It's about copyright. Seizing domain names (registered outside Italy of course) can't be done in 30 minutes which is what the football overlords want.

What is it with Southern Europe and the football overlords? Spain is blocking half the internet, Italy is fighting Cloudflare. What's up? Are football leagues big political donors?

Football is extremely popular, and football clubs (and their owners) are quite influential (socially and politically). But it's a little bigger than that.

EU is pushing for measures against live-event piracy[1], because they frame this as a systemic threat to cultural/economic systems, giving national regulators broad cover to act aggressively.

While football is quite huge in Europe at large, the impact to GDP of these broadcasting rights is sub-1%; however, lobbyists have a disproportionate impact: you have the leagues themselves (LaLiga and Serie A for Spain and Italy respectively), you have the football clubs, and you've got broadcasters. Combined, they swing quite high, even if the actual capital in play is much lower than the total they represent.

Add to this politicians who can frame these measures as "protecting our culture", get kickbacks in the form of free tickets to high profile games, see rapid action because blocks are immediately felt and very visible, and incentives for increased funding from regulatory agencies because "we need the budget to create the systems to coordinate this", and you can see how the whole system can push this way, even if it is a largely blunt instrument with massive collateral damage.

[1] - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=intcom%3...

Football, the clubs, are also major driver of money laundering. Dirty cash buys a lot of politicians.

https://www.comsuregroup.com/news/a-red-card-for-dirty-money...

Yeah, in Europe, there tends to be an association between football fans and organized crime, just as there's one between unions and organized crime in the US.

The kind of hooligans who love beating up the hooligans from the other team are also perfect from beating up the hooligans from the opposing drug cartel.

A company that would profit from more regulations arguing for more regulations. No way !

As usual, cronyism.

In Spain's case Telefonica (largest telecom, used to be state owned) is private but has a large State participation and the government literally appointed the latest CEO.

Guess who sells the largest football games as part of their expensive TV package?

Guess who asked a judge to order the other telecoms to also block Cloudflare IPs?

If this is true, and seems likely. There is some satisfaction seeing corrupt cronyism agencies getting slapped with a hard "NO" when they are used to getting what they want.

No usually the political figures are football league owners.

Jokes aside, I don't know, the obsession with soccer is extreme in Italy. For people who don't care about soccer like I did, there is so much you have to endure just "because of soccer"

It's not just Italy. The UK is also insane along with some cities in Spain. In the UK one of the rivalries supposedly goes back to the War of the Roses [1].

The way I describe EU football games to Americans is take the craziest student section at a US college football game and extrapolate that energy to the entire stadium.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds_United_F.C.–Manchester_U...

Spain especially but southern europe in general has a really crappy economy. Soccer teams are some of the wealthiest organizations in these countries, which means theyre the ones who are able to fund politicians which means they can get laws passed.

Those football leagues are run by the literal Mafia

There's no accountability or due process. According to this brilliant law, if some crony with write-privilege adds your website to a list, the whole world has to ban your website within 30 minutes no questions asked.

Germany has an equivalent within the CUII, which is also a censorship branch of the government with no judicial oversight.

There is no such thing as "no judicial oversight" in Germany.

That overstates things somewhat.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llglrd/2019...

> To some extent, judges are subordinated to a cabinet minister, and in most instances this is a minister of justice of either the federation or of one of the states. In Germany, the administration of justice, including the personnel matters of judges, is viewed as a function of the executive branch of government, even though it is carried out at the court level by the president of a court, and for the lower courts, there is an intermediate level of supervision through the president of a higher court. Ultimately, a cabinet minister is the top of this administrative structure. The supervision of judges includes appointment, promotion and discipline. Despite this involvement of the executive branch in the administration of justice, it appears that the independence of the German judiciary in making decisions from the bench is guaranteed through constitutional principles, statutory remedies, and institutional traditions that have been observed in the past fifty years. At times, however, the tensions inherent in this organizational framework become noticeable and allegations of undue executive influence are made.

You're completely on the wrong track here. The discussion is not about who does or doesn't control the courts, it's about the question if someone who's rights have been violated can go to court or not with regard to that specific matter. If a court rules that blocking an IP address is illegal, the access provider has to stop blocking it. Period.

Judicial oversight took a while in Germany, but it is there now (but I guess you will always find an incompetent judge if you really want). I wonder if cloudflare would implement the German blocklist now that we have judicial oversight. Currently it is as nice registry for pirating sites for anyone using 1.1.1.1 [1]

[1] https://cuiiliste.de/domains

The CUII does not need a verdict to enact censorship. Make of that what you will.

The police doesn't need a verdict to issue you a fine either. But you can challenge your fine (and your block) in court.

1. CCUI isn't even a government body

2. parent comment is wrong, CCUI is requiring court action by their members before they act.

3. I rather have companies competing under market pressure to find solutions to topics like copyright infringement than the German state (once again) creating massive surveillance laws and technical infrastructure for their enforcement in -house.

2 is wrong. The CUII even blocks political activists because they dare to post their entire blocklist [1]

[1]: https://lina.sh/blog/telefonica-sabotages-me

Read the post, they never blocked the activist. They just changed what they replied to a DNS query of an already blocked site to make it harder to detect.

1. Article you've shared is from 2025-02-26 2. New rules have been in place from 2025-07 3. The author hasn't been blocked at all. You're either a liar or you cannot read.

Challenging the IP bans in Italy is stupidly hard. Your VM gets an IP address that was used a few months ago for soccer piracy? Too bad, you won't be able to access it from Italy.

Surely there's some EU trade barriers law about that

Are you really countering an argument against censorship by a power abusing entity with another group famous for power abuse?

No.

A fine doesn't cause immediate harm as you don't have to immediately pay it while you challenge it in court, having your IP or website blocked happens immediately and will continue harming you until it's decreted that it wasn't lawful.

That depends on the country you are in. In some countries you have to pay anyway and then you get it back if you win the court case. And they're banking on you not challenging the fine because the fees for the court case will exceed the fine so you lose either way.

Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the 2. In this case it sounds like copyright in name but the implementation is such that it's a big hammer that can also be used for censorship if followed.