Europe has tightened its crackdown on illegal streaming. But is this good news?
In Europe, the fight against pirated football streams has begun to affect not only the perpetrators but also regular services. In the spring of 2026, widespread IP blocking led to outages for legal websites and interruptions in access for users who had no connection to the illegal content.
The problem stems from the very principle of blocking. When regulators or courts demand that access to specific IP addresses be blocked, it's often not just a single website that's at risk, but entire infrastructure clusters. Many services operate through shared IP pools, cloud platforms, and CDNs. As a result, regular websites—from small projects to large online services—are also affected, along with the pirate sites.
One of the key incidents occurred in France. A court ordered several dozen market participants—telcos, hosting providers, CDNs, and VPN services—to restrict access to 35 websites illegally streaming football matches. The order was initiated by La Liga, which is seeking to protect its rights to broadcast the matches. The ruling is valid until June 21, 2026, and allows for the list of resources to be expanded.
In the same case, the court specifically stated the need for infrastructure-level blocking , including actions by Cloudflare. This wording leaves companies free to choose their technical methods, but in practice, it leads to the same mass outages: it's not the specific website that's blocked, but the network segment connected to it.
A similar situation has developed in Spain. According to industry publications, La Liga demands reach telecom operators almost weekly. Each case involves thousands of IP addresses—around 3,000 at a time. Given the structure of CDNs and cloud services, such blocking inevitably affects third-party projects.
In practice, outages most often coincide with match days. At this time, the number of blocks increases, and along with pirated broadcasts, perfectly legal websites become unavailable. Users see a simple access error, while service owners experience a drop in traffic for no apparent reason.
This tactic has already sparked discontent among businesses and the internet community. Analytical center reports explicitly point to "collateral damage": protecting copyright holders' rights is beginning to impact the stability of digital infrastructure. The problem isn't the idea of fighting piracy itself, but the way it's being implemented, which poorly accounts for the architecture of the modern internet.
The situation highlights an old but still unresolved dilemma. The more stringent the network-level blocking, the higher the risk of affecting those unrelated to the violations. In a context where thousands of websites can share the same IP addresses, targeted measures quickly become widespread.
In Europe, the fight against pirated football streams has begun to affect not only the perpetrators but also regular services. In the spring of 2026, widespread IP blocking led to outages for legal websites and interruptions in access for users who had no connection to the illegal content.
The problem stems from the very principle of blocking. When regulators or courts demand that access to specific IP addresses be blocked, it's often not just a single website that's at risk, but entire infrastructure clusters. Many services operate through shared IP pools, cloud platforms, and CDNs. As a result, regular websites—from small projects to large online services—are also affected, along with the pirate sites.
One of the key incidents occurred in France. A court ordered several dozen market participants—telcos, hosting providers, CDNs, and VPN services—to restrict access to 35 websites illegally streaming football matches. The order was initiated by La Liga, which is seeking to protect its rights to broadcast the matches. The ruling is valid until June 21, 2026, and allows for the list of resources to be expanded.
In the same case, the court specifically stated the need for infrastructure-level blocking , including actions by Cloudflare. This wording leaves companies free to choose their technical methods, but in practice, it leads to the same mass outages: it's not the specific website that's blocked, but the network segment connected to it.
A similar situation has developed in Spain. According to industry publications, La Liga demands reach telecom operators almost weekly. Each case involves thousands of IP addresses—around 3,000 at a time. Given the structure of CDNs and cloud services, such blocking inevitably affects third-party projects.
In practice, outages most often coincide with match days. At this time, the number of blocks increases, and along with pirated broadcasts, perfectly legal websites become unavailable. Users see a simple access error, while service owners experience a drop in traffic for no apparent reason.
This tactic has already sparked discontent among businesses and the internet community. Analytical center reports explicitly point to "collateral damage": protecting copyright holders' rights is beginning to impact the stability of digital infrastructure. The problem isn't the idea of fighting piracy itself, but the way it's being implemented, which poorly accounts for the architecture of the modern internet.
The situation highlights an old but still unresolved dilemma. The more stringent the network-level blocking, the higher the risk of affecting those unrelated to the violations. In a context where thousands of websites can share the same IP addresses, targeted measures quickly become widespread.
