Paris court won't fine Cloudflare for keeping 1.1.1.1 out of piracy blocking
A Paris court has refused to fine Cloudflare for leaving its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 out of court-ordered piracy blocking. Canal+ wanted €50,000 a day for every pirate Formula 1 and MotoGP site that stayed reachable, arguing that Cloudflare had dodged the orders by blocking only through its content delivery network (CDN). In decisions dated September 17, the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris ruled that blocking through the CDN was enough, TorrentFreak reported on October 8. The French outlet L'Informé was first to report the rulings.
What Canal+ asked for
In April the same court ordered Cloudflare to block 21 domains streaming Formula 1 and 16 streaming MotoGP, races Canal+ holds the French rights to. The orders covered both the DNS resolver and the CDN and asked for blocking "by any effective means" without naming a method. In May, Canal+ came back asking for penalties: €50,000 a day for each listed site that was still accessible, and the same for each new site reported by the regulator Arcom. According to Canal+, only three domains per list had actually gone dark, and two of those were back online a week later, one on a different CDN and one through a mirror.
Why the court said no
Cloudflare argued that the way its public resolver is built does not allow blocking, that CDN blocking works far better than DNS blocking, and that the April orders left it free to pick the method. The three-judge panel agreed that Cloudflare blocks through the CDN "when the site uses that service" and "cannot be held responsible" when a site moves to another CDN or to a mirror; in that case Canal+ has to go after the new intermediary and report mirrors to Arcom. Relying on the EU Court of Justice's UPC Telekabel ruling, the judges said intermediaries only owe reasonable measures, an obligation of means rather than a result. They found that Cloudflare had taken such measures and rejected the penalties as neither necessary nor proportionate. Canal+ also lost its claim for €20,000 in legal costs. It can still appeal.
Cloudflare's transparency report says the company "has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver" to date. Through its CDN it geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025.
What it means for public DNS
European courts have been treating public resolvers in different ways. In August a Brussels court rejected a challenge by Google, Cloudflare and Cisco and upheld orders that make public DNS resolvers block pirate football streams. In France the next test is Quad9: beIN Sports is asking the Paris court for penalties because the Swiss non-profit refuses to block on its resolver, and Quad9 has said it may leave France rather than comply. A decision is expected later in October. Unlike Cloudflare, Quad9 has no CDN to block through instead, so the Cloudflare ruling does not settle its case.
For ordinary users the ruling also shows where blocking now happens. A site that Cloudflare geoblocks at the CDN stays unreachable from France whichever DNS resolver the visitor uses, so switching resolvers changes nothing for it.
