NordVPN wins early court victory against LaLiga’s VPN blocking campaign

A Spanish court has rejected LaLiga’s request to fine NordVPN over alleged failures to comply with a controversial anti-piracy blocking order.

The decision was issued on May 19, 2026, by the Commercial Court of Córdoba, which dismissed LaLiga’s petition seeking coercive penalties against NordVPN for supposedly violating interim blocking measures imposed earlier this year.

The case originated in February 2026 rulings by Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba, which classified VPN providers as intermediaries under the EU Digital Services Act. The court ordered NordVPN and Proton VPN to implement technical controls blocking 16 pirate streaming websites identified by LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital (TAD), the league’s broadcasting partner.

NordVPN said the court accepted technical evidence presented by its experts and concluded that it could not be established that the company had “deliberately and without justification” breached the injunction. According to the VPN provider, the disputed IP lists supplied by LaLiga changed rapidly, often within hours, making implementation difficult before the targeted infrastructure shifted elsewhere.

The company also argued that enforcing blanket IP-level blocking would have caused extensive collateral damage by rendering thousands of lawful websites inaccessible to users in Spain and potentially beyond. The judge reportedly found that a legitimate technical dispute existed between the parties and determined that financial penalties were therefore unwarranted at this preliminary stage.

NordVPN is one of the world’s largest VPN providers, offering encrypted internet traffic routing and privacy services to millions of users globally. VPN platforms have increasingly become targets in anti-piracy litigation as copyright holders attempt to restrict access to unauthorized streaming platforms that rely on location masking and IP obfuscation technologies.

LaLiga, which manages broadcasting rights for Spain’s top football competitions, has intensified anti-piracy operations over the past two years by pursuing legal action against infrastructure providers, CDN operators, DNS services, and VPN platforms. The organization argues that intermediary services play a critical role in helping users bypass geographic restrictions and access unauthorized streams.

However, the enforcement campaign has triggered mounting backlash inside Spain due to repeated incidents of overblocking. During major football match windows, users reported intermittent outages affecting major platforms and developer services, including Cloudflare, Vercel, GitHub, and Docker. Civil society organizations, software developers, and small businesses have documented widespread disruptions caused by IP-level blocking measures targeting piracy infrastructure.

The controversy has also reached Spain’s political institutions. On April 29, 2026, the Spanish Congress approved a non-binding initiative backed by PSOE and ERC lawmakers urging reforms to the country’s Digital Services Law. The proposal called for introducing a principle of “technological proportionality” designed to prevent overly broad court-ordered internet blocking.

Despite the positive development, NordVPN emphasized that the Córdoba ruling does not represent a final judgment on the merits of the case and that the main proceedings remain ongoing. Still, the company said the decision validates its longstanding argument that the technical and proportionality concerns surrounding blanket IP blocking are genuine and supported by evidence.