EU proposes 30-minute takedown of illegal streams — VPNs in the crosshairs

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EU study calls for a block on illegal live sports streams within 30 minutes

The proposal demands that ISPs, CDNs, and VPNs take an active role

Experts warn that rushing IP blocks could lead to massive collateral damage

A study commissioned by the European Parliament is calling for strict, binding regulations to block illegal live sports streams across the EU within 30 minutes — and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are also in the firing line.

For users relying on the best VPN to protect their digital privacy, this could be a major turning point. Rather than asking member countries to voluntarily crack down on copyright infringement, the report urges the EU to implement mandatory real-time blocking.

If accepted, this would mean a maximum 30-minute notice-and-takedown window for streaming intermediaries hosting the content. While network infrastructure providers — such as ISPs, CDNs, VPNs, and DNS resolvers — would be subject to dynamic and real-time blocking orders to disrupt access to those streams.

Authored by Professor Giovanni Maria Riccio at the request of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), the study argues that the EU’s current voluntary guidelines aren't working. Specifically, according to the report, "the current EU response to live-content piracy remains fragmented and not fully adapted to the speed and technical complexity of live broadcasts."

The proposed solution heavily mirrors Italy’s controversial Piracy Shield , demanding a rapid 30-minute blocking window from the moment a rights holder files a copyright complaint.

What a 30-minute takedown means for VPN users

If these recommendations evolve into binding EU law, VPN providers could be forced to prevent users from circumventing active blocks.

This echoes what the Motion Picture Association (MPA) previously asked for when pressing for VPNs to take a more active role in policing pirated content, and this report adds significant fuel to that fire.

For the everyday internet user, this raises urgent concerns over collateral damage and internet censorship. The push for real-time blocking relies heavily on IP and DNS filtering, which is a technically imprecise method. Because a single IP address can host hundreds of legitimate websites alongside one illegal stream, innocent sites are regularly caught in the crossfire.

We've seen this play out disastrously before. In Spain, an aggressive anti-piracy campaign by La Liga resulted in over 500,000 domains being wrongly blocked . The collateral damage was so severe that critics warned La Liga's war on piracy was breaking the internet in Spain , prompting a European ISP group to demand that rightsholders be held liable for the fallout .

Despite recent legal victories, including a ruling that VPNs are lawful technical tools and NordVPN successfully fighting off piracy fines in Spain , the VPN industry remains under immense legal pressure. Following France’s previous order to block illegal streaming sites , an EU-wide regulation would set an even more dangerous precedent for online privacy.

Can a rapid-fire block actually work?

(Image credit: Shutterstock / gonin) Professor Riccio's report acknowledges the very real risks of over-blocking inherent in live-content anti-piracy measures.

To mitigate the potential for widespread internet outages or collateral disruption to lawful services, the study recommends that blocking orders be narrowly tailored: limited strictly to the duration of the live event and subject to strict judicial or administrative oversight.

However, the report also underscores a structural driver of piracy that technical enforcement alone cannot resolve. It points out that when legal access to sports is fragmented across multiple costly, geo-restricted subscriptions, many consumers turn to illegal streams simply because lawful options are unaffordable or inaccessible.

In this context, blocking measures, however swift, risk being blunt instruments unless accompanied by improvements in the affordability, availability, and cross-border accessibility of legal offers.

For now, this remains a study rather than immediate legislation. But with the European Commission actively reviewing copyright directives in the digital market, the pressure to act on live-content piracy is mounting, and the clock on faster, more harmonised enforcement is ticking.