Cloudflare CEO: Football Piracy Blocks Will Claim Lives; “I Pray No One Dies”

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince issued a stark warning over LaLiga's ISP blocking campaign. The blockades deny access to less than 150 pirate sites and reportedly render millions of innocent websites unavailable. Prince said he "prays no one dies," after revealing Spanish citizens are being denied access to critical resources. Mass blocking of Cloudflare continued on Sunday, despite a clear indication from Prince that his company has always been willing to cooperate.

cloudflare-spain-s2 LaLiga’s 2024/2025 season is officially over. FC Barcelona were actually crowned champions on Thursday after it became mathematically impossible for Real Madrid to conjure up seven points or more from the six points available.

The final matches of the season were played on Sunday but with the championship settled, would LaLiga show restraint and taper down its blocking activity? Or perhaps it would continue under the authority of judge, despite the widespread collateral damage inflicted on innocent internet users since February, a scandal now known as #laligagate.

In For a Penny?

The early signs did little to inspire confidence. Protest website LaLigaGate.com was hit by a total blockade but whether the site was targeted deliberately or succumbed to collateral damage is unknown.

Intentional and Unintentional Blocking Look Identical
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As the latest data suggests that mass blocking of Cloudflare in pursuit of 150 piracy platforms has negatively affected millions of innocent websites, use of the term ‘collateral damage’ may be running out of scope.

Unintentional overblocking became inevitable overblocking some time ago, a point certainly not lost on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.

Posting to X last week, Prince asked if anyone wanted any general feedback, declaring that he felt “in an especially truthful mood.” The first response contained direct questions about the LaLiga controversy, the blame for which LaLiga places squarely on the shoulders of Cloudflare.

For the first time since Cloudflare legal action failed to end LaLiga’s blocking campaign, Prince weighed in with his assessment of the current situation and where he believes it’s inevitably heading.

“Bonkers” Blocking Strategy

“A huge percentage of the Internet sits behind us, including small businesses and emergency resources in Spain,” Prince explained.

“The strategy of blocking broadly through ISPs based on IPs is bonkers because so much content, including emergency services content, can be behind any IP. The collateral damage is vast and is hurting Spanish citizens from accessing critical resources,” he added.

Earlier this year, various comments and statements by LaLiga suggested that its relationship with Cloudflare had reached rock bottom. It transpired that LaLiga had obtained an injunction which allowed it to tackle Cloudflare and Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), but had done so without Cloudflare’s knowledge, effectively denying the company a right to respond.

Alongside other attacks delivered via the media, LaLiga slammed Cloudflare for refusing to cooperate. What action LaLiga had demanded still isn’t clear, but the league said that if there was any overblocking as a result, Cloudflare would have to shoulder the blame.

The Potential for Deadly Consequences

The scale of overblocking reported in Spain is unprecedented but since LaLiga has a court order that effectively gives Cloudflare blocking a green light, it has been doing so in bulk, every single week since February.

Depending on who addresses the overblocking issue, with whom and when, the league claims that collateral damage a) doesn’t exist or is minimal and/or b) is Cloudflare’s responsibility. Prince appears to have grave concerns over the scale and type of blocking taking place, warning that a worst-case scenario is inevitable.

Football Piracy Blocks Will Claim Lives

Despite LaLiga’s unshakable claims to the contrary, Prince believes that it’s not a case of ‘if’ disaster strikes, it’s ‘when’.

“It’s only a matter of time before a Spanish citizen can’t access a life-saving emergency resource because the rights holder in a football match refuses to send a limited request to block one resource versus a broad request to block a whole swath of the Internet,” Prince warned.

“When that unfortunately and inevitably happens and harms lives, I’m confident policy makers and courts in Spain and elsewhere will make the right policy decision. Until then, it’ll be up to users to make politicians clear on the risk. I pray no one dies.”

The suggestion that LaLiga’s demands were too broad, doesn’t mean that Cloudflare is refusing to help, Prince suggested. On the contrary, there’s a process available, LaLiga just needs to use it.

“We’ve always been happy and willing to work with rights holders in conjunction with judicial bodies to protect their content. We have a clear process that works around the world to do that, Prince explained.

LaLiga Targeted Cloudflare and Others During the Weekend

Live blocking data provided by hayahora.futbol has proven invaluable to those documenting #laligagate in recent months and this past weekend was no different.

As the small sample of Cloudflare IP addresses blocked on Sunday seems to show, concerns that every IP address blocked would inevitably result in collateral damage, seem to have been trumped by the authority of the now-famous court order.

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The importance of strict adherence to the law was underlined by LaLiga’s Global Content Protection Manager in a recent interview.

José Ignacio Carrillo de Albornoz told El Confidencial that without the collaboration of intermediaries, piracy will be impossible to beat. Carrillo de Albornoz concluded with a “statement of responsibility” which notes that real progress will require all parties to work together and go beyond compliance with the law.

“It is necessary that all links in the digital chain act legally and ethically,” he said.