Cloudflare avoids French penalties over DNS piracy blocking dispute

The Paris Judicial Court has rejected a request from pay-TV provider Canal+ to impose penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day, against Cloudflare. The dispute centered on whether Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver was complying with orders to block access to pirate sports streaming sites in France.

Cloudflare maintained that it does not block content through its public DNS resolver, a position it has consistently stated in transparency reports. While the company does not use DNS to restrict access, it noted that it does perform geoblocking through its Content Delivery Network (CDN). According to Cloudflare, it geoblocked 1,238 domains in France during the second half of 2025 under a single court order.

In submissions to the European Commission, Cloudflare argued that global public DNS resolvers should not be used for content restriction. Instead, the company utilizes a real-time mitigation program that allows vetted rights holders to flag infringing live streams, which are then disrupted within seconds without the need for DNS or IP address blocking.