The situation we are living these days in Spain with the Internet is worrying. Indiscriminate IPS blockages caused by the fight against illegal soccer broadcasts have made Complaints about Movistar’s service, O2 or Digi multiply: When these sporting events are held, various web sites and services cease to be accessible. The measures are resulting to have notable collateral effects, but this is not only in Spain.
The situation. In recent days we have seen how Movistar clients, O2 or Digi have criticized the cuts in the service in networks that prevented them from accessing various sites and platforms on the Internet. The reason has been the blockade of IPS to fight the illegal broadcasts of football matches. In several cases, blocked IPS, some of which belong to Cloudflare, are not linked to a single service, but thousands, and not make a selective block – which is complex, but feasible – causes numerous problems.
Italy was also a pioneer in this crusade. In Spain LaLiga keeps a crusade Against the illegal broadcasts of football matches, but Italy also has been fighting this type of problem for years. Already in November 2022 the iutalian authorities They identified thousands of subscribers to IPTV channels to which he later sent fines.
Shared IPS. Giorgio Bonfiglio, Amazon Web Services engineer, already explained the problem of IPS blocks In a thread in x. As he highlighted, in many cases the blocked IPS are shared IPS, although it is very difficult (or impossible) to find out if they are shared. The IPV6 protocol has facilitated that service providers can access a colossal number of addresses, being able to change them dynamically and even assign one for each request.
During IPS blocks, connectivity in various parts of Italy was very affected. Source: Torrentfreak
The selective block is very complex. “Block one by one would not be possible. You would have to block the entire class, but that is not feasible because it is almost never possible to determine how many IPS are owned by a certain client,” He added. And that is what is happening with these indiscriminate blockages. The Italian Parliament raised a law proposal precisely for that in July 2023. It ended up approved and was baptized as “Piracy Shield” or “Privacy shield.”
AGCOM acts in Italy. The Transalpino country has AGCom communications regulator (authoritá per le Garanzie Nelle Communicazioni), which is the one that manages the privacy shield blocking system. In February 2024 there happened there exactly what is beginning to happen here: the indiscriminate blockages of IPS that belong to Cloudflare OA services like Zenlayer (another CDN) e even Google They caused hundreds, perhaps thousands of legitimate and lawful websites were inaccessible while those blockages were active. Even the ISP, forced to comply with those blockages, also They criticize the situation.
United Kingdom adds to the crusade. The use of dynamic IPTV emissions blockages is becoming the norm also in the United Kingdom. Over there They started working in a regulation in respect in 2017, and have collaborated with specialized companies in illegal emission struggle such as FRIENDMTS. Content suppliers such as Sky obtained in July 2023 block illegal streaming services sports. Those blockages, of course, too They caused What legitimate services will cease to be accessible.
And more problems in Austria. These types of problems have also been lived in Austria. At the end of August 2022 Cloudflare clients began to complain about sites on their network that were not accessible in the country. As They told later Those responsible for Cloudflare, everything was due to an IPS blockade executed by the Austrian ISP. Austrian authorities They reacted later To avoid IPS blocking for the protecting neutrality in the network.
But the locks are everywhere. These types of situations are being suffered around the world. Judicial orders that force ISPs to block IPS denounced for illegitimate contents have occurred in countries such as Canada, Holland either Franceand in those cases once again the impact is not only for those illegitimate services, but for users and companies that lose access due to the blockade of IPS.
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