Allegation comes after Cloudflare takes LaLiga to court after it blocked IP addresses

LaLiga stadium football crowd 2

LaLiga has accused software company Cloudflare of, “knowingly protecting criminal organisations for profit.” 

The league recently blocked broadcasts of its matches from the DazcFutbolios and RBTV77 platforms, which had over 400,000 unique monthly users in Spain. It has accused Cloudflare, which provides a wide number of cloud services for websites, of, “actively enabling illegal activities such as human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, counterfeiting, fraud, and scams, among other things.”

It has even alleged that two of the IP addresses it blocked in this action, “provided access to child pornography.” This has been sent in a report to the Spanish police. 

The blocking of IP addresses related to the two platforms resulted in some legitimate sites experiencing issues, to which the league said, “LaLiga is absolutely certain and has proof that these IPs are being used to distribute illegal content alongside legitimate material. Legal businesses affected by these blocks are those that Cloudflare has deliberately used as a digital shield to obscure illegal activity, without their knowledge and while profiting from it.”

LaLiga also 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 competition despite repeated efforts to reach out. 

Cloudflare has taken LaLiga to court over the issue, and stated: “LaLiga secured this blocking order without notifying cloud providers, while concealing from the court the predictable harm to third parties and the public good. LaLiga’s actions pose a clear threat to the open Internet. Cloudflare has now filed a legal action to challenge the order and establish that LaLiga’s disproportionate blocking efforts are unlawful.

“Instead of addressing Spanish users’ concerns about excessive content blocking, LaLiga has attempted to deflect with baseless claims against Cloudflare while doubling down on its unlawful blocking practices. Cloudflare hopes this legal action helps prevent future indiscriminate blocking measures, and makes it clear that rightsholders cannot prioritise their commercial interests over the fundamental right of millions of consumers to access the open Internet.”

LaLiga has taken a hard line approach to piracy, recently blocking a distribution network with over 22 million users.