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Title: Cloudflare CEO: Football Piracy Blocks Will Claim Lives

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/27/22132...

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that LaLiga's ISP blocking campaign --
intended to stop football piracy -- has caused widespread collateral damage
by blocking millions of unrelated websites, including emergency services, in
Spain. He called the strategy "bonkers" and expressed fear that lives could
be lost due to the overblocking. TorrentFreak reports: Posting to X last
week, Prince asked if anyone wanted any general feedback, declaring that he
felt "in an especially truthful mood." The first response contained direct
questions about the LaLiga controversy, the blame for which LaLiga places
squarely on the shoulders of Cloudflare. For the first time since Cloudflare
legal action failed to end LaLiga's blocking campaign, Prince weighed in with
his assessment of the current situation and where he believes it's inevitably
heading. "A huge percentage of the Internet sits behind us, including small
businesses and emergency resources in Spain," Prince explained. "The strategy
of blocking broadly through ISPs based on IPs is bonkers because so much
content, including emergency services content, can be behind any IP. The
collateral damage is vast and is hurting Spanish citizens from accessing
critical resources," he added. [...] Despite LaLiga's unshakable claims to
the contrary, Prince believes that it's not a case of 'if' disaster strikes,
it's 'when.' "It's only a matter of time before a Spanish citizen can't
access a life-saving emergency resource because the rights holder in a
football match refuses to send a limited request to block one resource versus
a broad request to block a whole swath of the Internet," Prince warned. "When
that unfortunately and inevitably happens and harms lives, I'm confident
policy makers and courts in Spain and elsewhere will make the right policy
decision. Until then, it'll be up to users to make politicians clear on the
risk. I pray no one dies." The suggestion that LaLiga's demands were too
broad, doesn't mean that Cloudflare is refusing to help, Prince suggested. On
the contrary, there's a process available, LaLiga just needs to use it.
"We've always been happy and willing to work with rights holders in
conjunction with judicial bodies to protect their content. We have a clear
process that works around the world to do that," Prince explained.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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