Telefónica had remained in a discreet background in LaLiga’s war against Cloudflare. That is over
The indiscriminate blockages of IPS From LaLiga now they have a new protagonist. Telefónica has sent a document to the European Commission in which it defends said blockages And openly criticizes the techniques and technologies that Cloudflare uses to protect the privacy of users. What happened. The commission made a consultation with the audiovisual and operators sector with the idea of regulating it and taking measures in a specific scenario: protection against piracy of live sports emissions and other events. As indicated In BandanchaTelefónica responded with a document Posted on May 27. It speaks of a situation that according to this company harms the operators when it comes to fighting piracy in those broadcasts. The problems grow. According to Telefónica, illegal access to emissions of all kinds has been increased since the European Commission (EC) published its initial recommendations to combat online sports piracy in May 2023. According to their data, between 43 and 46% of users with Internet access report that they also have illegal acesses to audiovisual content. DSA is not enough. For Telefónica THE DIGITAL SERVICES ACT (DSA) It is not enough to combat piracy in live sports broadcasts. They cite article 7 of that regulation indicating that it introduces the principle of good Samaritan: it allows services to voluntarily take measures to detect and eliminate illegal stines. That policy is voluntary, not mandatory, which according to Telefónica causes lagoons in its application. Intermediaries are saved. Article 16 of the DSA is also seen as insufficient by Telefónica, since it excludes intermediaries. They ask for more strict requirements for servers of DNS, VPN file hosting. And they also point to the platforms that provide reverse proxies and CDNS, which allow this type of internet activity. Criticism of ECH. The ECH technology (Encrypted Client Hello) is an extension of the TLS protocol that prevents operators from identifying which specific domain is requesting the user and prevents them from blocking specific domains. This technology protects the privacy of the suppliers of these contents and Telefónica asks for legal instruments and tools “that are equated with the same level of technical development” of these mechanisms. Or what is the same: asks for ways of being able to undo what Ech does. And fight against P2P. In Telefónica expressly cite the ACESTREAM BASED P2P NETWORKS as responsible for 30-40% of the total volume of platforms with live sports emissions contents illegally. They talk about how these networks are used through social networks and websites and even in APKs and multimedia players such as Kodi. Blocks sentences. The operator informed the CE of how to fight those emissions They fit several sentences. The most notable, number 310/2024 of December 18, of Court No. 6 of Barcelona and in which the plaintiffs were LaLiga and Movistar+. Cloudflare does not cooperate. In the telephone document openly accuse Cloudflare of “violating judicial sentences, refusing conscious and repeatedly to provide effective protection measures in reference to the services it manages.” For the operator “the level of breach and lack of cooperation is not precedents.” He also mentions that although he is in contact with intermediaries such as Cloudflarein certain cases there is only resistance in compliance with judicial sentences. EU measures are insufficient. Although the operator does not provide concrete data of the Impact dimension Of these emissions, they ensure that the current regulations are not enough. In the document they recommend being able to take stricter technical measures that, for example, allow “the immediate elimination of live illegal emissions and in any case in the first 30 minutes from the reception of the notification.” And the damage to third parties, what. The document does not speak at any time of damage to third parties that cause those indiscriminate blockages. It is not mentioned, for example, that in some days of LaLiga there have been about 2.7 million inaccessible web domains And it has also made many companies lose customers and income during those periods of inaccessibility. Not only that: The damage is also reputational: Services They are fallenbut not because of them, and many users may not know the background of the situation and make them unfairly responsible. The case is already in the Constitutional. In recent weeks we have seen how First rootedcon and Then cloudflare They have submitted two registered resources to the Constitutional Court in independent and separately. The objective is to annul the sentence in which LaLiga and Telefónica are supported – in addition to other operators – to carry out those indiscriminate blockages. There is no estimated date for the resolution of these resources. In Xataka | LaLiga has found the best way to beat Cloudflare: ally with its competition
