In their desire to eradicate piracy of sports broadcasts, rights holders received blocking orders that went far beyond their purpose.
In Spain, Italy and France, banking services, professional tools and messaging became unavailable, sometimes for weeks. EuroISPA, an association of more than 3,300 European access providers, has just sent a formal request to the European Commission asking those demanding blocking be held liable for damages.
Banks, email and thousands of websites were blocked at the same time as pirated websites.
In Spain, the La Liga football league has secured the blocking of IP addresses associated with illegal streaming. Problem: These addresses were used by hundreds of legitimate services hosted on the same infrastructure. According to a report by Brussels think tank CEPS, banking apps and payment platforms fell at the same time.
In Italy, the Piracy Shield automated blocking system resulted in the concomitant blocking of 7,700 legitimate domain names. A Portuguese web host lost all email communication with its Italian clients for 16 days.
Italy’s AGCOM blocking page appears on Google Drive: In October 2024, the automated Piracy Shield system mistakenly blocked Google’s data storage service by targeting public IP addresses.
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When Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest web infrastructure providers, refused to filter requests on its public service, the Italian regulator fined it €14 million.
In France, Cisco withdrew its OpenDNS DNS resolution service from the territory following a Canal+-related injunction, and then from Belgium in 2025 under threat of fines of €100,000 per day.
Internet providers want copyright holders to foot the bill
EuroISPA draws on the CEPS report and recalls that the European Commission itself concluded that these measures led to “limited positive effects” on piracy.
The association calls for mandatory compensation mechanisms: when a blocking order results in the shutdown of legitimate services, the person receiving it must accept the financial consequences. The file remains open. The review of the Copyright Directive (CDSM) is ongoing, with copyright holders calling for greater blocking powers.
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