French Court Rejects Canal+ Fines Against Cloudflare Over 1.1.1.1 DNS Piracy Blocking

The Paris Judicial Court has rejected a petition by French broadcaster Canal+ to impose daily fines on Cloudflare for refusing to block pirated sports streams on its public 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. In decisions issued on Sept. 17, a three-judge panel found that Cloudflare satisfied court orders by restricting access via its Content Delivery Network (CDN) rather than its recursive DNS service, as reported by Hacker News (https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-keeps-1-1-1-1-out-of-piracy-blocking-escapes-penalties-in-france/).

The underlying dispute stems from April orders directing Cloudflare to block 21 domains broadcasting unauthorized Formula 1 streams and 16 domains streaming MotoGP events in France. The mandates instructed the infrastructure company to stop access "by any effective means" without prescribing exact technical mechanisms. Canal+ subsequently returned to court in May, seeking penalties of €50,000 per day for each accessible site—and the same amount for new sites reported by media regulator Arcom—plus €20,000 in legal costs, alleging that Cloudflare had evaded the order by only implementing blocks on its CDN.

In its defense, Cloudflare argued that the architecture of its public DNS resolver does not allow selective blocking and that CDN-level mitigation is substantially more effective. The Paris court noted that the method of enforcement was not in dispute and pointed to data submitted by Canal+ showing Cloudflare had blocked 72.6% of targeted domain names through its CDN. The panel interpreted that figure as proof of genuine compliance rather than circumvention.

The court also held that Cloudflare is not liable when pirated services migrate to rival CDNs or redirect users to mirror sites. Under the court's reasoning, Canal+ must request enforcement from the new intermediaries and report mirror URLs to Arcom. Addressing the Court of Justice of the European Union's UPC Telekabel Wien precedent, the panel clarified that intermediaries are required to take reasonable and proportionate measures rather than guarantee absolute prevention, rendering Canal+'s penalty demands unnecessary.

The ruling protects Cloudflare's operational policy of keeping its 1.1.1.1 resolver free from blocking mechanisms. In its transparency reports, Cloudflare noted that it has never blocked content through 1.1.1.1 despite court orders in France and Italy, while actively geoblocking 662 domains under seven French orders in the first half of 2025 and 1,238 domains under one order in the second half. The decision arrives ahead of an upcoming ruling in Paris regarding non-profit DNS resolver Quad9, which faces similar penalty demands from beIN Sports.