Cloudflare won a significant victory in Paris last month. A three-judge panel refused to slap the company with daily fines for failing to block pirate sports streams through its popular public DNS resolver.
The decision, handed down September 17, lets 1.1.1.1 remain untouched by court-ordered censorship in France. Canal+, the pay-TV giant behind the push, wanted €50,000 per site per day. The court said no. The ruling underscores limits on what intermediaries must do.
Over the past two years French courts have widened the net. Orders first hit internet service providers. Then they reached VPNs, search engines and alternative DNS services. Canal+ and other sports rights holders have driven much of this expansion under Article L. 333-10 of the Sports Code. The provision lets them seek any measure from any party that can help stop serious and repeated piracy of live events.
In April the Paris Judicial Court ordered Cloudflare to block access to 21 Formula 1-related domains and 16 MotoGP domains. The orders covered the company’s full stack: public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1, its content delivery network, reverse proxy and WARP VPN service. Yet judges left the precise method open. Cloudflare could choose how to comply so long as the effort proved meaningful.
The company chose its CDN. It did not touch 1.1.1.1. And it has never blocked content through the public resolver, a position Cloudflare has repeated in every transparency report. “To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver,” the latest edition states. (TorrentFreak, Oct. 8, 2026).
Canal+ cried foul. Its investigators found that only three of the 21 F1 domains and three of the 16 MotoGP domains were blocked through the CDN. Two of those blocked sites resurfaced within a week after operators switched providers or launched mirrors. The broadcaster argued this fell short of effective enforcement. It demanded coercive penalties that could have totaled tens of thousands of euros daily. It also sought €20,000 to cover legal costs.
But the numbers Canal+ presented to prove noncompliance became its undoing. The company’s own statistics showed Cloudflare had blocked 72.6% of targeted domains. The court viewed that figure as evidence of genuine effort rather than deliberate evasion.
Cloudflare told judges its public DNS architecture does not support selective geographic blocking without global side effects. CDN-level intervention works better anyway. And the original April orders explicitly gave the company flexibility in choosing its tools. A panel of three judges accepted those points on Sept. 17.
They drew on the European Court of Justice’s 2014 UPC Telekabel Wien decision. Canal+ read that precedent as requiring intermediaries to deliver airtight results. The Paris court disagreed. Intermediaries owe reasonable measures, it ruled. An obligation of means, not outcome. CDN blocks satisfied that standard when sites actually used Cloudflare’s network. When operators moved elsewhere, responsibility shifted back to rights holders. They must notify France’s audiovisual regulator Arcom about new mirrors and pursue fresh orders against new intermediaries.
The penalties were therefore neither necessary nor proportionate. The court rejected them outright. It also denied Canal+ any recovery of legal costs. Each side pays its own way. The broadcaster can still appeal.
This outcome fits Cloudflare’s broader stance. The San Francisco-based firm has faced similar pressure in Italy, where regulators fined it millions for refusing to hook 1.1.1.1 into that country’s Piracy Shield system. Cloudflare appealed. It continues to insist the public resolver stays neutral. Meanwhile its CDN business has absorbed growing volumes of court-mandated geo-blocks. The company geoblocked 1,238 domains in France during the second half of 2025 alone, up sharply from earlier periods. (TorrentFreak, Oct. 8, 2026).
Earlier this year the Paris Court of Appeal upheld orders requiring Cloudflare, Google and Cisco to block hundreds of pirate domains through their respective DNS services. Those March 2026 rulings confirmed such measures are technically feasible and proportionate. Cisco responded by pulling OpenDNS from France during the appeal. Google and Cloudflare kept services running but fought the precedent. They lost. Yet those decisions left room for exactly the kind of technical nuance now on display.
The latest judgment draws a practical line. DNS blocking through public resolvers is not mandatory if CDN intervention delivers comparable protection. And courts will not punish companies for imperfect success when pirates adapt quickly. Mirrors and provider switches are facts of life online. Rights holders must keep chasing them.
Industry watchers see implications beyond this single dispute. Next up is Quad9. The Swiss nonprofit DNS provider lacks a CDN business. BeIN Sports is already seeking penalties against it for similar noncompliance. A decision could come later this month. Unlike Cloudflare, Quad9 may face starker choices: comply by altering its resolver or exit the French market. (VPNLab, Oct. 8, 2026).
France’s approach stands out even in Europe. Many countries order ISP-level blocks. Few have pushed so aggressively down the stack to third-party DNS, CDNs and VPNs for live sports piracy. The strategy reflects frustration with fast-moving illegal streaming sites that rack up millions of visits during major events. Librefutboltv.su alone drew more than 27 million monthly users before earlier blocks.
Yet the Cloudflare ruling injects realism. Perfect enforcement is impossible. Pirates adapt within days. Technical intermediaries cannot be held liable for every workaround. And public DNS resolvers, prized by millions for speed, privacy and security, need not become tools of censorship if other effective options exist.
Cloudflare’s transparency data tells part of the story. The firm has ramped up CDN geo-blocking in response to French orders. It has not touched 1.1.1.1. That distinction now carries judicial approval, at least for now. Rights holders will keep pressing for more. Courts will keep drawing boundaries. The balance between protecting live sports broadcasts and preserving open internet infrastructure remains unsettled. But one thing is clear. In France, 1.1.1.1 stays block-free.