France Orders ProtonVPN to Block Piracy Sites

A Paris court has ordered ProtonVPN to block 31 domains hosting illegal sports streams, rejecting every legal defense the VPN provider raised - including net neutrality, overblocking risks, and the technical impossibility of geographically limited blocking. The January 2026 rulings mark a significant escalation: for the first time, a French court has formally treated a VPN service as an intermediary with the same content-filtering obligations as an internet service provider.

Two Court Orders, 31 Blocked Domains

The Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris issued two separate blocking orders on January 28 and 29, 2026. The first, brought by the Premier League, required ProtonVPN to block 16 domains carrying unauthorized live match streams. The second, filed by Top 14 rugby's governing body, added 15 more domains. Both orders are time-limited - running until May 24 and June 27, 2026, respectively - and include a dynamic mechanism that allows rights holders to add newly identified piracy domains without returning to court, subject to oversight by ARCOM, France's audiovisual regulator.

The orders were not targeted at ProtonVPN alone. French ISPs including Orange, SFR, Free, and Bouygues Telecom, as well as DNS resolvers operated by Google, Cloudflare, and Quad9, received parallel blocking demands. But ProtonVPN's case drew the most attention because the company chose to fight back in court - and lost on every point.

ProtonVPN's Arguments - and Why the Court Rejected Them

ProtonVPN mounted a multi-layered legal defense. The company challenged the court's jurisdiction, demanded proof of rights ownership, and invoked the EU Open Internet Regulation as a shield against mandatory traffic filtering. It also raised a WTO trade agreement argument and, most critically, argued that its technology made geographically limited blocking technically impossible - any enforcement order would force a global block, creating disproportionate harm to users outside France.

The court was unpersuaded. The net neutrality argument was dismissed as "too vague." The technical impossibility claim failed because ProtonVPN presented "no quantifiable and verifiable technical evidence" to support it. On overblocking, the court found that the blocking measures are "limited in scope and duration" and therefore do not raise legitimate concerns. The judgment stated plainly: "Under these circumstances, the argument is unfounded. There is no basis for granting Proton's subsidiary claim of non-compliance with European law."

The Overblocking Question Remains Unresolved

Critics of sports piracy blocking laws have long warned that forcing intermediaries to filter traffic leads to collateral damage - legitimate websites that share IP addresses, servers, or domain infrastructure with piracy platforms can be swept up in orders designed for other targets. ProtonVPN's technical argument centered precisely on this risk: a VPN cannot selectively block a domain only for French users without also affecting its global user base.

The court's response - that blocking is "limited in scope" - leaves this concern unanswered rather than resolved. The dynamic nature of the orders, which allow new domains to be added at the request of rights holders, raises additional questions about due process and the potential for scope creep. ProtonVPN has indicated it intends to bring the matter before Europe's highest court, arguing the ruling conflicts with EU law on open internet access.

A Precedent That Could Reshape How VPNs Operate in Europe

The practical implication of the Paris rulings is straightforward: French courts are now treating VPN providers as network intermediaries with the same legal obligations as ISPs. That designation carries significant weight. ISPs in France have operated under mandatory blocking regimes for years, implementing DNS and IP blocks at scale under orders from rights holders and regulators. If VPN providers are placed in the same legal category, they face not only the current orders but a growing pipeline of future demands tied to every major sports broadcast season.

Separate proceedings in Spain have already extended similar logic to other VPN providers under LaLiga's enforcement actions. France and Spain are not operating in a legal vacuum - their courts are drawing on the EU's evolving framework for online platform responsibility, and the outcomes in Paris and Madrid will be closely watched by courts across the continent.

For users who rely on privacy-focused services to protect their internet traffic, the expanding reach of court-ordered content filtering is a direct challenge to the guarantees those services have traditionally offered. As VPN providers are compelled to implement blocking at the network level, the distinction between a privacy tool and a regulated communications intermediary becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

Conclusion