In a significant legal decision for internet infrastructure providers, a French court has dealt a blow to pay-TV broadcaster Canal+ in its ongoing efforts to crack down on unauthorized sports streaming. The Paris Judicial Court has rejected a request by Canal+ to impose heavy daily financial penalties on Cloudflare, after the broadcaster argued that the infrastructure giant failed to properly enforce court-ordered website blockades targeting pirate Formula 1 and MotoGP streams.
Over the past two years, French courts have increasingly ordered various internet intermediaries to block access to unauthorized sports broadcasts. Beyond standard internet service providers, these legal mandates have expanded to target public Domain Name System (DNS) resolvers, virtual private network (VPN) services, search engines, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, all of which possess mechanisms that can theoretically help users bypass traditional network-level blockades.
Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure and security company, has found itself repeatedly named in these legal actions. Back in April, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Cloudflare to block access to 21 domains associated with unauthorized Formula 1 broadcasts and 16 domains linked to pirate MotoGP streams.
The scope of those April orders encompassed both Cloudflare’s public DNS resolver and its CDN services. However, the court’s directives did not prescribe a mandatory technical method for how the sites must be blocked, specifying only that access from within France had to be prevented "by any effective means."
Canal+, the prominent French pay-TV operator that originally requested the broad blockades, quickly concluded that Cloudflare’s implementation efforts fell short of expectations. Dissatisfied with the results, the broadcaster returned to court seeking stricter enforcement measures, a development first reported by digital technology publication L’Informé.
Canal+ Requested €50,000 a Day in Penalties
In May, Canal+ petitioned the Paris court to attach stringent daily financial penalties to the existing April orders. The broadcaster asked the judicial panel to levy a penalty of €50,000 per day for every listed domain that remained accessible, alongside the same daily fine for any newly discovered pirate site reported to Cloudflare by France’s media regulator, Arcom.
In its legal filings, Canal+ asserted that Cloudflare had deliberately and systematically failed to comply with the spirit and letter of the site-blocking mandates.
According to the court’s summary of the broadcaster’s arguments, Canal+ claimed that Cloudflare allegedly circumvented the measures by exclusively implementing the decision through its CDN service. The broadcaster argued that this narrow approach meant only three of the 21 domain names cited in the Formula 1 case were effectively blocked.
A similar outcome was reported for the MotoGP case, where Canal+ counted just three blocked domains out of the 16 ordered by the court. Furthermore, Canal+ pointed out that two of those three initially blocked sites managed to reappear online within a week—one by switching to a competing CDN provider and another by utilizing a mirror site to redirect traffic.
Court Sides With Cloudflare on Technical Constraints
On September 17, a panel of three judges delivered their ruling on the dual penalty requests. During the proceedings, Cloudflare highlighted significant technical constraints that restricted its compliance efforts to its CDN layer. The company also emphasized that the original court orders had deliberately left it free to determine which of its diverse services to utilize, provided that its actions contributed meaningfully to mitigating intellectual property infringement.
The court acknowledged this framework, noting in its written decision that it was undisputed that Cloudflare implemented the ordered measures strictly through its CDN service whenever targeted sites utilized that specific network infrastructure.
Cloudflare argued before the bench that CDN-level blocking is substantially more effective than DNS manipulation in combating dynamic web piracy. Furthermore, the company maintained that the underlying architecture of its public DNS resolver—widely known as 1.1.1.1—does not support targeted content blocking, making such measures entirely unreasonable to demand.
While Canal+ contended that Cloudflare had only managed to block a fraction of the targeted domains, the court viewed the company’s actions as evidence of a genuine, good-faith willingness to help curb copyright infringement. The judicial panel also ruled that Cloudflare bore no legal responsibility when independent site operators opted to switch to alternative CDN providers or establish operational mirror sites to evade detection.
The court noted that it was the responsibility of the rightsholder, Canal+, to pursue new intermediaries when sites migrated to different CDNs and to report newly emerged mirror domains to Arcom for administrative handling.
Addressing arguments concerning European Union jurisprudence, Canal+ pointed to the Court of Justice of the European Union’s landmark UPC Telekabel Wien ruling, asserting that intermediaries are legally required to execute blockades effectively. The Paris court interpreted the same ruling differently, concluding that intermediaries are only obligated to implement reasonable measures—a threshold the judges determined Cloudflare had satisfied through its CDN-based interventions.
Consequently, the court rejected the request for daily financial penalties, deeming them neither necessary nor proportionate. An additional request by Canal+ for €20,000 to cover legal costs was similarly dismissed by the panel.
1.1.1.1 Stays Block-Free Amid Broader Industry Pressures
As a result of the ruling, Cloudflare will not face financial penalties under the disputed orders, allowing its 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver to remain entirely free of targeted content blocks in France. This outcome aligns with Cloudflare’s long-standing corporate policy of maintaining neutrality on its public DNS network.
In recent transparency reports, Cloudflare has repeatedly confirmed that it has not implemented content blocks through the 1.1.1.1 resolver, despite receiving formal orders from judicial authorities in countries such as France and Italy.
In contrast, CDN-level geoblocking has been utilized extensively. Cloudflare’s latest transparency reports indicate that the company geoblocked thousands of domains across France over the past year under various court mandates.
Cloudflare has actively advocated for this distinction at the European level. In a submission to the European Commission regarding its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, the infrastructure provider argued that global public DNS resolvers are fundamentally unsuited for content blocking or access restriction.
Instead, the company promotes its real-time pirate stream mitigation program, which allows pre-vetted rightsholders to flag unauthorized live broadcasts traversing its network. According to Cloudflare, these flagged streams can be disrupted within seconds without requiring traditional DNS or IP-level blocking infrastructure.
While the Paris court’s recent decision provides clarity for Cloudflare regarding its CDN operations and DNS independence, the legal battle may not be over, as Canal+ retains the right to appeal the rulings.
Similar high-stakes legal battles are playing out across the French legal system. The non-profit public DNS resolver Quad9 faces a similarly aggressive penalty request from sports broadcaster beIN Sports over its refusal to implement pirate content blocks on its resolver network. A decision from the Paris court on that case is expected later this month.
Leave a Reply