A court decision requires that VPNs block illegal sports streaming sites – Liberation
The decision will be a date, and it will delight the broadcasters. For the first time, French justice ordered VPN to block illegal sites for the dissemination of sporting events. This decision « Sends a strong signal on the responsibility of VPNs, qualified for the first time as technical intermediaries, in the illegal dissemination of sporting content »writes the audiovisual group Canal +.
For its part, the Professional Football League (LFP) and its branch responsible for TV rights, LFP Media, stress that this decision is « A first in France, if not in the world, and constitutes a major advance in the fight against hacking ». The LFP knows what it is talking about, since it is entangled in a crisis that has lasted for months with the DAZN Ligue 1 diffuserwho has broken his contract due, in particular, hacking problems met during the season.
According to Canal +, the Paris judicial court ordered five VPNs on Thursday (NordVPN, Cyberghost, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and Proton) of « Blocking 203 names of illegal diffusion sites » of « Sports competitions ». This concerns the Champions League, the England Football Championship and the Top 14 (the French Rugby Championship), competitions of which Canal + holds the rights, as well as Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, organized by the LFP.
In the past, justice has already ordered other technical intermediaries to block pirate sites: Internet service providers, then « Alternative DNS service providers (…) or CDN and proxy »recalls Canal +.
The fact that this type of decision now concerns VPNs creates a « Previous judicial » Who « Formally is part of the group’s dynamics to force technical intermediaries, of any kind, to take responsibility in the fight against audiovisual hacking »concludes Canal +.
VPNs (virtual private networks) make it possible to bypass the restrictions that apply to paid content, locating the computer connected in a country other than that where it really is and by masking its IP address.
In a report published in the spring of 2024, the French audiovisual regulator, the Arcom, stressed that more than one in two user (57 %) with illicit practices used a VPN.
