Spain’s LaLiga has blocked access to freedom.gov | Hacker News Reader

Spain’s LaLiga has blocked access to freedom.gov

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215 pointsakyuu250 comments

It’s sad that most comments are just focusing on political bashing instead of the root problem here.

It’s the fact LaLiga and Spanish ISPs comply.

They’re “carpet” blocking entire IPs of Cloudflare.

Every weekend if I need to access some of my work websites which are affected by this (while there are football games) - I need to VPN to bypass the blocking.

I’m new in Spain so my ability of surfacing the Spanish law or the European is limited. But I really wish they’ll have to find a nicer approach instead of this aggressive approach.

I also see another side of the problem - too many services are proxied via CloudFlare making it easy to disrupt at the same time. Folks really need to try and choose alternatives instead of feeding the “world firewall”

why? so La Liga can more easily target smaller providers?

if anything the "world firewall" here has a redeeming feature, making this nonsense a lot more costly

Some people genuinely believe the european copyright system (and La Liga and the Spanish judiciary) has more than 0% legitimacy… is it truly that hard to imagine?

Collective punishment is such overreach that it's a violation of the Geneva conventions. You do that and you no longer have more than 0% legitimacy.

I meant even after the fact they still believe to some degree of legitimacy.

Believing that an action is legitimate when it isn't simply means that they're in error.

How is that a bad thing? Our goal should be to maximize the amount of collateral damage that any censorship causes, with the ideal case being that the only two choices available to the censors are "no censorship at all" or "completely air gap yourself like North Korea".

That extreme centralization makes the single choke-point vulnerable to all kinds of other problems. The web is supposed to be decentralized and distributed.

In theory. It’s strange to argue about hypothetical issues with something currently defending against actual problems. One battle at a time.

I'd hardly call decentralization a "hypothetical" issue: we've already seen governments are willing to issue gag orders so that we can't even find out what they're doing inside major companies. That's clearly a lot easier to do when there's a single central point of control.

If there's a single central point of control, then that also means an outage takes everything offline, instead of just 1-2 tools. That also makes it a bigger target for attackers.

It doesn't even need to be an attacker - CloudFlare themselves have managed to take down impressive portions of the internet more times than should be accepted just this year.

So do you apply the same logic for measures gov/Apple/etc put out about on-device scanning and e2e messaging stuff? It's always "hypothetical" until it hits the fan.

Sure, I agree there are bad things about extreme centralization. I'm just saying that the increased collateral damage of censorship is a silver lining of it, not one of the bad things about it.

I agree with you on the technical premise, but I think the point made was that the bigger the disruption, the greater the backlash and swift reversal, in ideal theory at least.

What DDoS mitigations are there besides the less affordable Akamai?

Cloudflare has become so ubiquitous that they've become a major vulnerability for non-U.S. governments. The recent outages offered a small taste of what might happen if the U.S. government, on one of their random whims, ordered Cloudflare to block everyone and every site within a target country.

This in no way excuses what Spain is doing, but its important to recognize that the internet is becoming more of a battlefield every day.

Spanish citizens have control over eh Spanish government. If this is a concern they can of course change the law. Yes democracy is hard, you have to convince the country it’s important.

European citizens have less control if they aren’t Spanish citizens as they can only talk to their local and European representivies and not the national ones. But they can still raise the cause, and there nothing politicians like more than a popular cause which wins them votes. Enough people say they won’t vote for party X as they back the blocking and that becomes a policy at whatever party conferences Spain has

People in Spain and Europe have no control over America though. If the American governments blocks a site they have to comply with no representation.

Freedom is impotent, but it doesn’t mean what Americans think.

> European citizens have less control if they aren’t Spanish citizens as they can only talk to their local and European representivies and not the national ones.

Citizens of other countries have less influence on the Spanish government than Spanish citizens? Not surprising.

> Freedom is impotent,

Did you meant to say important?

> Spanish citizens have control over eh Spanish government.

The fact is LaLiga has more.. It's been that way for years. There was a case where they would (may still do) use the microphone on your phone via the laLiga app to hear if you were watching a match and correlate that with licensed venues.

They're the most aggressive I've ever seen, and their influence in the government is unmatched.

So you’re saying democracy doesn’t work?

I've come to believe that democracy doesn't work because most citizens don't want to work it. Many of the legislations passed are harmful to the majority even when the intentions are good. Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Friedrich Hayek have been saying this for a century.

Spanish ISPs comply because Spanish judges issue legal injunctions that obligate them to institute these blocks. Sure, Movistar/Telefónica would do it anyway (I understand that they're the rightsholder in this case), but other ISPs are forced to do this by the courts.

I'm a US immigrant here and since I couldn't give a shit about soccer it is extremely annoying to be blocked from websites for something I am barely aware of. The ultimate irony is that none of this bears fruit because I am capable of streaming these games with no VPN by just avoiding CF sites if I had any desire at all. The blocks are invasive and yet ineffective.

> but other ISPs are forced to do this by the courts.

They are in theory. But they were claiming "technical difficulties" to block the IPs until they also offered DAZN (socker) in their TV packages. Now they are quick to ban.

Remember how this is working: TV operator (Movistar, Vodafone, Orange) demand ISPs (Movistar, Vodafone, Orange) that they block the IP for a couple of hours. The judge, who can't tell apart an IP from a car plate, agrees to the request. Nobody can appeal in practice the block, because if your site gets blocked, the judge now say "unblock", the ISPs claim "technical difficulties" to unblock, and the two hours are gone. Sunday after sunday.

You can avoid the block just proxying you traffic through a ssh loop to localhost, but that is not the problem. 99% of people won't do that to access your online shop, they just assume your site is down and buy from you competition. And sunday afternoon is one of the busiest day of the week for online stores.

I have commented this in multiple occasions. What is happening here in Spain with LaLiga is just absurd. My company's domain gets blocked often because we use CloudFlare. In essence, any service using CloudFlare gets blocked often. The main problem is that the common Joe tries to navigate and finds that it doesn't work, and they blame their network, and when they come back two hours later after the game finished, the website works, so they move on. The only way for this to get resolved is if they blocked something critical and an accident happened because of that (e.g. hospital services, traffic control, or something like that). Eventually this will escalate to national courts (currently this was dictated by a regional court in Barcelona). But again, legal action is extremely slow. VPNs are becoming a must everywhere, because the Internet is becoming wild from all directions.

> My company's domain gets blocked often because we use CloudFlare.

Then don't use it. When I want to go to "example.com", I want "example.com", not Cloudfare, a "mafia organization" which is "protecting" "example.com".

The Mafia here it's LaLiga and Tebas.

Cloudflare is the outfit which offers protection, however they are failing to protect their customers.

What would you suggest they did in this case, advertise a false AS/ ranges?

Cloudflare offers some genuinely valuable services that protect you from exposing your infrastructure to the world wild web. And regardless why does a private institution like LaLiga have the power to censor anything they want for their own benefit?

> What is happening here in Spain with LaLiga is just absurd

So what? I don't see crowds protesting on the streets of Barcelona. People are compliant, unfortunately.

My point is that people don't understand nor know that this is happening at all. Even when I get customers complaining that the service isn't available, they don't believe that their ISP is blocking them because of football. It's almost unbelievable for how absurd it sounds that people don't even think that could be the reason.

The most obvious outcome possible.I was never able to load the website myself, but if you centralize things to a specific website, it's trivial to block it. Since I could never load the site, I don't know if they had any plans outside of just putting up a website. If not, this was incredibly stupid.

Pretty sure it is all performative and the actual audience is the voters in the US.

It's the same administration that stated that they sent a hospital ship to a country with public healthcare to take care of the sick people there.

Boy, I will miss this administration for their sense of humor and ingenuity. They always find something new. A firework of performance art.

I think it looks stupid on the surface. But maybe it is a purposeful way to goad European countries into taking increasingly authoritarian policy changes like banning VPNs. They will use it to generate outrage among Europeans and undermine the leadership, and try to either split the EU along these lines or place friendly leaders.

Maybe this is conspiracy theory. But I feel like the aggression they’ve shown - even people like Marco Rubio - suggests they’re acting with a purpose.

the goal was to publicly display european censorship and to take down its moral "high ground"

it succeeded

Maybe in the US. In Europe it never convinced anyone, as it never would since anything minimally related to Trump is discarded automatically.

Also because internet censorship and censorship in general has largely become normalized in Europe.

US is infinitely worse than EU but selectively based on what ruling party wants you to both see and post. try to get some coverage from gaza or west bank and/or post something slightly critical of israel and see how that works out for you. EU, China… are at least up front about what they want to censor and why, US censors every fucking imaginable thing while people are too stupid to see it and go “oh my, look how bad EU/China are…”

US censors every fucking imaginable thing while people are too stupid to see it and go “oh my, look how bad EU/China are

No, we do not. You've been lied to. You should go back to whoever told you that, ask them why, and ask them not to do it again.

I mean there are an increasing number of states that are requiring age gating for pornography access for sites like PornHub. It's only a matter of time before that age gating expands to non-pornographic entities, which is the ultimate goal of the plan.

Unfortunately you're probably not wrong, but the fact remains, none of this is happening at a national level. Yet.

shit is and has been happening at the national level for a while. gave you an example you can take for a spin (would not advise you do though)

If you're not in the US, you probably don't understand how our system of federalism works. We have 50 different states, some of which are basically run by the Christian equivalent of the Taliban or the Shiite mullahs of Iran. These state governments often come up with goofy, performative laws such as age verification that are normally set aside by higher courts as First Amendment violations.

I say "normally" because the same religious factions are rapidly expanding their dominance over those very courts. Absolutely no historical freedoms can be taken for granted in the US right now. Nevertheless, the fact is, there is no national Internet censorship regime including age verification. No such laws are currently under consideration at the national level.

(Yes, you can be prosecuted for downloading or distributing child pornography, but that is not an Internet-specific issue, and there is no other country I'm aware of where such laws are not also on the books.)

Edit: if you are willing to move the goalposts that far, there is probably no way to convince you that the facts are as stated. Nevertheless... those are the facts. For further reading, look up the term "prior restraint." That's what's actually different in the US versus other countries that use technical means to enforce legal restrictions on Internet speech.

What are you smoking? Access to porn has been legally restricted in every state to 18+ for decades. Adding the Internet only made things easier because nobody enforced it the same way they were already enforcing brick and mortar stores that had the exact same materials.

Likewise, there are plenty of rules and regulations around adult content on broadcast airwaves managed by the FCC.

Challenging adult content as "free speech" has happened and already settled precedent at the Supreme Court.

Yes, individual states are still trying to figure out how to actually best enforce the laws on the books at the Internet level, but there's no pretending that it is just a few states that actually have those laws.

I AM in the USA. And yes, we are heavily censored, but not simply in content. Its a financial censorship, or cut off from banking, or payment processing. And being the "Home of the (everything costs so damned much) Free", starves all initiatives that threaten companies or government.

Wikileaks is one such. Operation chokepoint, another. OFAC sanctions. Holder v Humanitarian Law Project. Knight First Amendment Institute.

But thats the point - USA speech says you can say "Hitler did nothing wrong" and its legal. But you infringe on Powers that Be, and money is involved, your speech via money will quickly be eliminated.

It is hard to discuss these things with people that post such comments as the one you replying to... off the deep ledge where there is no coming back from

(Shrug) If you're not already posting from some Eastern European or Russian hellhole, you need to spend some time in places such as those to gain some perspective.

Or, in general, any other country that people die trying to get out of, as opposed to trying to get into.

keep shrugging but your mind has been totally polluted to think you live in some "free" society where you have "rights and shit" and oh other countries don't have that. but this is good training you went through, you have been told these lies all your life and you believe in them strongly - and that is fine, it is what it is.

the truth of course is much harsher and hopefully you'll never run into it but you absolutely do not live in a free society, the censorship is all around you (if you care to look deeper), the freedoms you think you have are daily being taken away, you can't carry a bottle of water or a f'ing toothpaste onto the airplane (and apparently we have 4th amendment?)... - this is all normalized in the US but we still think we are "free" and your best is "see how many people are flocking to come here, we must be great..."!!!! :) quite something...

Not since the Biden administration, anyway. During covid they made sure social media site black-holed information they didn't want people to see.

Another lie. The government has the same right to politely request sites to remove disinformation as you and I do. No one "made sure" of any such thing.

Eh. Asking sites to remove information while concurrently litigating against them is very "nice site you have there, shame if something were to happen to it."

The real issue here is that accusations of hypocrisy are misdirection. Two wrongs don't make a right and it's not a competition to see which government can screw people worse.

If your murder rate is up 300% and your defense is "well what about the murder rate in <other country>", the most conspicuous thing about that response is that it contains zero absolution from your murder rate being up 300%. The same is true of the censorship rate.

Just like someone walking into a bank with a shotgun can politely ask for money?

A nation whose public health agencies don't fight the deliberate spread of disinformation is a very sick nation, or soon will be.

The problem is any mechanism you put into place to fight "disinformation" will be used to suppress information the government doesn't like.

Covid is a great example, since most of the disinformation was coming from public health authorities, and people who were skeptical about vaccine safety and effectiveness were ruthlessly suppressed online. People who turned out to be right.

People who turned out to be right about jack shit.

When you peddle horse paste during a pandemic, you can expect some pushback. It's part of what my taxes pay for.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. You're confidently calling Ivermectin, a drug that's been used in human medicine for decades, "horse paste". You're just ingesting propaganda without putting any thought into it.

That's kind of a juvenile view of how power works.

but is prevalent in the America... that is what our society is going down the path it is going...

Da, tovarisch.

You'd almost be better off in Russia (since you already speak the language) - a lot more freedom there than here with us

no one told me silly :)

> try to get some coverage from gaza or west bank and/or post something slightly critical of israel and see how that works out for you.

On a US ISP aljazeera.com loads right up, as does The Guardian and RT.

No it isn't. For example in my EU country I can see the list of all websites blocked, and all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting (legal betting is allowed, but must register and pay taxes). That and rt.com. I can also say/post whatever I want in social media except stalk and harass individual people. There is no "censorship" at all compared to virtually anywhere else in the world, US included.

That's normalization.

> That and ...

lenta.ru ? (aha, management personnel has been replaced 2014 [1])

[1] https://t.me/systemasystema/89 [RU]

Blocking RT is not censorship?

Nor is sanctioning your own journalists? Or a former intelligence agent, a Swiss national who worked for NATO, and now lives in Belgium?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969722

You link to a comment which lists a number of russian-paid propaganda actors spreading lies and hate. They have not been censored by a government but by courts which based on evidence identified breaches of law. It's something very different from censorship.

RT was not censored by any courts of law. It was censored by an unelected executive branch.

Also it's not "censored in Europe" I am in Switzerland and can still access it

So say when China censors USAian and European sites, that's authoritarian, but when Europe does it it's very different from censorship.

Got it.

Col Jacques Baud is the exception to your rant. He's a retired swiss intelligence officer who served with NATO.

He didn't even quote a Russian source in his books, has refused to appear on any Russian media channel.

Now explain why he's sanctioned.

Pensioner called Merz "pinoccio," now faces police investigation.

Even our "authoritarian" PM Modi ignores petty nonsense like this. You people need to wake up.

https://www.stimme.de/heilbronn/stadt-heilbronn/friedrich-me...

Blocking someone who's sole purpose is to destabilise your region is wrong? You are an idiot if you think that one should let them spread their lies and anti EU propaganda freely.

Imagine what the Russian government tells its citizens about (blocked) European and American foreign news, and then you will see why this is a terrible argument. The mark of a free country is that nothing is blocked, because the citizens can be trusted to think.

And y64 can see where that th5n25ng br64ght the us. Rampant Russian disinfo helped push them into the mess they are in. No thanks, I still stand by that some things needs to be banned, be it foreign disinformation campaigns or nazis eg.

> No it isn't.

Yes it is.

> For example in my EU country I can see the list of all websites blocked, and all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting (legal betting is allowed, but must register and pay taxes). That and rt.com.

You provided a counter-example that disproves your claim in the next sentence. I'm just flabbergasted.

Blocking a propaganda outlet by a hostile foreign government is not censorship and certainly not "general censorship that is normalised."

If you know that a foreign actor intentionally tries to undermine your government you honestly think the right course of action is to just relax and let it happen? Absurd.

Europe has seen it's share of dictators and knows that a democracy needs to also protect itself.

A regime dictating what its people may and may not read about is exactly censorship.

> all of them are for piracy/copyright infringement and illegal betting

Does that include all of the sites that share the same IP addresses as those sites?

For that matter, you're posting a reply to an article about a European country blocking the website of a generic US government VPN service, and the service isn't even operating yet. So not only have they graduated to censoring VPNs, they're now censoring a website whose only content is political criticism of their other censorship.

There are no IP bans ...

Well apparently there are, because huge swaths of CDN PoP IPs are getting banned/blocked in Europe especially during La Liga matches. How are we explaining this?

They explain it by plugging their ears, chanting "LA LA LA LA", rocking back and forth, and telling themselves (and everyone else) that the US is worse.

I'd love to see the link to your country's blocklist.

Not op, but here: https://www.gespa.ch/en/fighting-illegal-gambling/access-blo...

Let's be real, this is just protectionism. The most popular prediction market in the world is DNS-blocked, in the hopes of redirecting you to some crappy online casinos instead.

Good lord. Your response only proved his statement. Blocking rt.com glaringly showcases the eye-rolling, ridiculous and "moving to dangerous-territory" censorship that the EU is performing - my opinion as a citizen of an Asian nation.

How much dangerous censorship does your Asian nation carry out? India, for example, blocks thousands of websites - no sex work for them - and regularly shuts down the Internet entirely.

Why else do you think I mentioned that the EU is on a dangerous path ? I utterly stand against govt censorship.

But corporate censorship by companies larger and more powerful than most countries with no democratic accountability is ok?

Govt is far worse since Corporates can't throw you in jail for social media posts - which is what is happening.

Why is the response to all of this a giant ad hominem. “Oh but <region> does it too!” - how does this help me as an European?

Ah yes, there is a foreign government sponsored campaign to deligitimise and spread lies about your country and government. And because you are a democracy you should just accept it and let lies and propaganda flood your country? Can't even make these entities follow the law as they operate outside your legal framework. So let them lie and manipulate people while claiming to be "news.l".

This is how democracy dies - when we stop caring about truth. This is how fox ruined the US, when lies becomes fine just because they are "opinion" or "entertainment".

Hate to break it to you, but European countries have equivalent foreign news propaganda services: Deutsche Welle & France24, for example. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If European countries weren't such nanny states, they would trust in their populations' critical thinking skills.

Not true. Going to assume you are from Spain. Try posting a recording of the police. Try posting something praising terrorism. Try a joke about victims of terrorism. A humour magazine called Mongolia has been fined with 40,000€ for publishing a joke about Ortega Cano. Try offending religion publicly. All of that is allowed in the US.

Every country in Europe has some restraint to freedom of expression (lots of them ban either nazi or communist symbols, for starters). US has none.

While conveniently ignoring or gaslighting everyone about this admins own censorship.

>ignoring or gaslighting everyone

Where's the "gaslighting"?

implying that the EU is currently worse on censorship when this admin is utilizing their power to silence critics.

It failed. The outcome was europeans see “yet another nonsense” coming from the US. Also, it barely made the news because of other nonsense coming from the US and generally that’s limited to “international news”.

Also, we don’t actually have censorship in Europe, not in the way the US is trying to suggest.

Yet, your ISPs don't give you access to the full Internet. First it's porn (age verification), then it's soccer, then it's social media (ID verification), then it's libraries. Soon, you even stuff that you take for granted, such as playing an online game, may require age/ID verification. At this rate, all you will be able to access soon will be center-left Euro propaganda.

The ISPs do what our elected governments direct them to do. It’s how democracy works. If you don’t like what people are voting for, get into politics and talk to your community. Or at least email your MEP. There is no conspiracy here.

Cute that you think that's how it works. I guess you're also thinking everyone that voted for the current administration agrees with them on everything they do and voted them in exactly for that. I am at least glad you didn't say if you don't like how it works, move elsewhere.

I know that’s how it works and I also know it’s not a zero sum game. That’s why every law or policy gets time for comments and debate and sometimes policy gets revised. It’s how governance works.

But if you feel you have the perfect solutions, then by all means get yourself on the ballot so we can finally see the light.

Sorry you have to deal with our culture warriors, cheers. It's funny to watch someone get a 1st grade instruction in civics while raving.

What websites a person is allowed to access should not be a matter of debate, it is for the individual to decide. Other people's opinions are not relevant. Even if 99% of people think a person should not be able to access a website, it is still their right to do so and they have no need to justify it.

Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.

Does that apply to websites full of CSAM, or that sell for-hire animal torture real-time streaming services, or that provide hitman hiring services, or...

I think your view on how government and the internet works is somewhat outdated. Social media is not just "what websites a person is allowed access to" and government is so much more than what we do with taxpayer money.

The US is evidently a poor example of what a fully formed government is so I wouldn't use that as a basis for one's world view.

> Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.

This is a child-like argument. Pretty much every law such as requiring you to wear a seatbelt takes away your freedoms.

Are you forgetting how the Americans blocked Stormfront and Silk Road? They don't have full access to the Internet either, they're just not so obviously totalitarian about it as the Europeans.

Stormfront was deplatformed, not blocked by ISPs. Silk Road wasn't deplatformed or blocked, the owner got his ass arrested and thrown in prison.

Many parts of the US require age verification for porn as well.

It's only UK that does that, and they're not in the EU. Many us states do the same, and the administration wants to ban porn completely and jail those who make it.

You talking about Texas right? Half the states in the us block and age gate those sites.

"The situation for free speech in Europe is even worse than I thought"

https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-situation-for-free-sp...

I read through this drivel and it's nothing more than conjecture and anecdotes from someone who seems never to have been to Europe. Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.

In short: nonsense. Completely made up narrative filled with quotes from same-belief people, claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent.

I'm pretty sure the President and CEO of the leading free expression organization today understands what he's talking about and is fully aware that there are bad things happening in this vein in the US.

The guy who literally actively helped to create the current USA situation? Yeah. All the while he pointificated about free speech, he had clear favorites whose speech mattered and who should shut up.

When the left is censoring more (as was true in the run-up to Trump's election), of course a free speech organization will be opposing left-wing censorship more frequently.

Censorship doesn't help your team, just the opposite. https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...

Trump's election was a reaction to left-wing cancel culture. If people had listened to FIRE, and refuted bad ideas instead of censoring them, maybe Trump wouldn't have been elected: https://qr.ae/pYCVXO

Do you have any specific disagreements you can share with the criticism of the actual content that the parent comment gave, or do you think that the author's job title is more important than whether what they said is actually correct?

The parent comment in question has essentially zero in the way of supporting evidence. The author's first claim happened to be verifiable. I attempted to verify it, and it was pretty clearly false.

What's asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I guess I might not have been clear. I'm specifically wondering about this part, which is what I was referring to about the critique they gave of the actual content:

> Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK, not Europe as a whole, and each of them has plenty of counterexamples of the same thing happening in the US.

Separated from the ad hominems on both sides, it seems like a pretty reasonable criticism to me. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it should be dismissed as irrelevant.

Well, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that when someone claims that the author is "claiming moral outrage about issues they either don't understand or wilfully misrepresent" then what he does for a living matters.

Sure, but if I'm trying to verify the accuracy of their claims, their job both giving them potential subject expertise but also potential bias towards making the exact claims that are being criticized, it doesn't really clear anything up, so I'm back to trying to understand if there's any counterargument to the criticism other than their pedigree.

>Nearly every example of his critique is of the UK

I just used a word count tool to sanity-check this claim. It said there are 1061 words about the UK and 1684 words about non-UK countries.

You appear to be fibbing about easy-to-check facts. Anyone who trusts you on your harder-to-verify claims is a fool.

There seems to be a bit of a pattern I've noticed with Europeans on HN. They criticize the US constantly, yet flip out instantly when their countries are criticized, to the point of reflexively lying about stuff which is easily checkable.

I can sorta understand lying about claims which are hard to verify. It's distasteful, but I can understand why a certain type of person would do it. But, why lie about stuff which takes under 60 seconds to check? What are you trying to accomplish?

BTW, I hope you aren't in Germany. It's a crime to insult someone or spread malicious gossip online in Germany. Your usage of "drivel" might be considered an insult which could get your phone confiscated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc#t=3m

Do Europeans see "yet another nonsense" coming from the US or coming from the EU?

The US.

> Also, we don’t actually have censorship in Europe

Of course you do. If you think it does not exist the brainwashing has worked on you.

There was a comma, after which it said "not in the way the US is trying to suggest." You evidently missed that part, or are you saying that it is in exactly the way the US is trying to suggest?

I do not see it succeeding. I genuinely see it as an attempt to make child porn more available and to promote nazi. And considering the latter is basically official usa policy, europe still keeps high moral ground ... despite its own actual faults which are not this.

"censorship" (aka not allowing hate speech from Nazis)

For those wondering what is this freedom.gov thing, it was discussed here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270

FWIW, Vodafone ES still resolves freedom.gov fine via their own DNS resolver. They're usually very block happy, can't access Anna's, TBP and also not Cloudflare during La Liga games normally, as some examples. But freedom.gov still resolves seemingly.

Can any other Spaniards confirm if freedom.gov still resolves for them?

As a side-note, I don't know why anyone would want to block that website in the first place? Barely has any information about what it is, and doesn't seem to be able to be used for anything as of today either.

It resolves now but also other websites that are blocked during games are available.

At 11.30 CET it resolved for me on DIGI ES, but as a sibling comment pointed out, there's no soccer game on at the moment, so that's probably why.

As for why it's blocked, isn't this website planned to be related to censorship evasion? By purporting to help Spanish ISP users circumvent the blocks on CF sites imposed by their government, this site would run afoul of the megalomaniacs that instituted the blocks.

> At 11.30 CET it resolved for me on DIGI ES, but as a sibling comment pointed out, there's no soccer game on at the moment, so that's probably why.

Yeah, but if it's matching with the La Liga games, then it's just the typical "pirate-streams-using-cloudflare" block that kicks in, very different from the title which is "Spain's La Liga has blocked access to freedom.gov", which makes it seem like that website in particular is targeted.

If instead it's just about the general Cloudflare block we "enjoy" for match days, then this is way less interesting, it's just another collateral victim in the overly broad censorship.

True, and I don't know for sure either way. But in either case Twitter will notice it and post about it , I suppose. Honestly freedom.gov is almost the least annoying thing to be swept up in this, for my part.

Yeah agree, I don't care about freedom.gov at all, I'm not sure why someone would use a VPN by a government famous for spying on people, with plenty of evidence for a long time about it.

Overall the whole thing sucks, and I'm not sure how it's still going on, clearly against so many rules, regulations and norms to block large swaths of the internet just because of some misbehaving websites. And meanwhile they say we have freedoms and are free of censorship...

Ignoring the disastrous policies of the Spanish government, I find it telling that this was the year when it finally became worth it to pay to VPN out of the US, and also the year when this freedom.gov propaganda thing launched.

Perhaps Europe should put up a portal to bypass American copyright restrictions. Free speech, and all that.

As an American I accept your terms. More freedom for all.

If Europe would set up a way to facilitate non-Europeans getting GDPR protections I'd pay them a good bit of money.

Portugal’s golden visa only costs a year’s salary!

Copyright was invented in England and was globalized by France by a treaty signed in Switzerland. The US didn’t join the treaty until 102 years later. Up until 1989 the Berne Convention was stronger than US copyright law.

That's a neat factoid, but my point was about repudiating the current boneheaded US foreign policy rather than anything to do with where copyright was invented.

And my point is I don’t know why “Europe” would want to evade law that was their entire idea to begin with… and that they widely continue to enforce.

Copyright in Spain is automatic and life plus 70 years. Same as the US and every country in Europe except for Monaco and San Marino where it’s 50.

That is ridiculous argument. Yes a coutry can have an idea and then 200 years later fundamentally disagree with self serving damaging implementation of it.

But they don't; they all currently have strong copyright law.

Largely because of American diplomatic/soft power, which has been significantly weakened of late, protecting the interests of American media conglomerates.

Every extension of copyright for the last several decades has been driven by the desire to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain.

They did that around the world, but they didn't have to in Europe -- Europe has pretty consistently had longer copyright terms than the US. The EU moved to life + 70 in 1993. The US did in 1998.

Regardless, my point is that copyright evasion is not anything that any European authority is interested in building a website to facilitate.

The foreign policy of calling out silly censorship in Europe and violations of fundamental freedoms and making European countries implicitly acknowledge it by blocking a US site?

Seems great. Wish Europe didn't censor free speech.

It's sad to see that, in Spain, the soccer mafia controls the country.

The situation in Spain with laligua is becoming crazy, completely crazy.

No surprise, it's Cloudflare:

    $ host freedom.gov
    freedom.gov has address 172.67.219.106
    $ whois 172.67.219.106
    NetRange:       172.64.0.0 - 172.71.255.255
    CIDR:           172.64.0.0/13
    NetName:        CLOUDFLARENET

A lot of Cloudflare is netblocked during soccer games in Spain, this has been a thing for years now.

This is not a dedicated block against freedom.gov, it's just the ordinary collateral damage from the fight against sports piracy. Sigh.

The truly fun fact here rather is that the US government seems to be unable to host a website on its own these days but needs Cloudflare's protection. It's either a grift, a hack job / MVP demo or every last competent person in IT there has departed or been DOGE'd off. Ridiculous.

Wait that’s a thing? It sounds outright crazy to block people from going about their business and using the Internet to protect one particular industry. Especially sports, which is low priority to me and I am sure to many people.

Yes, it has caused major issues all across Spain, including interference with emergency services, but apparently the owner of the league has deep political connections or something. It’s also likely that the political class sees this as laying the groundwork for future censorship efforts, given their track record.

Yes, for years now [1].

Sports is worth billions of dollars - La Liga makes 6.1 billion € from domestic rights alone [2]. UK's Premier League made 7.1 billion € during the Covid years [3].

[1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/la-liga-w...

[2] https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/laliga-secures-over-euro61...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/06/premier-lea...

Cloudflare could refuse to host illegal material or make it available in Spain. If they cannot or will not, this was the best solution the courts arrived at. Other Cloudflare clients could also decide to host elsewhere for Spanish traffic if they cared.

I assume court orders against Cloudflare have been tried. How come they are not effective?

Edit: according to this article, Cloudflare have not been ordered to block the sites. Very odd.

https://cybernews.com/news/cloudflare-spain-laliga-piracy-bl...

This Reddit post [1] says the block 188.114.96.0/23 is blocked.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1ravua8/psa_if_...

Just checked - not blocked, works just fine (Adamo and Vodafone).

Adamo never blocks, at least for me. Vodafone does.

That seems a bit fast since nothing is on that ridiculously looking website yet, but if this website is planning to host content that is illegal in the EU, then it will be blocked by many EU countries. Usually, these blocks aren't very effective. My country blocks most piratebay domains, for instance.

It's misleading title, not Spain as the government but LaLiga(a sports organization) abused its given powers and apparently demanded that ISPs block the site.

So it's very American style censorship in principle, that is it is censorship for profit reasons HOWEVER it is wrong in this particular instance because freedom.gov hadn't infringe copyrights. Nothing political despite what the title may make you believe so, purely internal issue. Italians are having similar problems with their football streaming organizations.

I'm not aware of American ISPs and CDNs straight-up blocking websites. That is distinctly European-style censorship.

American style censorship would be more like going through the courts to get an order to have the domains seized.

In that case, European-style censorship is preferable, because you can just use another DNS server.

Also you don't have to be afraid for your freedom when you just slightly go against someone bigger than you.

Getting your domain blocked is favourable to getting sued and jailed usually

Well we came pretty close with TikTok[1], which I guess is somewhat analogous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_ban_TikTok_in_the_U...

What are the odds that the Cloudflare CEO will have a twitter meltdown about this?

Are they restreaming football?

www.rt.com is blocked in a couple of countries in Europe, so it's not about football, rather to curb "disinformation" for the next elections or whatever.

https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/the-achilles-heel...

So, freedom.gov is also blocked to protect you from fake news I guess.

Sad.

It actually is, the IP it resolves to is Cloudflare.

Lucky you (this was not cynical) because for me there is no Cloudflare:

    This site can’t be reached
    Check if there is a typo in rt.com.

    DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

(just an empty A record)

rt.com does not use Cloudflare, they are a customer of DDOS Guard:

  $ drill -Q rt.com | tee $(tty) | xargs whois | grep org-name
  91.215.41.4
  org-name:       DDOS-GUARD LTD

  $ curl --silent https://www.rt.com | grep '<title>[^<]\*</title>' | head -1
  <title>RT - Breaking News, Russia News, World News and Video</title>

RT is blocked in the entire EU as part of a sanctions round due to the invasion of Ukraine: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...

RT is not blocked in the entire EU, I can access it just fine.

No — it's not and I've just verified that. The RT website is accessible: people can visit it, create accounts, log in, and use all its features without restrictions.

What’s changed about the RT is public perception. It’s widely recognized and labeled as a Kremlin propaganda outlet — which is precisely what it is — so audiences can approach its content with appropriate awareness.

If someone can't access the page, it's likely caused by a particular ISP and not by "European censorship".

Whe you realise the most culturally important things in Spain were dragonball and football this all starts to make more sense. I don’t know if this still is the case but it seems so.

No surprise with that, I would think other countries will do the same.

But as we all know, there are ways around that for people who really have to go there.

Until these workarounds are progressively made illegal or required to provide identification.

https://www.generation-nt.com/actualites/vpn-age-mineurs-roy...

It's not ok at all, because such operators will get punished if they don't.

Therefore they will more and more respect the law to block sites, etc.

Spain living in 2010’s tech

great website explaining the situation for anyone not familiar: https://hayahora.futbol

(language switcher in the top right)

if Spain does that to protect LaLiga football games, god knows what they do against political rivals or movements such as Catalonia in 2017...or now?

It looks like a landing page… wth is freedom.gov?

I feel like this move is premature and playing directly into Trump's hands. "See how Europe flinched at even the suggestion of free speech, we haven't even started yet"

Surely whatever they eventually put up on there will be blatant and horrible propaganda, but I think judging the reactions are the purpose of the site, not the content itself.

The site was created for the express purpose of enabling bypass of sovereign policy decisions: so yeah, it's going to be blocked.

It's a canary, for the governments who claim they have free speech. If they then block this site, then they're giving away the game. Government have the right to censor whatever they want (until they're overthrown), but they can only lie that they have free speech.

It doesn't matter anymore. Trump is saying and turning everything the way he wants. The majority of the world doesn't listen anyway and you guys seem to have a horrible time either way.

freedom is not coming

US ISPs would do the same if the EU started hosting the unredacted Epstein files.

laughable on both sides.

Good. freedom.gov is a clear subversive political influence campaign that should be banned by all European countries.

It is basically just a proxy. I don't see how censorship could be an antidote to a "subversive political influence campaign" - if anything you're describing censorship

Censoring foreign political influence and misinformation campaigns is just sane policy.

US misinformation is no different from Russian misinformation. freedom.gov is specifically meant to spread this misinfo, freedom of speech is the stated purpose, but if you believe that, you are naive.

This is obviously an influence campaign.

It has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

The solution to disinformation is not censorship, it's education and to teach early people on how to critically think by themselves.

It's "thoughtcrime" and "censorship" when they do it. It's "stopping disinformation" and "protecting democracy" when we do it.

That is unfortunately the truth of it. There are distressingly few people in the US these days who actually have a principled belief in freedom of speech. Both the left and the right talk up freedom of speech when they are out of power, but are quite willing to destroy it when they are in power. I would give my left proverbial for a political party that actually protects freedom of speech.

I think the people blocking content in Europe and those "protecting democracy" in the US share most of the same political beliefs.

ATM, nobody is blocking any actual content unless it breaks very specific laws, like CSAM.

Believe it or not, removal of content is mandated on the basis of laws that have been passed by the majority of representatives elected by the people. For example, it is a crime in Germany to publicly glorify wars of aggression and use Nazi symbols or deny the Holocaust. It's also a crime to publish child abuse material.

On a side note, setting up a website deliberately designed to circumvent such laws will itself likely violate the law and might lead to criminal prosecution. While the US government will certainly be protected by diplomatic immunity, other people involved probably won't be protected.

Oh please. If a known bad actor is trying to influence your polity, the best solution is to block them.

This does not mean people should not also be educated. That critical thinking is also what leads me to the conclusion this should be blocked.

How exactly does a proxy spread misinfo? Also, the project isn't even functional yet and appears to have been blocked to avert piracy

Well, it certainly allows and enables the spread of misinformation.

That is, what's blocked? Things that people consider misinformation. Some of it really is, and some of it is just stuff that's politically unpopular with the powers that be (which they're also going to label misinformation). And then some of it falls afoul of various copyright laws or other such.

But certainly real misinformation is a significant chunk of that. The proxy enables that misinformation (and disinformation) to bypass the censorship/blocking. So in that sense, yes, it spreads misinformation.

I agree. I just don't agree with misinformation not being protected as free speech. Surely having an INGSOC decide what is truthful enough to be shared is detrimental to free expression and thought. Heliocentrism was also misinformation at one point.

Things that allow and enable the spread of misinformation:

- pen and paper

- the printing press

- the telegraph

- radio

- television

- the internet

How is it a proxy? It's just a boring blank landing page? (Just checking from my European internet connection, without blockage as Spain is not all of Europe.

Should the Spanish government decide what is "misinformation"? Should it be forbidden to read false or misleading statements on the Internet?

This is of course an influence campaign, just like government ads to get people not to smoke are influence campaigns, but where's the misinformation?

> Censoring foreign political influence and misinformation campaigns is just sane policy.

That would be true if there were objective definitions of "foreign political influence" and "misinformation campaigns".

But there isn't. One can wave their hands and say any information falls into those categories.

What rubbish. A foreign bad actor declares they specifically want to feed your people propaganda through a specific communication channel. Do you need more than two brain cells to decide whether that's an influence campaign?

What is rubbish is your inability to see the subjectivity in “bad actor” and “influence campaign”.

I can wave my hand and make that claim about anything.

“Oh those evil Americans and their influence campaign on free speech rights!”

It's just an empty landing page I never heard about before. (Accessed from Europe by the way, without block)

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