Soccer Week, Blocking Week. With the support of a judicial sentenceLaLiga has power to ask the operators to Block certain IP addresses. The problem of killing flies to guns is that these blockages do not affect only the domains related to the retransmissions that LaLiga considers illegal: companies and individuals that have little or nothing to do with football are being affected.
Visiting a website is not available is a draft problem, even more so if the address you need to access is necessary to work. Movistar and O2 They are at the head of criticism, but even “small” operators like Digi They have been intensifying the blockages for months.
From Xataka spoken with affected and compiled several of the testimonies that flood both social networks and forums. The problem is common and easy to replicate: football day, problem day.
Why indiscriminate blockages
At first glance, it clashes that the order of an operator to block a unique IP address, supposedly to issue illegal content, can leave dozens of websites inaccessible that they have no relation to her. Although it seems illogical, this effect is a direct consequence of how an important part of the Internet infrastructure works.
A habitual (and economic) practice in web accommodation is shared hosting, where multiple sites operate from a single server and share a single IP address.
This configuration causes an unwanted collateral effect: as the blockade applies to the complete direction, it cannot differentiate individual sites. Thus, if a website with supposedly illegal football streaming shares the IP with the website you use to work, both will be blocked if the operator is given the order.
It is the reason why a fall or blockade in a CDN (Content delivery network) as Cloudflare either Vercel It ends up causing dozens of websites to cease to be accessible. If the service provider blocks an address, those that share it fall as dominoes.
How it is affecting users
There are several more than known websites to which users They are not being able to access certain websites during the game days. In the closest cases, Xataka companions have suffered problems to access platforms such as Bluesky from the average in specific cases. Always on the weekend (coinciding with the game days).
In some cases, the service provider clarifies that we cannot access a certain website by the judicial block. In others, simply do not load the page
It is the same case as a server, which a few weeks ago suffered several problems to enter forocoches (where there are already numerous threads reporting difficulties to access the forum). The tonic was exactly the same. In the hours before the party, access to this address was blocked. It was not until the hours after the meeting when it could be accessed normally, both from mobile data and from WiFi.
This is a relatively lower problem. Gravity increases when the user cannot access their web platforms necessary to work. This is the case of Álex Jiménez, a journalist of the Local section of Córdoba in eldiario.es.
“In my case I am a Digi user. The blockade is simple: at the time the weekend arrives and LaLiga’s games, Besocy’s website stops loading, showing the message I shared in the publication. I have tried to use other devices such as my personal phone or the tablet, both for wifi and by mobile network, and the blockade continues to exist. Normally it stops working both Saturday and Sunday.
There is no margin of doubt: the message you see when trying to access Besocya platform that provides media tools, is that “this IP address has been blocked in compliance with the provisions of the judgment of December 18, 2024”.
Even more concrete is the case of Rodrigo, who has a Homelab At home to house some of your websites. During the hours before the matches, in some cases from noon, Cloudflare begins to cut the tap.
“I use Digi, in my case I have hired the 10GB because I give it enough use since I have a homelab at home and I lodge enough services for the public too. I am happy in that aspect, speed, stability and support. Until the day D arrived, when I see that I cannot access one of my webs Being failing.
And indeed, with a VPN, in my case I use protonvpn, connecting even to a server in Spain, everything worked magically, it was to disconnect the VPN and nothing was loaded. Since then I began to monitor all the cloudflare IP’s, at least those that assign me, by region or the plan that I have hired with them. And as a clock, every time there would be football, Cloudflare fell and the second my websites.
Rodrigo’s case is one of the most visual, since he has shared with us the hours in which Cloudflare begins to give problems: they coincide with the meeting days and begin to “revive” when the game ends.
Fall in the days that there is a game, during the previous hours and its celebration and with return to normal after its completion. This is the blockade that, indiscriminately, are applying operators under court order.
What can I do as affected
LaLiga blocks are protected by a judicial sentence, one that Rootedcon He wants to lie down after collecting data and testimonies of users and companies that are suffering the blockages in legitimate web addresses. He has been trying to propose nullity incident since February.
For now, This is a legal practice (although with serious doubts around and with several demands against him) and we cannot prevent in any way that the operator is given to carry out the blockade. Despite this, we can put some practices into play to try to overcome these blockages.
Use VPN: In Xataka We have detailed How to avoid the lalaiga block to cloudflare using VPN. This is the easiest way to skip the restriction since, to perform the blockade the operator not only needs the IP of the address you want to block: you also need yours to know where you access. If you activate a VPN (and for honor registration, simulas navigate from another country), it is more than likely to see the problem solved.
Activate mobile data. This is perhaps the most curious way to try to overcome the blockade. When LaLiga sends the updated list of domains or IPS addresses to block, each operator must update their systems (DNS, firewalls, etc.). This process is not instant or necessarily uniform. The fixed network servers can be updated at a different rate than those of the mobile network, leaving a time window open where the block is active in one network but not in the other.
In principle, the blockade must prevent you from accessing both from Wi -Fi and from mobile, but if you agree with the window in which the changes have not yet been applied, changing from Wi -Fi to data can allow you to access the web in a matter temporarily.
Beyond safeguarding yourself in a VPN, little more can be done before LaLiga blockages. No one is clear if the new Internet is one in which LaLiga will have the power to block websites at will, or one in which consumers’ demands and the defense of freedom of information will end up prevailing.
Image | Footy
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