June 29, 2026
Blocked, botched, and billed?
European ISPs Want Rightsholders Held Accountable for Overblocking Damage
ISPs say if legal blocks wreck innocent websites, the people demanding them should pay
TLDR: A major European internet provider group wants copyright owners to pay when anti-piracy blocks accidentally shut down innocent websites and apps. Commenters are raging that sports leagues and rightsholders have too much power, with many calling the fallout a massive waste of time for ordinary people.
Europe’s internet providers have basically marched into the room yelling, “If you break it, you buy it.” Their message to the EU Commission is simple: when copyright crackdowns accidentally knock innocent websites and services offline, the companies demanding those blocks shouldn’t get to walk away untouched. And judging by the comments, the public mood is somewhere between furious, exhausted, and ready to throw a shoe.
The biggest outrage is coming from Spain and Italy, where anti-piracy blocking has reportedly spilled over onto perfectly normal services. Commenters were especially livid about Spain, with one person asking how LaLiga — yes, the football league — somehow ended up with “this much power over the Internet.” Another fumed that people in Spain “can’t access anything that uses Cloudflare,” turning a copyright fight into what sounds, in the comments at least, like a national inconvenience speedrun. One of the sharpest takes? The true cost isn’t just a few support complaints — it’s “millions of hours of wasted time” for regular people trying to do boring everyday stuff like banking, payments, and work.
Then came the ideological fire: some commenters called the whole thing plain old censorship, arguing that if someone breaks the law, courts should target that exact content — not carpet-bomb access and hope for the best. Others turned their heat on the internet providers themselves, saying they never should have gone along with these demands in the first place. In other words: everyone’s mad, nobody looks good, and the internet comments section is treating this like the bureaucratic disaster movie of the summer.
Key Points
- •EuroISPA asked the European Commission to hold rightsholders accountable for collateral damage caused by overbroad site-blocking measures.
- •The group says the Commission’s own review of the 2023 live-event anti-piracy recommendation found limited positive effects and no substantial reduction in piracy.
- •EuroISPA argues that enforcement should focus on existing law rather than creating new obligations under the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive review.
- •The filing cites overblocking examples in Italy, Spain, France, and Belgium, including impacts on domain names, email services, and access to legitimate online services.
- •EuroISPA says the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive already provides a basis for compensation mechanisms and opposes rapid blocking requirements with short implementation deadlines.