LaLiga Blocks Vercel Again, Despite the Available Piracy Overblocking Measures

• Web hosting service company Vercel is back on the blocked list in Spain.
• On Sunday, the Spanish football organization blocked another Vercel CDN IP.
• LaLiga ignored the dedicated communication channels, which remained unused.

LaLiga has once again landed in hot water over allegations of indiscriminate piracy-blocking practices. Among its latest actions, LaLiga has blocked a Vercel CDN IP, despite prior arrangements to prevent overblocking through dedicated reporting mechanisms. 

Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch criticized the move as unnecessary and harmful to internet accessibility, highlighting broader concerns over the power of organizations to block critical online infrastructure without accountability.  

Vercel’s advanced content delivery platform supports major websites and applications globally, but repeated blocking of its IP addresses by Spain's top soccer organization has caused disruptions for millions of users in Spain. 

Although Vercel previously established a dedicated reporting system for LaLiga to request targeted interventions, this process was disregarded in the latest action.  

Rauch emphasized that content delivery networks (CDNs) serve crucial roles in the digital ecosystem and proposed an alternative blocking approach using hostname-based methods to minimize impact. LaLiga's stance, however, remains unchanged, raising concerns about overreach and internet censorship.

Adding further pressure, many internet service providers (ISPs) in Spain have been called out for complying with LaLiga’s broad blocking orders. 

Recent incidents extending to platforms like Vimeo and X (formerly Twitter), alongside the continuous blocking of Cloudflare and GitHub Pages, highlight ongoing issues with overblocking due to shared IP address usage.

LaLiga’s president remained firm, labeling major tech intermediaries such as Google, Cloudflare, and X as facilitators of online piracy. His controversial statement indicates an unwavering commitment to aggressive anti-piracy policies, despite mounting backlash from tech companies and privacy advocates.