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So then why hasn’t Europe made a viable competitor to Cloudflare yet…?


Cloudflare isn't the company with too much power in the above scenario: La Liga is. CF isn't turning off access because they want to, it's because La Liga convinced a court that Cloudflare is promoting "piracy" with the various websites they host (some of which, constituting less than a rounding error of the overall sites they host, may host pirated soccer streams), and convinced a court to have Cloudflare blocked.


Technically LaLiga is only allowed to sue because the gov created aggressive IP/piracy rules, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Sinde

They were given those powers in court over Cloudflare via the Spanish government, with some help via a pressure campaign by US gov to protect US copyright globally.


That said, Cloudflare absolutely has too much power. Centralizing the internet makes it fragile and maximizes the collateral damage caused by draconian copyright enforcement.


If there was a viable competitor, then it wouldn’t matter so much if it was blocked or not…


The same IP rules would apply to anybody hosting any site that could have the pirated streams...


That's a bad thing in this case. I don't want website blocking to be easier.


What makes you think the competitor wouldn't simply be blocked as well?


Because their policies, behavior, etc., likely wouldn’t be 100% identical.


Must be a lack of regulations and compliance procedures giving potential entrepreneurs the legal framework to work within.




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