Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties In France

An anonymous reader reports from TorrentFreak that Cloudflare will not face penalties from French courts for not blocking pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. The Paris Judicial Court dismissed Canal+ requests for fines of 50,000 euros per site, per day. The court's decision is based on statistics provided by Canal+ itself.

Cloudflare maintains its stance that it does not interfere with its DNS resolver. In its transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated it has not blocked any content through 1.1.1.1 despite orders from French and Italian courts. Blocking through Cloudflare's CDN is a different matter. The company geoblocked 1,238 domains in France during the second half of 2025 and 662 domains in the first half of the year under court orders.

Cloudflare explained its position to the European Commission, emphasizing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used for blocking or restricting access. Instead, it highlighted its real-time pirate stream blocking program, where vetted rightsholders can flag pirate streams running through its network. Cloudflare can continue blocking pirate sites through its CDN while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains unaffected. Canal+ may appeal the rulings, indicating this could not be the last development on this matter.