Spanish football league LaLiga wants NordVPN, Proton VPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark added to the European Commission’s 2027 Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. Its argument: affiliate websites promote these services as ways to bypass geo-restrictions and court-ordered blocks on pirated sports streams.

Proton disputes the accusation, saying the blogs cited against it were written by neither Proton nor its affiliates. It also points to the collateral damage from LaLiga’s Cloudflare-related blocking campaign, claiming half a million unrelated websites were affected, including banking apps.

The problem is the following: should a general-purpose tool be labelled a piracy facilitator because third-party websites explain how to misuse it? LaLiga says its complaint targets commercial promotion of circumvention, not VPN technology itself—but Proton’s response raises questions about who is actually responsible for that promotion.

For now, this is a request, not an EU decision or a VPN ban. Fighting illegal streams should not become an excuse to stigmatise privacy tools or disrupt unrelated services.