Spain's La Liga blocks US government's VPN-enabled Freedom.gov in piracy crackdown | Tech Radar

Overview

Spain's La Liga blocks US government's VPN-enabled Freedom.gov in piracy crackdown

Collateral damage: Freedom.gov goes dark in Spain as football league nukes Cloudflare IPs

Details

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The US Freedom.gov was collateral damage of La Liga's anti-piracy blocks

Proton VPN confirmed the block occurred during weekend matches

A Spanish court ordered VPN providers to block illegal football streams

La Liga’s aggressive crusade against illegal football streaming has triggered a diplomatic oddity and a digital rights fiasco, with the Spanish league accidentally blocking access to a United States government website designed to fight internet censorship.

During the weekend’s match schedule, Spanish internet users found themselves unable to access Freedom.gov, a new initiative by the US Department of State and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) intended to help Europeans evade content bans.

The blockade was flagged on X by David Peterson, General Manager at Proton VPN, who confirmed that the site had become collateral damage in La Liga's ongoing war against piracy. The error appears to stem from La Liga’s tactic of targeting IP addresses associated with Cloudflare, which hosts both pirate streaming sites and legitimate government infrastructure.

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This latest blunder underscores the volatility of the Spanish league's "whack-a-mole" approach to copyright enforcement. By ordering ISPs to block IP addresses dynamically during match times, the league risks taking down innocent websites sharing the same server space — a phenomenon experts have warned about for months.

The blocking of Freedom.gov is not an isolated glitch, in fact, but a direct result of the technical measures granted to La Liga by Spanish courts.

The league utilizes "dynamic injunctions" that allow it to update lists of prohibited IP addresses in real-time, without requiring a new judge's signature for every block.

Because many pirate streams utilize Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) to mask their origin, La Liga has resorted to blocking broad ranges of Cloudflare IP addresses. This "carpet bombing" strategy does not distinguish between an illegal stream of El Clásico and a US government portal.

La Liga has been ordering Spanish ISPs to block ~3000 IP addresses almost every weekend. Because Cloudflare IPs are shared, this has been doing massive collateral damage to thousands of legitimate websites, apps, and vital services - all at the whim of a private corporation. pic.twitter.com/Mmon W1BXgj February 17, 2026

Peterson took to X to highlight the absurdity, noting the "massive collateral damage" caused by the blocks.

Affected legitimate sites and services, Peterson reports, include popular social media apps, local banking sites, and productivity apps like Chat GPT, Gift Hub, and Microsoft services.

Now, the irony seems even more palpable — a platform funded by the US government to help citizens bypass censorship was itself censored by a European sports league.

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This incident is the latest escalation in a bitter conflict between Spanish football authorities and the open internet. La Liga has previously found itself in a deepening conflict with Cloudflare, accusing the tech giant of not doing enough to remove illegal content.

In response, the league has ramped up its technical enforcement, leading to frequent weekend outages for legitimate sites that rely on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.

The situation recently intensified when a Spanish court issued a landmark ruling requiring Nord VPN and Proton VPN to block illegal football streams. While the VPN providers have pushed back against these orders, citing technical impossibility and lack of due process, the blocking of Freedom.gov demonstrates that ISP-level filtering remains a blunt and imprecise instrument.

As these blocks become more aggressive, Spanish users are increasingly looking for ways to maintain open internet access, with Spaniards reportedly turning to Proton VPN to navigate blocks.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone using a VPN service to break the law or conduct illegal activities. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

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Rene Millman is a seasoned technology journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, the Financial Times, Computer Weekly, and IT Pro. With over two decades of experience as a reporter and editor, he specializes in making complex topics like cybersecurity, VPNs, and enterprise software accessible and engaging.

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Key Takeaways

Spain's La Liga blocks US government's VPN-enabled Freedom
Collateral damage: Freedom
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
Proton VPN confirmed the block occurred during weekend matches