from the stop-believing-the-copyright-industry’s-lies dept

Afew weeks ago, Walled Culture wrote about Hadopi, France’s infamous copyright enforcement mechanism. The so-called “graduated response” – aka “three strikes and you are out” – has been around for over 15 years now, has cost French taxpayers a fortune, and has never achieved any of its aims. As the Walled Culture post suggested, the latest court ruling might finally put the benighted scheme out of its misery.

But even if it does, there is already another disproportionately heavy-handed attempt to enforce copyright up and running in the shape of Italy’s Piracy Shield. It works by blocking access to unauthorized material using court orders against Internet Service Providers (ISPs). That would clearly be problematic, even if it were implemented properly, and well run. It is neither, as academic research from the end of last year underlined. Since the massive extension of its powers a year ago, things have gone relatively quiet on the Piracy Shield front in terms of new developments, and there are no signs that the Italian government has taken the many criticisms to heart.

That’s depressing enough, but even more worrying is that alongside France’s Hadopi fiasco, and Italy’s troubling Piracy Shield, Spain too seems intent on letting the copyright industry attack the Internet’s basic plumbing and thereby disrupt other sites, as well as downgrading the experience of thousands of innocent users. It’s increasingly clear that what’s happening in Spain is now a serious a threat to the operation of the online world there, but one that is still little-known. That makes a post from the Disruptive Competition Project (DisCo), which comes from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), particularly useful. Its title picks up on the similarities with Italy’s approach: “Repeating Failure: How Spanish Overblocking Ignores the Lessons of Italy’s Broken Piracy Shield”. Here’s what has been happening in Spain for over a year now:

Since early 2025, LaLiga (Spain’s top-tier football league) has been operating an aggressive and largely unchecked IP-address blocking regime in an attempt to tackle sports piracy. In 2024, LaLiga and several Spanish internet service providers (ISPs), some of whom have direct commercial interests in LaLiga broadcasting, sought a court order authorising the blocking of specific domain names.

They succeeded in this particular endeavour. However, LaLiga has thereafter continued to interpret this order as a green light to unilaterally select Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and domains to block, without ongoing court oversight or accountability.

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It turns out that the legal basis of the current action is flimsy in the extreme:

The legal foundation of LaLiga’s anti-piracy enforcement model rests on a single, seven-page judgment issued by a Commercial Court in Barcelona on 18 December 2024. This ruling should have never been treated as setting a strong precedent, as it was not the result of a rigorous legal battle and didn’t seriously examine whether the blocking approach is lawful or proportionate under EU law.

As has happened so often in the world of copyright, the companies involved have taken a very narrow, and possibly flawed legal judgment and applied it as widely and broadly as possible, without asking further permission from the courts:

LaLiga now compiles and updates lists of IP addresses and domain names that it wants to see blocked. This process is completely opaque: these lists are not publicly disclosed, there is no independent technical or judicial validation before new addresses are added, and the court does not appear to continuously review any additions.

Once someone gets blocked, there is no redress mechanism to remove addresses from the list, even when they are no longer associated with infringing content, nor any appeal process for mistakenly blocked services.

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that this cavalier approach has already led to the overblocking of sites, just as has happened in Italy because of Piracy Shield’s poor implementation:

LaLiga’s approach has caused widespread disruption, preventing access to tens of thousands of legitimate websites in recent years – including critical services such as payment providers and a national health operator. This disproportionate cost is borne by innocent third parties and small businesses, reflecting a mistaken belief that the commercial interests of one dominant party should trump Spanish consumers’ rights to a functioning internet.

The second of those overblocking incidents is particularly serious, since it involves a healthcare provider, which potentially puts people’s lives at risk. According to an article on La Razón (via Google Translate):

During the weekend of December 13-14, access to the Madrid Health website was blocked. While the duration of the access interruption and the message displayed upon entering the website varied depending on the internet service provider blocking access at LaLiga’s request.

Despite the serious nature of this overblocking, which effectively places the enforcement of copyright above protecting people’s health, the Spanish government is trying to wash its hands of the problem:

The situation has become so severe that members of the Spanish Parliament have sought explanations from the government. While acknowledging that the blocks have significantly impacted legitimate websites, the Spanish Government maintains that this is a judicial matter falling under the jurisdiction of the courts.

However, the courts seem to be entirely on the side of LaLiga, since they didn’t even give Internet companies a chance to present their side of the story earlier this year.

In February 2026, the Commercial Court of Córdoba even granted [LaLiga] an ex-parte preliminary injunction against NordVPN and ProtonVPN. This means the court issued a binding order, based solely on LaLiga’s arguments, without notifying those virtual private networks (VPNs) or allowing them to present a defence beforehand. The VPNs only discovered the judgment through the media and are now obliged to implement the blocks enforced by LaLiga.

It’s true that the same court has just rejected LaLiga’s request for coercive fines, and accepted that there was a technical dispute over whether the blocking could be implemented. But the refusal to allow the VPN companies to present a defense remains a deeply troubling precedent, and runs contrary to basic principles of justice. Moreover, as TorrentFreak reports, this latest ruling may be only a temporary reprieve for the VPN providers:

The league confirms that the decision merely sets aside the coercive fines while the proceedings continue, stressing that it does not exempt NordVPN from implementing IP blocks where LaLiga can prove piracy is taking place.

It is the usual one-sided justice that is typical when copyright is involved. It seems that LaLiga is being given carte blanche to do whatever it likes here, and never mind the consequences for Internet companies and their users. As Hadopi fades, and Italy’s Piracy Shield carries on as before, the fear has to be that Spain’s unconstrained approach to copyright enforcement could end up being worse than both.

There is currently a rare opportunity to comment on the issue of EU copyright enforcement in the realm of sports and other live events. There is an open Call for Evidence from the European Commission, which:

aims to collect the information necessary to support the review of the 2019 Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, and to seek feedback on the challenges linked in particular to the exercise of copyright and related rights in the context of technological developments and potential ways to address them.

As well as that general review of the main EU Copyright Directive, discussed at length in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available), and the issue of live streaming, the Commission is seeking people’s views on an important upcoming legislative proposal aimed at strengthening copyright (yet again) in the light of AI, which is planned for the first quarter of 2027. The Call for Evidence closes on 25 June, so you have a couple of weeks to hone your thoughts and submit them. Based on previous experience, we can probably expect the European Commission to ignore what anyone except the copyright industry thinks, but it’s worth a try.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Republished from WalledCulture.

Filed Under: copyright, france, hadopi, ip blocks, italy, piracy shield, spain

Companies: laliga, nordvpn, proton

Alibaba has taken the US Department of Defense to court over a label the company insists it does not deserve. In a complaint filed on Tuesday in the federal court in San Jose, California, the Hangzhou group asked a judge to strike its name from the Pentagon’s list of “Chinese military companies” and declared the designation, in its own words, to have “no basis in fact or law.”

The list in question is the one maintained under Section 1260H of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which requires the Pentagon to name Chinese firms it judges to have direct or indirect ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

Alibaba was added on June 8, alongside Baidu, BYD, the robotics maker Unitree, and others, in an update that pushed the roster to 188 entities, up from 134 the year before.

In its filing, Alibaba argued that it is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation, and that its products and services are built “for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology, not weapons, defense, or intelligence.”

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The Pentagon’s justification, set out in a June statement, was that the company is “a military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base” through its affiliation with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with an indirect link to the state asset regulator known as SASAC.

The designation does not, by itself, ban anyone from doing business with Alibaba. What it does is layer on consequences.

Under the relevant law, the Defense Department cannot enter into or renew contracts directly with listed entities from June 30, and from 2027 it cannot buy their goods or services through third parties either.

Government contracts are prized by technology firms, and the company told the court that the listing creates barriers to financing, sourcing, and partnerships with American counterparties, reducing its access to capital and raising its risk profile. It also claimed the move violates its constitutional rights to due process and free speech.

Alibaba had signalled it would fight. When the June update appeared, a company spokesperson said it was “not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy” and promised to “take all available legal action.” China’s embassy in Washington called the designations “discriminatory.”

It is not the only listed firm to reach for a lawyer. WuXi AppTec, the biotech contract research group added in the same round, filed a similar suit on June 11.

Earlier rounds drew the same complaint without the litigation: when Tencent was added in January 2025, it called its inclusion “a mistake.” The Pentagon is not required to publish evidence. The criteria turn on military-civil fusion, broad enough to sweep in companies whose main business is consumer technology.

That breadth is part of why the list has become a recurring headache for the Chinese tech sector. It sits alongside export controls on chipmaking equipment, tariffs, and the Entity List run by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, the same bureau now at the centre of a separate fight over access to advanced AI models.

For Alibaba, whose cloud division underpins much of China’s AI infrastructure and whose US footprint spans cloud, advertising, and research, the designation turns every American business relationship into a compliance calculation.

The timing did Beijing no favours. The June update landed during a fragile trade truce, and a day before Alibaba sued, China added 10 US firms to its own export control list. The two governments keep escalating in parallel while insisting they are talking.

What happens next is a matter for the court in San Jose, where Alibaba and WuXi will press their cases. The Defense Department has not commented.

The contracting bans take effect at the end of the month regardless, which means the practical clock and the legal one are running at different speeds. Alibaba is asking a judge to stop both.

The Google-owned platform has thousands of similar lawsuits pending.

The Eero Pro 6E mesh system is an older Wi-Fi 6E mesh, but it’s every bit as easy to use and stable as the rest of Amazon’s Eero lineup. Eero makes some of my favorite mesh systems, ideal for busy families seeking a set-and-forget mesh. The Pro 6E is a tri-band system with a 6-GHz band for fast Wi-Fi at close range. But you need an Eero Plus subscription at $10 per month or $100 per year to unlock some features, including parental controls, advanced security, and ad blocking.

The most effective way to get Wi-Fi in your backyard is to snag an outdoor router like this one. Anyone with a TP-Link Deco system can add this to their existing mesh network and extend Wi-Fi into the their outdoor space. It’s waterproof and dustproof, with an IP65 rating, and can cover up to 2,800 square feet.

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This Wi-Fi 7 router offers 2.4-GHz, 5-GHz, and 6-GHz bands in a basic affordable package. There are six adjustable antennas, and TP-Link has been very generous with the ports (one 10 Gbps, four 2.5 Gbps, and a USB 3.0), though it’s a little annoying that the USB is on the side. This model also offers excellent close-range speeds on the 6-GHz band, though it was a little disappointing on both the 5-GHz and 2.4-GHz bands.

The latest Apple Invites update brings some long-requested features, like co-hosting an event. There are also some other great quality-of-life changes to the party planning app.

Back in February 2025, the Apple Invites app made its way to the App Store. With it, iOS users can create party or event invitations, manage RSVPs, share links, and more.

On Tuesday, Apple released version 1.9 of its event invitation app, which includes a new co-hosting capability. This lets two or more Apple Invites users plan and organize an event within the app.

Previously, with version 1.2, Apple Invites gained support for link sharing, letting event hosts send web links to all attendees. Apple is always improving the app even if it isn’t its most popular.

With the new-and-improved Apple Invites, hosts can now also choose to make guest lists visible to all attendees. Bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements are also included with the 1.9 update of the Apple Invites app.

Additionally, the app has received new event backgrounds. Its release notes say these new backgrounds will “help set the mood for your next coffee catch-up, boba run, ice cream social, and more.”

Even so, none of the requirements for Apple Invites have changed. Hosts will still need an iCloud+ subscription to organize events and send invitations via the application. Guests, meanwhile, don’t even need an iPhone or iPad to RSVP to an event.

Apple Invites can come in handy if you already have an iCloud+ subscription and you want to put together a party. The app itself is quite easy to use once you get the hang of it.