Paris court rejects Canal+ penalties

On September 17, 2026, the Paris judicial court dismissed two penalty requests submitted by Canal+ against Cloudflare, a U.S.-based tech company, as reported by L'Informé. Canal+ had asked for 50,000 euros per day for each unblocked pirate site related to Formula 1 and MotoGP, along with 20,000 euros in legal fees.

Previous court order on domain blocking

In an earlier ruling on April 17, 2026, the same court ordered Cloudflare to block access to 21 domain names broadcasting Formula 1 and 16 others retransmitting MotoGP from France. The court left Cloudflare to choose the method of blocking, though it only acted on one of its functions.

Cloudflare’s role and partial compliance

Cloudflare operates as a content delivery network (CDN) and provides a public DNS resolver called 1.1.1.1, which helps users access websites. In this case, Cloudflare only used its CDN to block access to pirate sites, leaving other methods unaffected. According to Canal+, only three of the 21 Formula 1 domains and three of the 16 MotoGP domains were blocked, with some returning quickly due to technical changes.

Court dismisses Canal+'s blocking rate

The court rejected Canal+'s argument that 72.6% of pirate sites were blocked, noting that the number of blocked domains was not clearly linked to the three sites in question. The judges emphasized that Cloudflare had shown a willingness to cooperate and referenced a 2014 European Union court ruling that technical intermediaries must take reasonable steps, but without guarantees of success.

Cloudflare’s defense and no DNS filtering

Cloudflare argued that its public DNS resolver, 1.1.1.1, is not designed for content filtering, though the court did not comment on this claim. The company has not used the DNS resolver to block any content. During the relevant period, 1,238 domains were blocked via Cloudflare’s CDN in France.

Next legal challenge involves beIN Sports

In a related development, L'Informé reported that beIN Sports is seeking 580,000 euros in penalties from the Quad9 Foundation, another DNS resolver, over similar issues.