Rightsholders Target VPN Providers in French Court to Block Piracy
French rightsholders, including Canal+ and the French football league (LFP), are intensifying their efforts against online sports piracy by targeting Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers. They have initiated legal actions to compel major VPN services—such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, CyberGhost, and Surfshark—to block access to pirate sites and services. This move follows previous court orders that mandated DNS resolvers like Google, Cloudflare, Cisco, and Quad9 to restrict access to infringing sites. The legal basis for these actions is Article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code, which allows rightsholders to demand “all proportionate measures” against entities that can help address copyright infringement. Hearings for these cases are scheduled for next month.
