Canal+ Sues Cloudflare, Google & Cisco to Fight Piracy * TorrentFreak

Home > Lawsuits >

When broadcaster Canal+ obtained court orders to block popular sports streaming sites including Footybite and Streamcheck, French ISPs had to implement DNS blocking. In response, some users switched to third-party DNS providers, a hole that Canal+ now wants to plug. Through a lawsuit filed in a Paris court, the broadcaster hopes to force Cloudflare, Google and Cisco to implement similar DNS blocking measures.

Music Industry Obtained Groundbreaking Court Order to Force Danish ISPs to Implement Site Blocking Measures back in 2006.

The goal was to limit access to the Russian unlicensed music download platform AllofMP3, but the action also represented the thin end of a site-blocking loophole that is still being exploited today.

Canal+, a broadcaster and site blocking advocate, believes that when service providers implement technical measures to prevent access to pirate sites, it helps reduce piracy rates. Unfortunately, online obstacles that depend on technical adjustments always collide with other technical adjustments designed to overcome them.

Protecting live sports

A report by French media outlet l'Informé describes a fairly typical framework adopted by rights holders in Europe. To limit access to pirated live sports streams, Canal+ went to court in France this year arguing that local ISPs should prevent customers from accessing various pirate streaming sites.

Through Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info and Catchystream.com, Internet users were able to watch Premier League and Champions League football, as well as matches from the competitions of the 14 best clubs rugby, without paying for Canal+. the holder of local rights.

After the decisions favored Canal+, ISPs including Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free and Bouygues Télécom had to implement blocking measures. This meant that when ISPs' customers attempted to visit any of the above domains, the ISPs' respective DNS resolvers provided inauthentic responses, thereby denying the customers access to the sites.

Circumvention and New Legal Actions

The response to ISP blocking by increasingly savvy customers was to change their network settings to replace their ISP's DNS servers with those offered by unaffected third-party providers. When switching to DNS servers offered by cloud flare, Googleand Cisco (OpenDNS), domains worked as expected. This entirely predictable response is now countered by another.

Having leveraged enough to obtain the initial blocking orders, Canal+ has now returned to court in hopes of resolving the deficiencies of the blocking orders. After failing to achieve voluntary cooperation, reports l'Informé (paywall) that Canal+ is now suing Cloudflare, Google and Cisco in the Paris judicial court, to impose similar DNS blocking measures.

Legal basis: article L333-10

According Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code (active in January 2022), when there are “serious and repeated violations” by a “public online communication service” whose main objective is the unauthorized broadcast of sports competitions, rights holders can go to court to demand “all proportionate measures capable of preventing or putting an end to this violation, against any person who may contribute to remedying it.”

Measures provided include blocking, removing or deindexing communication services (in this case pirate streaming sites) when they meet the above criteria.

The judicial court may order that these measures be applied “for each of the days that appear in the official calendar of the competition or sporting event, within the limit of a period of twelve months.” Regarding the competitions that Canal+ hopes to protect, that is, until May 19, 2024 for the Premier League, until June 1, 2024 for the Champions League and until June 29, 2024 for the Top 14.

How serious is the avoidance situation?

According to detailed reports published by telecoms regulator Arcom, ISP-only DNS blocking measures have been highly successful in France.

Published in May 2023, Arcom's report for 2022 indicates that the overall audience for illicit sports broadcasts decreased by 41% between 2021 and 2022, going from 2.8 million average Internet users to 1.6 million.

Regarding circumvention of blocking measures, Arcom reported in May 2023 that, upon encountering a blocked site, almost half of all violating Internet users (46%) completely abandoned the idea of ​​​​viewing the content.

Of all offending users, only 6% attempted to bypass blocking measures using an alternative DNS, VPN, or similar method.

>

While circumvention of lockdown measures does not appear to be a particularly big problem in France at the moment, Arcom notes that it will remain vigilant in the future.

Out of curiosity, we looked for signs of blocking in France using data provided by the Open Network Interference Observatory (ONI). The system appears to detect the blocking of pirate sites in France as an "anomaly" (yellow) rather than a confirmed and absolute block (red).

Green sections may indicate that a relatively small number of users gain access to domains known to have links to piracy. Whether that volume justifies taking third-party DNS providers to court is another question.

However, it cannot be ruled out that there is also a strategic element in Canal+'s complaint; Another tap of a wedge, more incremental progress, and then an ever-expanding DNS lock in preparation for whatever comes next.