Vercel Slams LaLiga Piracy Blocks As 'Unaccountable Internet Censorship'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloud-based web application platform Vercel is among the latest companies to find their servers blocked in Spain due to LaLiga's ongoing IPTV anti-piracy campaign. In a statement, Vercel's CEO and the company's principal engineer slam "indiscriminate" blocking as an "unaccountable form of internet censorship" that has prevented legitimate customers from conducting their daily business. [...] US-based Vercel describes itself as a "complete platform for the web." Through the provision of cloud infrastructure and developer tools, users can deploy code from their computers and have it up and running in just seconds. Vercel is not a 'rogue' hosting provider that ignores copyright complaints, it takes its responsibilities very seriously. Yet it became evident last week that blocking instructions executed by Telefonica-owned telecoms company Movistar were once again blocking innocent users, this time customers of Vercel.

As the thread on X continued, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch was asked whether Vercel had "received any requests to remove illegal content before the blocking occurs?" Vercel Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes answered quickly. Additional users were soon airing their grievances; ChatGPT blocked regularly on Sundays, a whole day "ruined" due to unwarranted blocking of AI code editor Cursor, blocking at Cloudflare, GitHub, BunnyCDN, the list goes on. In a joint statement last week, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes cited the LaLiga/Telefonica court order and reported that ISPs are "blocking entire IP ranges, not specific domains or content." Among them, the IP addresses 66.33.60.129 and 76.76.21.142, "used by businesses like Spanish startup Tinybird, Hello Magazine, and others operating on Vercel, despite no affiliations with piracy in any form." While clearly unhappy with how the company has been treated, Vercel says it's now working with LaLiga.

"We remain committed to providing fast, secure infrastructure for modern web applications. Likewise, we expect enforcement efforts to do the same: targeted, transparent, and technically sound. We are in contact with La Liga and are collaborating to remove illegal content in accordance with the court order. We're exploring mitigation strategies to restore access for Spanish users and continue to advocate for an open and permissionless web," Vercel concludes.

try blocking office 365 / Microsoft entra and see

[Joe_Dragon]

try blocking office 365 / Microsoft entra and see how fast the IP block is lifted when people can't login into work.

One cannot help but think

[TuballoyThunder]

If you had your corporate infrastructure on-prem, you would not be vulnerable to indiscriminate blocking. Just saying.

Re:

[aitan]

If you had your corporate infrastructure on-prem, you would not be vulnerable to indiscriminate blocking. Just saying.

You would be instead a prime target for DDOS, and all kind of attacks that you would have to defeat by yourself.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The large national company I work for used to be strict on-prem only and had 1 major outage that impacted the entire business in 15 years and that was down to a missed patching related configuration issue on our AD controllers that was resolved in under 2 hours.

Since 2020 there was a move to cloud services that was mostly implemented to quickly bring in remote working for the entire company. It was then extended to include all IT services including various services from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others (

Re:

[tlhIngan]

The large national company I work for used to be strict on-prem only and had 1 major outage that impacted the entire business in 15 years and that was down to a missed patching related configuration issue on our AD controllers that was resolved in under 2 hours.

Since 2020 there was a move to cloud services that was mostly implemented to quickly bring in remote working for the entire company. It was then extended to include all IT services including various services from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others (a

Re:

[vbdasc]

Only if I host Internet-facing servers, which might not necessarily be the case.

Re: One cannot help but think

[ccguy]

Really, somehow on-prem IP addresses can't be blocked? Just wait until some employee watches a football match from the office.

Oh no

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

Provider has to actually manage their network instead of getting away with hosting piracy, spam, phishing, etc. All these providers love to get paid by bad actors but hate any modicum of responsibility.

Re:

[bleedingobvious]

Precisely this. Vercel, Blue Ocean... all of them playing safe haven to multiple APT groups with zero effort made to weed them out.

Block them all. When they go out of business maybe they'll get the message.

Re:

[vbdasc]

When the Spanish e-business go out of business maybe they'll get the message.

FTFY.

Re: Oh no

[ccguy]

That's called being a common carrier. Why do you demand more from internet infrastructure companies than from say, USPS? The responsibility of taking bad actors to court and then to jail doesn't fall on Vercel or Cloudflare. That's what the fucking police and judicial system are for.

Re:

[bleedingobvious]

No. It isn't. These are hosting providers with all the capabillity available to detect and remediate the abusive behaviour of their customers. They are choosing to do nothing. They are fundamentally complicit.

Yet another proof

[vbdasc]

that sports, particularly soccer, causes brain atrophy.

It's not Internet

[Tokolosh]

If you block addresses, ports, protocols, mess with DNS, degrade or prioritize certain traffic, or otherwise operate counter to RFCs, then the "service" you are providing is not "Internet".

Call it something else, I suggest AOL/Compuserve, and forgo any legal protections, subsidies or benefits that are given to real Internet service providers.

If not, you should be prosecuted for false advertising by the FTC or FCC or equivalent in your country.