- US Freedom.gov site is collateral damage of LaLiga anti-hacking blocks
- Proton VPN confirmed the blockage occurred during weekend matches
- Spanish court orders VPN providers to block illegal soccer streams
La Liga’s aggressive crusade against illegal soccer streaming has sparked a diplomatic bizarre and digital rights fiasco, with the Spanish league accidentally blocking access to a US government website designed to combat internet censorship.
During the weekend’s match schedule, Spanish internet users were unable to access Freedom.gov, a new initiative from the US State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) intended to help Europeans evade content bans.
This latest error highlights the volatility of the Spanish league’s “brutal” approach to copyright enforcement. By ordering ISPs to dynamically block IP addresses during games, the league risks taking down innocent websites sharing the same server space – a phenomenon that experts have been warning about for months.
Cloudflare’s “carpet bombing”
The blocking of Freedom.gov is in fact not an isolated problem, but a direct result of the technical measures granted to LaLiga by the Spanish courts.
The league uses “dynamic injunctions” that allow it to update lists of banned IP addresses in real time, without requiring a new judge’s signature for each block.
Since many pirate streams use Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) to disguise their origin, LaLiga has resorted to blocking large ranges of Cloudflare IP addresses. This “carpet bombing” strategy does not distinguish between an illegal flow of The Clasico and a US government portal.
LaLiga has ordered Spanish ISPs to block around 3,000 IP addresses almost every weekend. Because Cloudflare IP addresses are shared, this has caused enormous collateral damage to thousands of legitimate websites, apps, and mission-critical services, all at the whim of a private company. pic.twitter.com/MmonW1BXgjFebruary 17, 2026
Peterson took to X to point out the absurdity, pointing out the “massive collateral damage” caused by the blocks.
According to Peterson, affected legitimate sites and services include popular social media apps, local banking sites, and productivity apps such as ChatGPT, GiftHub, and Microsoft services.
Today, the irony seems even more palpable: a platform funded by the US government to help citizens circumvent censorship was itself censored by a European sports league.
A story of collateral damage
The incident marks the latest escalation in a bitter conflict between Spanish football authorities and the open Internet. LaLiga has already found itself in a situation deepening the conflict with Cloudflare, accusing the tech giant of not doing enough to remove illegal content.
In response, the league has ramped up its technical enforcement, leading to frequent weekend outages for legitimate sites that rely on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
The situation recently intensified when a Spanish court issued a landmark ruling requiring NordVPN and Proton VPN to block illegal soccer streams. While VPN providers have opposed these orders, citing technical impossibility and lack of due process, the blocking of Freedom.gov demonstrates that ISP-level filtering remains a blunt and imprecise instrument.
As these blocks become more aggressive, Spanish users are increasingly looking for ways to keep internet access open, with Spaniards apparently turning to Proton VPN to navigate the blocks.
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Access a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protect your online security and strengthen your online privacy abroad. We do not support or approve the use of a VPN service to break the law or conduct illegal activities. Consumption of paid pirated content is not endorsed or endorsed by Future Publishing.
