Canal Plus has worked to protect itself from any illegal broadcast of “its” Formula 1 championship: Proton VPN, Google Search, Bing (Microsoft) and internet service providers have just been ordered by the courts to block illegal IPTV of the “FIA Formula One World Championship”.
At Canal Plus, victories against illegal IPTV and sports piracy are multiplying like hot cakes. The encrypted channel, which has launched salvos of legal action against the illegal broadcast of its sports competitions, has this time set about protecting the broadcast of the “FIA Formula One World Championship”, a Formula 1 championship for which it holds certain rights, and which takes place from March 6 to December 6, 2026.
To do this, it initiated three actions against three types of intermediaries: typically, internet service providers (ISPs) in France and overseas territories (SFR, Orange, Bouygues, Free and many others) – case 26/00511 – the search engines Google Search and Bing (Microsoft) – case 26/00512, and the Swiss VPN service Proton – file 26/00520.
Legal actions launched in December 2025
As always, the story begins the same way. Canal Plus notes, at the end of 2025, that “ numerous websites and IPTV services accessible from France broadcast almost systematically, free of charge, in streaming and live, among other things, the races of multiple competitions to which it has rights “. To try to prevent Internet users via streaming, a VPN or illegal IPTV from having access to Formula 1 competitions broadcast on Canal Plus, without going through the channel’s subscription box, several legal actions were taken in December 2025.
And the judgments were published on April 17, spotted and relayed on his X account this Tuesday, April 28 by the lawyer specializing in digital technology Alexandre Archambault. All agree with the channel, by demanding that the intermediaries concerned prevent access to illicit IPTV sites or services listed in a specific list.
Also read: IPTV: what are the risks if you use an illegal service?
The fight against sports piracy includes more and more intermediaries
These judgments are far from being a surprise. Since May 2025, the date of Canal Plus’s first victory against consumer VPN providers, this time over football and rugby matches, the successes have continued for the audiovisual group. As a reminder, VPNs, “Virtual Private Networks” or virtual private networks in French, are platforms that allow Internet users to modify their position and bypass geographic blocking of sites and platforms.
In each of its legal actions, Canal Plus had to prove “ serious and repeated violations of its audiovisual exploitation rights », according to article L 333-10 of the sports code. To do this, it mandates bailiffs who draw up reports for each identified site or service which broadcasts sports competitions on the encrypted channel.
If these violations are serious – which is the case in our three cases – the president of the Paris judicial court can order “ any blocking, withdrawal or dereferencing measure ” has ” any intermediary likely to remedy the breach » – a non-limiting term, recalled the Paris judicial court, which now includes in addition to Internet access providers, DNS, VPN and search engine providers.
The court imposes the blocking measure but not the technical means of blocking
For Microsoft and Google, these will be dereferencing measures – the giants will have to remove from search results any links to the disputed sites and IPTVs. For Proton, who pleaded “ the necessarily international scope of the blocking, the significant costs, even the technical impossibilities, the need to break the encryption of traffic to carry out the measurement “, or who decried a ” measure (which) involves observation and active monitoring of users », the judgment is identical.
Same story for Free Mobile which now offers a VPN service. The Paris judicial court thus recalls “ that it is not up to the court to choose between the different technical means of executing the blocking measure ordered. (…) The company Free mobile must remain free to choose the technical methods by which it will carry out the ordered blocking », including for its VPN component.
This will involve adopting within three days “ all blocking measures to prevent, until the date of the last race of the competition known as “Formula 1” season 2026 currently set for December 6, 2026, access to identified IPTV sites and services “. To go faster and avoid having to go back before a judge to stop mirror sites, the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom), the digital and audiovisual policeman, will be able to update the famous list, until the last day of the competition.
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