As of April 25, 2026, Civitai, GitHub, Docker, and ChatGPT are among over 13,500 legitimate sites disrupted each football match weekend by LaLiga-directed IP blocks affecting Spanish users.
The court order allows LaLiga to block entire IP ranges, causing collateral outages for platforms on shared infrastructure like Cloudflare and Vercel, with incidents impacting GPS trackers and critical developer tools.
Legal challenges from Cloudflare and RootedCON have failed, and the mechanism’s compatibility with EU digital rights law remains unresolved, leaving Spanish startups and developers facing recurring, unpredictable service outages.
Is Spain's internet now effectively controlled by its football league?
When a sports league can block thousands of websites, who really governs the internet?
Will the EU intervene as Spain's anti-piracy law clashes with digital rights?
Can AI development survive if platforms like Civitai are blocked without warning?
Is massive collateral damage a fair price to pay to stop illegal streaming?
Over 3,000 IP Addresses Blocked Every LaLiga Match Weekend: The Collateral Damage of Spain’s Aggressive Anti-Piracy Campaign
Overview
Starting in December 2024, Spanish courts authorized LaLiga to compel ISPs to dynamically block IP address ranges linked to illegal streams, causing widespread disruption to over 13,500 legitimate websites each match weekend due to shared internet infrastructure. Despite legal challenges, the blocking expanded in early 2026 to include VPN providers, who protested the lack of due process and the impact on user privacy. This enforcement led to unreliable VPN services and increased VPN usage for piracy, prompting further court orders. The broad blocking approach disrupted critical services, AI research, and even diplomatic sites, raising concerns about proportionality, conflicts of interest, and the risk of setting a global precedent that threatens internet freedom and digital rights.