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by pier25·3mo ago·view on hn ↗
> I think you're not faithfully trying to adopt their perspective here

I think you're not seeing the bigger picture.

Somehow La Liga (a private company) was able to convince the courts that it should be able to ban IPs almost in real-time without any oversight from the law. This is just insane in a modern democracy and only benefitted La Liga. Certainly not the population of Spain for whom the courts work for.

Time has proven what anyone with two brain cells knew already. Blocking IPs was never going to do much to solve the issue. It's a wack-a-mole game. Cloudflare knew this and La Liga did too.

> where can the block be done, and have the least amount of collateral?

Blocking one of the biggest providers of internet infra was anything but "the least amount of collateral". Plenty of companies and services depend on Cloudflare.

1 comments
> Blocking IPs was never going to do much to solve the issue. It's a wack-a-mole game.

But that in their mind is "solving the issue, at that time". Why do you think they want to expand it to other sports now, because "doesn't do anything" or because they actually see some effect from it?

> Blocking one of the biggest providers of internet infra was anything but "the least amount of collateral". Plenty of companies and services depend on Cloudflare.

Ok, so given their perspective is "something must be done" and Cloudflare are not blocking the users after requests, what is the alternative here? Turning off the entire internet connection for individual users? Turning off all the internet during games? I really don't know what alternative could be possible, that still satisfies their "something must be done".

Again, I agree that this is an massive overstep, wildly miscalculated and I'm personally affected by this every time a football is on, I don't like it either.

If there’s no reasonable alternative that satisfies their “something must be done” without creating massive negative consequences for the rest of society, then in fact something must not be done, and the large corporate entity will either have to settle for not making as much money as they think they’re entitled to or figure out some other way to recapture those viewers.
> massive negative consequences for the rest of society

What are these "massive negative consequences" you're talking about? Some IPs blocks from Cloudflare are blocked for ~90 minutes, some times a week. As repeated so many times, I agree it sucks, but it's not "internet is unavailable most of the week", it's "some websites are unavailable for some hours of the week".

And also again, if you don't see "something must be done" you're not able to adopt their perspective, so of course you'll never understand this, because you're seemingly refusing to. Fine, you do what you want, but don't mislead others what the real situation is, just because you're unable to grasp it from the other side.

> it's not "internet is unavailable most of the week", it's "some websites are unavailable for some hours of the week"

A good chunk of the internet goes through Cloudflare. Something like 40% of the top 1000 websites use it.

Services depend on it (CI etc). SaaS companies are shut down. Businesses can't sell. Etc. It's a disaster. It's amazing how oblivious you seem to the gravity of the situation.

> It's amazing how oblivious you seem to the gravity of the situation.

I'm not, I don't know how I could, as every single time the blocks happen, I'm personally affected by it, since I live in Spain.

But, seemingly we have wildly different experiences. None of the companies I buy stuff from our down during those periods, it's not a disaster as far as I notice it, but clearly you do, so now I'm curious what exactly you're doing during these 2-3 hours a week when this happen that makes you so affected by this, while I'm not?

I'm genuinely curious, not a "gotcha" or anything, I just want to understand your situation better, since our experience differs so much. Which region are you in and with what ISP?

> And also again, if you don't see "something must be done" you're not able to adopt their perspective, so of course you'll never understand this, because you're seemingly refusing to. Fine, you do what you want, but don't mislead others what the real situation is, just because you're unable to grasp it from the other side.

I can see their point of view. I understand they consider this a disaster. I understand they are insistent that something must be done. I am saying that the remedy they are proposing has too many negative consequences to the rest of society to be allowed. I am saying that their interests, sincerely held though they may be, do not trump the interests of the entire rest of the country, and therefore their injury is not satisfiable in the manner they wish it were. As the man once said, you can’t always get what you want, no matter how large an economic enterprise you’re running.