📰 New article from TorrentFreak
Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties in France
### The Great DNS Tug-of-War
If you’ve ever used Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS to speed up your browsing, you might be breathing a sigh of relief today. French courts just handed Cloudflare a major win in a high-stakes battle over sports piracy.
The drama centers on Canal+, the French pay-TV giant, which has been aggressively trying to shut down illegal Formula 1 and MotoGP streams. Canal+ went to court demanding that Cloudflare block these pirate sites via its DNS resolver, even threatening massive fines of €50,000 per day if they didn’t comply.
However, the Paris court wasn’t buying the drama. They ruled that Cloudflare doesn’t need to “break” its DNS to satisfy the law. Instead, Cloudflare has been using its CDN (Content Delivery Network) to block sites, which is technically more effective but leaves the DNS resolver untouched.
The key takeaways:
- DNS stays free: Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 resolver remains unblocked, sticking to its promise of not interfering with internet traffic.
- Reasonable efforts count: The court decided that using a CDN to block sites constitutes “reasonable measures,” even if some pirate sites simply hop to a different provider.
- The burden is on the broadcaster: The court noted it’s up to Canal+ to chase down new mirror sites, not Cloudflare’s job to play digital whack-a-mole forever.
Cloudflare dodged the fines, but the legal battle isn’t over—other DNS providers, like Quad9, are currently facing similar legal heat.