This is generally how the GFW works in China. Instead of an overbearing nanny like a school or corporation's DNS blocker, you're left with a sense that you're on a version of the Internet that is just intermittently and somewhat mysteriously broken.
And indeed, in China, a lot of things that probably aren't fully intended to be blocked are not reliably accessible. Implementation varies, so you get strange routing and peering issues. It feels like an Internet that isn't fully formed, that hasn't finished coming together yet.
Nation states and corporations obviously gain some things sometimes by having Internet censorship/blocking frameworks in place. Maybe, sometimes, ordinary people even benefit, too, if it helps shut down illegal and genuinely harmful businesses.
But it feels like the whole world is gradually trending towards more and more Internet censorship without realizing that we are un-building a miraculous thing that took enormous effort and cleverness and expense to build. I wish we could think about this not only in terms of freedom (and we absolutely should think about it in terms of freedom), but how we are disintegrating the infrastructure of communication and computing.
The counter-reaction to this era will include additional communication control.
These were ripe with espionage, wiretapping and sabotage. Access to it used to be highly restricted as well, up until the 90s for example you were only allowed to connect government-licensed modems to the German PSTN directly.
Just like today's Internet. BGP spoofing, CALEA, DDoS.
> Access to it used to be highly restricted as well ...
And this is where the regression or "downfall" is beginning. Access to the Internet (as in ability to send/receive arbitrary data to the wider Internet) is something I bet is going to be increasingly restricted, but most people won't notice because they don't understand the difference between apps and the Internet.
I'd be surprised if direct access to the Internet is possible for consumers in the next 10 years. Everything will have to be through approved apps (age assurance is going to be the catalyst) that work over registered tunnels contracted through ISPs, if there isn't an outright blurring or merger between the concepts of phone/CPE, ISP and CDN. Your non-tech layperson will not know any difference whatsoever if all they use are their phone plan, streaming/banking apps and Facebook.
That's actually just how the Internet is. Nothing to do with the great firewall.
I've claimed financial loss, claimed sanity loss and everything in-between, but I'm afraid unless something reaches the European/EU courts, Spain will continue to be in the pocket of the La Liga owners.
Straight up fucking censorship with wide collateral being completely accepted in a Western country in 2026, beyond comprehension how this is allowed.
(Sadly as living in Spain for about a year I’m still not in such place to raise this or understand the full steps needed)
Used my digital certificate (which is installed in the browser), but AFAIK, you can use Cl@ve on that page above too.
In the past, I've cited BOE-A-2022-10757 (https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2022-10757), done a reclamació for the repeated loss of lawful access on my connection, and a denúncia about a broader overblocking practice affecting access to lawful services.
Also, supposedly, we should be able to make claims to CNMC as well, but haven't figured out how. Also of course, been complaining to my ISP every time it happens too.
We've never guaranteed the right to free speech and because we haven't it's a slippery slope all the way back down to the furnaces of autocracy we sprang from.
The Spanish president has come out on record saying we don't deserve anonymity on the internet.
Snail mail uses up physical space so it might get more attention, it would be hilarious to see news reports of truckloads of complaint mail being dumped in front of the whatever office.
This is a great idea, we definitively should make this happen! If people are curious on collaborating on something, reach out, email in profile (English or Spanish emails welcome!).
And when purchasing a product, there's no "bill of materials" telling you about the services it relies on, beyond "internet connection" at best.
I'm not saying this situation isn't bullshit, but the bigger problem is that CloudFlare is now "fundamental internet infrastructure". This is precisely the situation that the internet was designed to prevent.
Yesterday I got stuck in endless CloudFlare CAPTCHA's, trying to access theretroweb.com. I had to give up. Many such cases. I hate CloudFlare so much, it's unreal.
Right, but on the other hand, our constitution and laws are supposed to give us the rights to access a internet where the government cannot block entire companies who host websites, because a few bad websites are hosted there.
Not to mention all us freelancers, contractors and just in general computing users, who sometimes want to continue working although 90% of the country is watching football, we should be able to do so even if pirates use Cloudflare for shitty stuff.
I agree that Cloudflare sucks, people should avoid defaulting to putting Cloudflare in front of absolutely everything they do and I too get stuck at the CAPTCHAs sometimes. But that doesn't remove the fact that Cloudflare, just like every other lawful company, should be allowed to be visited during La Liga matches.
The fault here lies 100% with horribly designed IoT devices that turn into bricks when they lose internet connection.
A VPN won't help against government blanket outages, where the target is complete control of communications, and attempts to circumvent may result in extreme penalty. In this case, where the government policy is to stop unauthorized streaming, and collatoral damage is acceptable, a VPN hosted in a more favorable location is likely to work enough. Afaik, I don't think Spain has the political appetite to block VPNs and such during football matches.
You can still fight the political issue with political means, but in the mean time, you can also get work done.
Unfortunately nobody is quite sure what appetite they have, because LaLiga is doing this all on the back of a relatively narrow judicial ruling that hasn't been reviewed in a long time
What technical solutions can't change is the underlying social dynamics.
What is this "sweet position" you talk about?
I was trying to refer to an actual rebel position, which is actors which use illegal practices to achieve their goals agaisnt institutions in place. Which might have the cool attitude imagery attached to it, but which is certainly not an easy one in reality.