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Comment by mmh0000 | Hacker News Reader

Context, a few days ago, this was a very popular article on HN:

  Tell HN: Docker pull fails in Spain due to football Cloudflare block

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738883

TL;DR: Spain blocks A LOT of CDNs during footy matches, including ALL of Cloudflare, thus breaking most of the internet. All in the name of stopping "pirates".

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I wonder how close they are in broad economic damage to it being cheaper to just pay FIFA or whomever for some kind of nationwide viewing license (which they'd surely be able to negotiate way lower than a simple "cost to view every match, times count of Spanish residents" since that's nowhere near as much as they're getting out of Spain now)

That's effectively how it was in European countries, when TV was nationalised. Then everything became about extracting as much money as possible from consumers, and here we are.

It's La Liga - Spain should just nationalize them and make it a division of the government.

Or follow the example of the Barcelona football club and make it be owned by the fans and supporters themselves instead.

Movistar are paying a billion dollars a year, so probably a long way away

$20/yr per Spanish resident? That's very few wasted labor-hours per worker per year (on average).

No thank you, i don't watch sports, why should i pay for that crap just so a corrupt judge can get another car or sit on some board of some company when they "retire"

I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm trying to get a handle on whether Spain is on track to de facto spend more than this per resident in lost economic productivity (to say nothing of whatever value we might like to place on sheer inconvenience for residents that doesn't have measurable GDP effects). Like just paying a tiny tax and calling it a day might be less crazy than the current path, which would highlight how nuts this is precisely because that's also nuts.

The number will increase each year for sure. If all people are forced to pay, what’s to prevent them from charging 100€ a year or more?

> TL;DR: Spain blocks A LOT of CDNs during footy matches, including ALL of Cloudflare

AFAIK, I don't think it's "A LOT of CDNs", it's only Cloudflare, at least personally Cloudflare is the only CDN I can verify I lose access to during the football matches.

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