French Court Orders Google DNS to Block Pirate Sites, Dismisses 'Cloudflare-First' Defense (torrentfreak.com) 34
Paris Judicial Court ordered Google to block additional pirate sports-streaming domains at the DNS level, rejecting Google's argument that enforcement should target upstream providers like Cloudflare first. "The blockade was requested by Canal+ and aims to stop pirate streams of Champions League games," notes TorrentFreak. From the report: Most recently, Google was compelled to take action following a complaint from French broadcaster Canal+ and its subsidiaries regarding Champions League piracy.. Like previous blocking cases, the request is grounded in Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, which enables rightsholders to seek court orders against any entity that can help to stop 'serious and repeated' sports piracy. After reviewing the evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, the Paris Court granted the blocking request, ordering Google to block nineteen domain names, including antenashop.site, daddylive3.com, livetv860.me, streamysport.org and vavoo.to.
The latest blocking order covers the entire 2025/2026 Champions League series, which ends on May 30, 2026. It's a dynamic order too, which means that if these sites switch to new domains, as verified by ARCOM, these have to be blocked as well. Google objected to the blocking request. Among other things, it argued that several domains were linked to Cloudflare's CDN. Therefore, suspending the sites on the CDN level would be more effective, as that would render them inaccessible. Based on the subsidiarity principle, Google argued that blocking measures should only be ordered if attempts to block the pirate sites through more direct means have failed.
The court dismissed these arguments, noting that intermediaries cannot dictate the enforcement strategy or blocking order. Intermediaries cannot require "prior steps" against other technical intermediaries, especially given the "irremediable" character of live sports piracy. The judge found the block proportional because Google remains free to choose the technical method, even if the result is mandated. Internet providers, search engines, CDNs, and DNS resolvers can all be required to block, irrespective of what other measures were taken previously. Google further argued that the blocking measures were disproportionate because they were complex, costly, easily bypassed, and had effects beyond the borders of France.
The Paris court rejected these claims. It argued that Google failed to demonstrate that implementing these blocking measures would result in "important costs" or technical impossibilities. Additionally, the court recognized that there would still be options for people to bypass these blocking measures. However, the blocks are a necessary step to "completely cease" the infringing activities.
The latest blocking order covers the entire 2025/2026 Champions League series, which ends on May 30, 2026. It's a dynamic order too, which means that if these sites switch to new domains, as verified by ARCOM, these have to be blocked as well. Google objected to the blocking request. Among other things, it argued that several domains were linked to Cloudflare's CDN. Therefore, suspending the sites on the CDN level would be more effective, as that would render them inaccessible. Based on the subsidiarity principle, Google argued that blocking measures should only be ordered if attempts to block the pirate sites through more direct means have failed.
The court dismissed these arguments, noting that intermediaries cannot dictate the enforcement strategy or blocking order. Intermediaries cannot require "prior steps" against other technical intermediaries, especially given the "irremediable" character of live sports piracy. The judge found the block proportional because Google remains free to choose the technical method, even if the result is mandated. Internet providers, search engines, CDNs, and DNS resolvers can all be required to block, irrespective of what other measures were taken previously. Google further argued that the blocking measures were disproportionate because they were complex, costly, easily bypassed, and had effects beyond the borders of France.
The Paris court rejected these claims. It argued that Google failed to demonstrate that implementing these blocking measures would result in "important costs" or technical impossibilities. Additionally, the court recognized that there would still be options for people to bypass these blocking measures. However, the blocks are a necessary step to "completely cease" the infringing activities.
DNS doesn't work that way. (Score:3)
I have to assume that Google isn't the authoritative record for these domains. I guess they might be, and in that case the block seems 'somewhat' reasonable. However, if they aren't, and they are just an echo of the authoritative server, then it seems incredibly short-sighted to target Google here.
Is OpenDNS targeted as well, or xFinity, or any of a million other DNS 'repeaters.'
Canal+ is European. I wonder what percentage of European 'Internet users' have Google as their primary DNS server. I'm guessing those [famous IPs] are hosted in the US, and it would server Europe better to point at something more local? (Does Google have other DNS server IPs in other regions? Can you load-balance a single IP such that it doesn't require bouncing off an specific machine? Or is that what DNS would provide?)
Re:DNS doesn't work that way. (Score:5, Informative)
This is the Google public resolver, at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. They are "anycasted" IPs, with servers all over the world. Much of the core DNS infrastructure (large authoritative servers like the 13 root servers and lots of TLDs like .com as well as public resolvers like Google, Cloudflare, and quad9).
Anycasting is advertising routes into the global routing tables for the same network in multiple locations. It's not something generally used much with longer-lived TCP connections like HTTP/HTTPS, but works well with UDP and very small/short TCP connections like DNS.
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With the housing crisis as bad as it is, how can you let the guy live rent free in your head? Surely you can make some money off your mental handicap?
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I don't consent to being involved in his kink, which depends upon public ridicule.
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I checked my tablet (a Samsung), it has a default set to "Private DNS (recommended)" which means it does DoH to somewhere, and I would guess Google.
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Re:DNS doesn't work that way. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I think it happening here is that they're trying to get Google DNS (as in 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) to prevent resolving of the pirate sites. Which is fine. Users who really want to reach those pirate sites will switch directly to cloudflare's piracy-friendly 1.1.1.1
There is likely a fundamental misunderstanding by Canal+ about how DNS works. Because Google is correct, the way to shut a piracy site down is to sue Cloudflare for the damages if they do not eject the site from it's CDN.
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Indeed, that is not how DNS works. Or rather, this "block" will affect only people using the Google resolver.
But too many judges and politicians think _they_ define reality and are incapable of asking actual experts before making nonsensical decisions.
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Canal+ is European. I wonder what percentage of European 'Internet users' have Google as their primary DNS server.
61%. That's the percentage of Chrome users in Europe. Since Chrome 83 DoH has been enabled by default, and while it will try doing a DoH connection to the OS configured server first, the fallback (and it will fall back since most ISPs do not offer DoH) is to use Google's DoH servers for DNS.
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French impotence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:French impotence (Score:5, Interesting)
1) The court acknowledges the existence of workarounds.
2) There's a claimant (a rights holder) that asked the Court to block the DNS. As this is a Rule of Law country, the Court has no other option than ruling in their favour, even knowing the decision is futile.
3) As the court addresses, even a futile measure is still necessary to preserve the legal order.
One cannot make a business of facilitating illegal things, and the existence of workarounds isn't a justification. Google is making a business with the data it collects from people asking DNS from them. As an analogy a pharmacist cannot make a business of telling customers tips on where to buy illegal drugs. Telling the pharmacist to stop is a necessity, even though the customers can ask someone else.
Re:French impotence (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah the law is funny that way. So the pharmacist has to waste his time pulling down the posters on the message board while the rest of the shops in the mall have flashing advertisements.
The funny thing is that in some future time a similar case will be heard in front of another judge and we won't have the same decision.
Roads facilitate illegal things, maybe we should go after the pavers....
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In a DNS resolver analogy, the road company gets into trouble if they place signs that read "DRUG HOUSE --->"
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It might also be worth pointing out that once the rightholder has won that case, it will make it easier for him to go after the other offenders and slowly close the most gaping loopholes...
With regard to the "a 10 year old can get around it" comment... The reality is that most 50 year olds can not... in the same way that a 10 year old can go through a fence hole to grab an apple in someon's garden, a 50 year old can not...
Also, the 10 year old might do something illegal on purpose, but a 50 year old might r
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It might also be worth pointing out that once the rightholder has won that case, it will make it easier for him to go after the other offenders and slowly close the most gaping loopholes...
Except that will be equally futile within the bounds of the law. French law stops at the border, the internet doesn't. Google is a target thanks to being a multinational and specifically Google France is the entity that needed to comply. Simply not being a French company offers you immunity from this law.
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Next the rightsholders can also go against cloudflare (as google suggested), which has business in Europe. Current news is cloudflare just got fined in Italy for refusing to block piracy on its services ( https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com] ). If the sports rightsholder sue Cloudflatre for damages related to the World cup--the most watched show of all time, the damages can be so high they will force cloudflare to remove their servers from the European continent entirely and indefinitely. Which destroys their
I run my own DNS... (Score:3)
I run my own DNS. Google is not one of my forwarders, or even involved. If my server isn't authoritative, it goes to the root servers for the TLD, and tracks it down from there. Frogs can go surrender to my house dynamic IP. I'll accept Nouvelle-Aquitaine with land & titles, and let them keep Paris.
T
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I do the same, but it appears that at least Movistar in Spain is doing DPI and blocking the requests to the authoritative servers for "prohibited" domains. Movistar also will block Cloudflare IP ranges that have been used to pirate content, taking out a lot of legitimate sites as well for hours or days. It's very frustrating.
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The root servers support DNS over TLS, so Movistar, unless they are willing to block that, they might as well give up.
Since when (Score:2)
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Lack of technical competence and knowledge by judges is a current and growing problem.
When they don't understand what they're ruling on, their rulings can be harmful or nonsensical and this can create very real issues in the world.
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Lack of technical competence and knowledge by judges is a current and growing problem.
Judges should not be subject matter experts on every subject, except the law.
No, the problem is Dunning-Kruger syndrome in judges and their apparent lack of awareness of this.
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I never said they have to be an expert.
There's a lot of separation between "what is this thingy with the typewriter keys on it?" and "senior design engineer".
Unfortunately, most of those in power (both judicial and legislative) tend to be closer to the lower end of that scale.
And, as I said, that's a problem.
Can Google really not do this only for France ? (Score:1)
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I'm not sure it's required that it be "globally".
8.8.8.8 is anycasted. Even if they made their French POPs enforce it, anycast traffic can shift, nor does BGP reliably respect national borders. So it may never affect Australia, but it could leak into UK, Germany/Bavaria, Netherlands etc, alternatively French traffic might under certain circumstances hit an Amsterdam or Frankfurt POP.
Not to mention GEO satellite internet.
Alternatively, were they to implement it via CIDR-delineated views, there's enough other
Redirect DNS (Score:3)
If you have to stop resolving these pages, redirect to a page with an apology and an explanation where to find uncensored DNS. 8.8.8.8 is not making Google money anyway and basically exists so their own products have a fallback, so they have nothing to lose from directing people from a "sorry we are censored" page to explanations how to get uncensored access.