La Liga Intensifies Piracy Battle, Accuses Cloudflare of Enabling Illegal Content

Spanish Football League Targets Cloudflare in Anti-Piracy Campaign

The Spanish professional football league, La Liga, has escalated its long-standing fight against audiovisual piracy by directly accusing Cloudflare, a prominent U.S. content delivery network company, of actively enabling the illegal distribution of its match broadcasts. La Liga alleges that Cloudflare 'knowingly protects criminal organisations for profit' by providing services to pirate sites and failing to adequately block illegal content, despite repeated notifications.

This dispute highlights the ongoing challenges content creators face in protecting their intellectual property online and raises questions about the responsibility of internet intermediaries.

La Liga's Accusations and Extensive Anti-Piracy Efforts

La Liga claims that over 50% of piracy-related IP addresses distributing its content are protected by Cloudflare, and that the company has refused to cooperate with the league's efforts to combat illegal streaming. The league has gone as far as to allege that some IP addresses it blocked, which were protected by Cloudflare, provided access to child pornography, a claim reported to the Spanish police.

The Spanish league estimates that audiovisual fraud costs the national football industry between €600 million and €700 million annually. To counter this, La Liga employs approximately 50 analysts who actively monitor websites, social media, and streaming platforms for illegal broadcasts. Their efforts have led to significant actions, including the blocking of platforms like DazcFutbolios and RBTV77, which collectively had over 400,000 unique monthly users in Spain. La Liga has also secured 1,600 convictions against hospitality venues for illegally broadcasting matches since January 2019.

Cloudflare's Defense and Legal Counter-Actions

In response to La Liga's accusations and blocking orders, Cloudflare has vehemently denied wrongdoing, positioning itself as a 'long-standing champion of a free and open Internet'. The company has accused La Liga of 'bullying' and implementing 'indiscriminate blocking practices' that have inadvertently restricted access to tens of thousands of legitimate websites for Spanish users.

Cloudflare has initiated its own legal actions, filing appeals to challenge La Liga's blocking orders and seeking to have them declared 'disproportionate' and 'unlawful'. They argue that La Liga secured these blocking orders without notifying cloud providers and concealed the predictable harm to third parties and the public good. Cloudflare maintains that its network is vital for the U.S.' economic and security interests and has engaged with politicians and regulators to find collaborative solutions that do not impede internet access.

Broader Implications for Internet Intermediaries and Content Protection

The legal battle between La Liga and Cloudflare carries significant implications for the future of content protection and the liability of internet intermediaries across Europe and Latin America. While a Barcelona commercial court has dismissed Cloudflare's requests to annul proceedings that upheld the blocking of IP addresses, Cloudflare continues to pursue legal recourse, potentially at a European level.

The core of the debate revolves around whether companies like Cloudflare, which provide network services, should be held responsible for the illegal activities conducted by some of their users. La Liga argues that Cloudflare's infrastructure plays a decisive role in facilitating piracy, while Cloudflare asserts that it should not be held accountable for the actions of its clients and that broad blocking measures threaten the fundamental right of users to access the open internet.