Spain’s parliament approved a non-legislative initiative to reform the Digital Services Act, adding proportionality rules to stop anti-piracy court orders from blocking legitimate sites.
Key Takeaways
The initiative, agreed by PSOE and ERC, will amend the Digital Services Act to embed “technological proportionality” and protect third parties from collateral IP blocks.
LaLiga’s court-ordered ISP blocks have hit shared Cloudflare IPs, taking down unrelated services like the Transporta’m public transport platform during match windows.
The reform targets gradation of blocking measures and mandates “adequate consideration of third parties” before execution of anti-piracy rulings.
Even PP, which voted against the initiative, is filing amendments requiring platforms on shared infrastructure to apply selective, precise blocks.
The vote is non-binding but reverses a failed attempt last year and sets the legislative framework for the DSA amendment now in process.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters confirmed the core mechanism: LaLiga court orders force ISPs to block shared Cloudflare IPs during matches, making hundreds of unrelated sites unavailable Spain-wide on a recurring schedule.
There is consensus the blocks failed as piracy deterrents while causing real business harm, with operators of event ticketing and geolocation services citing unacceptable downtime.
Debate centered on why blocks were never made selective: commenters questioned whether Cloudflare had technical or financial leverage to resist or narrow compliance, and why courts accepted IP-level rather than domain-level targeting.
Notable Comments
@matteason: Confirms blocks are specifically timed to match windows and target shared Cloudflare IPs, citing cybernews reporting.
@aduwah: Suggests Cloudflare could have claimed technical inability to comply, forcing earlier political response.
