to try to put order in this scenario. The Economy, Commerce and Digital Transformation Commission approved yesterday April 29, 2026 a non-legal Proposition promoted by ERC that, as published by Democratwas agreed with the PSOE to request more proportionality in the face of judicially ordered IP blocks.

In practice, NLP serves to record of a parliamentary position and forward a petition to the Government. It is not a small thing, especially when the debate had been accumulating complaints from affected companies and users for months, but it is not equivalent to changing the legal framework quickly. The next step, if there is one, will have to come through regulatory means.

One initiative, several specific requests

The initiative converts this general idea into several requests to the Government, with a common axis: that the response to illegal content does not end up affecting unrelated third parties. From the published text we can extract these points:

• Review, with the competent ministries, the protocols for the execution of sentences on IP blocking to prevent them from affecting legitimate digital platforms or essential services
• Create an inter-ministerial mechanism that evaluates the impact of these orders on legitimate services and applications, and that promotes alternative technical solutions.
• Promote regulatory changes in the Digital Services Law and the Intellectual Property Law to incorporate technological proportionality and reinforce the responsibility of rights holders in the direct control of illegal content, avoiding massive blocks on unrelated third parties
• Protect rights such as information, freedom of expression and digital social innovation against indiscriminate technological measures, especially when they affect free, non-profit or public service services
• Open a space for dialogue with affected platforms, operators, LaLiga and digital rights protection organizations to define good practices
• Take an active position before the judiciary so that blocking orders respect proportionality and reduce their impact on citizens, in line with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

The important difference is that we are not dealing with an abstract statement. Among its points, as we can see, the document expressly mentions the Digital Services Law and the Intellectual Property Law as frameworks in which to promote a reform to incorporate technological proportionality. In other words: the text does not change the law today, but it does draw a fairly clear route to try to do so.

That is the context that turns the discussion into something broader than a dispute between LaLiga and those who try to access unauthorized broadcasts.As we have seen in Xatakaamong those affected there are examples from very different areas: online sporting goods stores, services managed by technical agencies, digital communities and even public law corporations such as the Seville Bar Association. Each case suffers it in a different way: commercial activity that drops, payments that are not recorded, traffic that drops or users who cannot access when they need to do so.

The vote also leaves an interesting political picture. Democrat also details that the initiative went ahead with the support of PSOE, ERC, Sumar, Bildu, PNV and Compromís, while PP and Vox voted against and Junts was absent. The same medium also includes a relevant nuance: despite rejecting this NLP, the PP stated that it will present its own amendments to the Digital Services Law in a line aimed at avoiding damages to legitimate services.

Images | Xataka with Nano Bana | LaLiga

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