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Comment by Zealotux | Hacker News Reader

I live in Spain, while I find the whole "life-threatening" narrative a tad overblown: I agree these obnoxious blocks are unacceptable. Incredible how much power LaLiga is capable of wielding.

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Didn't one of the major ISPs in Spain go down like a weeek ago (movistar) and that caused some emergency numbers to not function properly for some time? I wouldn't be surprised if critical (digital) infrastructure would rely on Cloudflare. If Liga is banning blocks of IP addresses without distinction, then anyone is at the mercy of being shutted down in Spain.

In a globalized internet, your health institutions websites may run through, or depend on (i.e. 3rd party sites, js dependencies, etc) going through Cloudflare. Or emergency services, or whatever. With enough players you go from a side possibility to a certainty.

Cloud flare even offers a CDN for npm libraries.

it feels like incapable "experts" are placed in position or authority for something like this to happen.

Why would anyone use a cloudflare js cdn for anything but a toy site? Those are bad decisions by developers.

They are, but that doesn't mean it's their fault when websites fail because LaLiga decided to block an entire ISP. That's pure victim blaming. "Oh, what did you expect when you rely on a third party and another company wields the power of blocking anything without a specific court order?"

Huh? It is their fault though. They chose to rely on a third party service that they don't own and had no mitigation for when it failed.

Sure using a different domain has come to being bad practice for security and performance reasons, nonetheless fetching libs from CDNs including cloudflare remains prevalent. Even if they would make a move that is slower than takedowns.

Also Serie A, in Italy we had people losing everything this winter due to floods, and clubs were still trying to not postpone matches, it's so crap that there are so many people following football

In Brazil it is not uncommon for fans to organize protests, sometimes violent, when a club starts performing poorly due to perceived slack on the players. At the same time, seemingly more pressing political issues often go unnoticed. It's beyond me how some people get more riled up by the sport, not being a sports person myself.

It's designed for this purpose. Rome was organizing those games to thrill the romans, it worked splendid. When political concerns gets on the rise, you pump the show.

It works better than your typical propaganda as players become heroes, managers and clubs make great money. Distributors get their cut. The machine is well oiled with solid monetary incentives.

Football (and other sports watching): cheap but deep rooted emotions, press here to get your dose.

_Rollerball_ a movie from 1975 (not the 2002 remake) is an interesting take on this. A futuristic society that promotes an increasingly violent game to entertain and misdirect the masses.

Look at it the other way -- absent sports fanaticism, people with these personality traits would be involved in politics.

I'd categorically say that focusing that sort of person on sports is by far the lesser of the two evils.

Democracy only chooses as wisely as the average intelligence of its voters.

Perish the thought that our politics will turn into a low level entertainment spectacle based on primeval emotions.

If only Italians treated this seriously their economy, job market, and demography. Ooops, it's too late. Enjoy your bloody football.

These are just so much useless phrases, don't italian treat their job market seriously? We have a referendum as soon as next month to remove laws introduced by neoliberals few years ago that removed job safety and made everyone expendables, among other things.

Football clubs have a billion euro budget nowadays. Sport is business. Where does FC Barcelona get their money from? The tooth fairy?

Who let laws, which allows IP blocking, to pass?

> I agree these obnoxious blocks are unacceptable. Incredible how much power LaLiga is capable of wielding.

It's not even about the power. It's about how freaking dumb of a "solution" that is.

It's not "you're too powerful" (la liga and the judges enforcing this) but really "you're too fucking dumb".

BTW, your account seems to have been shadowbanned for the last 4 months.

You might want to reach out to the moderation team.

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