PARIS — In a significant legal defeat for major sports broadcasters, the Paris Judicial Court has refused to impose heavy daily financial penalties against several prominent virtual private network (VPN) providers and infrastructure company Cloudflare. The broadcaster, beIN Sports, had sought the fines after accusing the tech companies of failing to fully implement website-blocking orders targeting unauthorized streaming platforms broadcasting Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) matches.
The decision, handed down in two separate rulings, underscores the legal limits placed on intermediaries in European copyright enforcement. The court concluded that while digital intermediaries must make reasonable efforts to obstruct access to infringing platforms, they are not legally required to guarantee a 100 percent effective outcome. This standard aligns closely with established case law from the European Court of Justice, which seeks to balance the enforcement of intellectual property rights with the fundamental freedom of businesses to operate within the digital economy.
The legal battle originated in May when the Paris Judicial Court ordered multiple VPN providers and network intermediaries to block ten pirate websites and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services that illicitly streamed WTA tennis tournaments. Among the targeted domains were popular unauthorized streaming destinations such as thetvapp.to and tennistream.com.
The initial site-blocking order followed a familiar, increasingly utilized enforcement pattern in France. The request was brought forward by beIN Sports, which holds the exclusive French broadcasting rights for the majority of WTA tour matches. Demonstrating the aggressive multi-layered enforcement strategy frequently deployed by rights holders, the broadcaster secured a parallel site-blocking order directed at Cloudflare just one day after obtaining the initial injunction.
During the initial proceedings, beIN Sports requested that the court impose punitive financial measures, specifically asking for daily penalties of 2,000 euros for each domain that two specific VPN providers failed to block. At that time, the court declined to grant the penalties, noting that there was no evidence demonstrating the providers acted with deliberate intent to flunk compliance. The court indicated that if genuine operational problems arose during the implementation phase, the involved parties retained the right to return to court to seek clarification or further remedy. That is precisely the path beIN Sports chose to pursue.
beIN Loses Penalty Request
According to initial reports from French technology publication L’Informé, beIN Sports returned to the Paris Judicial Court to register complaints that the targeted intermediaries—including several major VPN services and Cloudflare—had fallen short of completely severing user access to the unauthorized domains. Frustrated by persistent availability, the broadcaster dramatically escalated its financial demands, requesting a daily penalty of 10,000 euros for every single domain that remained accessible to internet users.
The targeted entities mounted a coordinated defense. Cloudflare, along with prominent VPN services Surfshark and NordVPN, retained common legal representation to contest the penalty requests. In their defense, the companies highlighted significant technical constraints inherent to their network architectures and insisted they had executed good-faith efforts to comply with the judicial mandates as far as technically feasible. Another targeted provider, Proton, was also named in the proceedings but did not make an appearance at the scheduled hearing.
An examination of the technical measures implemented by the companies revealed that the blocking efforts were indeed imperfect. Cloudflare managed to restrict access to three out of the four targeted sites, though it did so exclusively through its content delivery network (CDN) layer. Meanwhile, Surfshark and NordVPN successfully blocked six out of eleven domains, restricting access strictly via the DNS service operating on their servers physically located within France.
‘Reasonable Effort’ Standard Prevails
For the Paris court, the imperfect execution and partial compliance measures implemented by the tech firms were deemed sufficient under the law. In the two rulings issued on October 7, the judicial panel concluded that intermediary service providers are legally obligated to deploy reasonable efforts to impede access to pirate infrastructure. However, the court explicitly reaffirmed that they are under no legal obligation to guarantee an absolute, flawless outcome—a principle that mirrors broader legal doctrines established by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Furthermore, the submitted case files clearly demonstrated that all the summoned companies had carried out the court-mandated orders, at least to a significant degree.
"The requested penalty (…) therefore does not appear necessary or proportionate, given the need to strike a fair balance between the protection of the intellectual property rights of copyright and neighboring rights holders, and the freedom to conduct a business enjoyed by economic operators," the court wrote, as translated and reported by L’Informé.
Despite the rejection of the penalty requests, the underlying blocking orders themselves remain fully in effect. They are scheduled to stay active through the conclusion of the current WTA tennis season, which is set to wrap up on November 14. In the interim, beIN Sports retains the legal right to appeal the court’s decision.
This recent outcome closely mirrors a separate ruling handed down by the same Paris court in a legal dispute involving broadcaster Canal+ and Cloudflare just a month prior. In that case, Canal+ petitioned the court for exorbitant daily penalties of 50,000 euros per site against Cloudflare. The court similarly rejected the demand, ruling that Cloudflare was only legally required to implement reasonable countermeasures—an obligation it had successfully satisfied by deploying blocks through its CDN layer.
The legal pressure from sports broadcasters shows no sign of abating, with DNS resolver Quad9 positioned next in line for potential financial sanctions. According to representatives from the Swiss-based privacy foundation, beIN Sports is demanding 10,000 euros per domain, per day, from Quad9. Because multiple domains are involved, the cumulative daily penalties could theoretically reach up to 580,000 euros.
Quad9’s operational position differs significantly from the VPN providers, however, as the non-profit DNS resolver has not implemented any blocks against the disputed domains. A formal judicial decision regarding beIN Sports’ request against Quad9 is anticipated later this month.
Appeals Court Hits Pause
The failure to secure hefty financial penalties is not the only obstacle rights holders are encountering in French courts. Simultaneously, the VPN providers targeted by these injunctions are mounting direct legal challenges against the underlying site-blocking orders themselves, an effort that recently gained significant procedural breathing room.
Late last year, major VPN operators including NordVPN, Proton, and CyberGhost formally appealed one of the pioneering VPN site-blocking orders. That initial injunction had been successfully secured in May 2024 by the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), the governing body of professional French football.
At the explicit request of the VPN providers, the Paris Court of Appeal elected to place that ongoing case on hold on September 30. Rather than issuing a direct ruling on the merits of the VPN appeal, the appellate court decided to suspend proceedings until France’s highest court of ordinary jurisdiction, the Cour de cassation (Supreme Court), renders decisions on a series of pending appeals stemming from earlier, closely related DNS blocking cases.
Those pivotal rulings, handed down by lower courts in March and May, upheld site-blocking orders originally obtained by Canal+ against major DNS providers. During the March hearings, tech giants Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco suffered defeat when their appeals against DNS blocking mandates were dismissed. In response to those losses, several prominent DNS providers escalated the dispute by petitioning the Supreme Court.
While the Paris Court of Appeal acknowledged that the technical and corporate characteristics of the current disputes are not entirely identical—noting that the pending Supreme Court cases involve DNS resolvers rather than VPN providers, and were initiated by Canal+ rather than the football league—it determined there is a substantial overlap in the core legal questions at stake. Consequently, the appellate panel decided that judicial consistency requires waiting for the Supreme Court’s definitive guidance.
"Despite the differences, namely that the seven decisions under appeal concern DNS providers rather than VPNs, and that they were issued at the request of the Canal Plus companies rather than LFP and LFP1, the present case has many legal questions in common with the rulings under appeal before the [Supreme Court]," the appeals court stated in its freeze order.
The overlapping legal questions awaiting high-court scrutiny include defining precisely which types of intermediaries can be legally compelled to assist in anti-piracy efforts, assessing whether France’s aggressive site-blocking statutory framework complies with overarching European Union law, establishing acceptable evidentiary standards for proving copyright infringements, and determining the legal thresholds for when blocking measures can be considered proportionate.
While no definitive timeline has been provided by the Cour de cassation regarding when it will issue its rulings, the Paris Court of Appeal remains confident that the eventual Supreme Court precedent will heavily influence the trajectory and outcome of the ongoing VPN dispute.
Leave a Reply