Canal+ intensifies its fight against sports hacking by taking Google, Cisco and Cloudflare to court. The channel aims to block illegal sites broadcasting the Champions League, the Premier League and the Top 14, for which it holds the rights.
The encrypted channel Canal+ puffs its chest out. She has initiated major legal proceedings before the Paris judicial court, our colleagues at the Informed, with the aim of forcing Google, Cisco and Cloudflare, excuse me, to block illegal streaming sites which broadcast renowned sports competitions (Champions League, Top 14 or even Premier League) which it offers to its subscribers. If, until now, the group had focused on Internet service providers, it is now aiming higher by targeting the DNS services of digital giants.
Canal+ could create a legal precedent in the world of illegal piracy of sports content
Canal+ is adopting a fairly unique strategy in its battle against sports piracy. After successfully blocking sites from ISPs, the chain is now targeting DNS services from Google, Cisco, and Cloudflare. The group belonging to Vincent Bolloré relies on article 333-10 of the Sports Code, which authorizes rights holders to request measures against any person contributing to an infringement.
We must bear in mind that the action taken today by Canal was recommended by ARCOM (the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication) and the European Commission. For both authorities, it is imperative to take all necessary measures against new forms of fraudulent access.
It could create a sort of jurisprudence on the subject and thus revolutionize the fight against violations of audiovisual rights, who knows. If the final decision of the Paris judicial court were to be favorable to Canal+, it would also contribute to updating the blacklist of illegal sites, without resorting to new legal action in the future. But let’s try to understand what we’re talking about more concretely.
Because ISPs are not the only ones who can act, Canal wants the digital giants to take their responsibilities
Despite recent blockages imposed on ISPs, at the beginning of the year or more recently in September, initial but still vain victories, Canal+ has noted that users manage to circumvent the restrictions by using alternative DNS to those of Orange, SFR, Free or Bouygues Telecom, those of Google, Cloudflare and Cisco more particularly. The bailiffs unearthed online tutorials detailing this manipulation, and it was with a large list of banned domain names that Canal filed its case in court.
Cisco did not respond to our colleagues from the Informed. As for Canal+, Google and Cloudflare, the three players have also not commented on the current affair. The latter city has nevertheless already reacted to a similar action in Germany, criticizing the inefficiency and disproportion of blocking by public resolvers. Behind the scenes, several actors question the feasibility of the measure, arguing that it is easy to change DNS services and that this approach could contravene European law.
Canal+ is in any case determined to enter a new era in the fight against piracy by subpoenaing digital giants. This is an approach that could reshape strategies for protecting audiovisual rights, while the debate on the proportionality and effectiveness of these blockages rages.
Source : the Informed
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