The crusade of official sports broadcasters against illegal streaming platforms is taking a new turn. On February 18, it was Canal+ which, with drumbeat, filed a legal action with the Court of Cassation against Cloudflare.
Cloudflare is an American web company that provides DNS and content delivery network (CDN) services to customers. All these services then allow Internet users to access sites blocked by operators.
This is where the legal action initiated by Canal+ is surprising compared to all those carried out so far by the various broadcasters. Usually, these attack Internet service providers (ISPs), such as Orange, Free or SFR. But here, Canal+ is directly attacking the source of the problem.
Because ordering Internet service providers to block a site is no longer enough. Indeed, when a user types “site-pirate.com” in their search bar, the ISP pretends not to know the address and prevents the user from accessing it. But the user can, by changing their DNS settings, access the site directly through Cloudflare and no longer through the provider. Concretely, Cloudflare “masks” the real address of the servers of pirate sites and therefore prevents these sites from being closed.
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New burst of site blocking #streaming ordered to #CloudFlare in respect of its activities #DNS / #VPN / proxy.
With rejection by the Court of the request (heavy, €50,000) for penalty payments.
TJ Paris, 18/02/2026, 25/12366 25/10980 25/11814https://t.co/zXnixnZkdR pic.twitter.com/9CLvtcWHxw— Alec ن Archambault (@AlexArchambault) March 16, 2026
With its complaint, Canal+ wants to put pressure on Cloudflare for all official broadcasters of sports competitions. In the present case, the legal decision rendered by the Court of Cassation aims to protect the rights held by Canal+ for three competitions, namely the UEFA Champion’s League, the Premier League and the Top 14, the rugby championship.
Around fifty sites blocked
Cloudflare therefore has three days to block numerous sites illegally broadcasting matches from the previously mentioned competitions. In total, more than fifty sites are affected, including canalsport.ru, veplay.top, antenaplanet.store, etc.
The American company had argued to the court that setting up such blocks would be complex to implement, that they would be easily circumvented and, above all, that it would generate excessive technical costs. Regardless, the company must comply with the court decision, and even automatically block new domain names created to replace blocked sites.
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