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Posted by Ernesto Van der Sar

https://torrentfreak.com/protonvpn-fights-french-pirate-site-blockades-but-court-rejects-overblocking-fears/

https://torrentfreak.com/?p=276877

Earlier this week, a Spanish court ordered ProtonVPN and NordVPN to block pirate LaLiga streams on their networks.

The VPN providers were not involved in the legal proceedings, and the orders were granted without a defense. In fact, ProtonVPN learned about it from news reports and questioned its legal validity.

While the Spanish order made headlines due to its novelty, France has seen several of these orders already. This includes two new decisions issued in late January, where ProtonVPN fought back tooth and nail but still lost.

ProtonVPN Faces Two New Blocking Orders in France

The Paris Judicial Court issued two separate orders on January 28 and 29, both targeting Proton AG individually as the sole defendant. Both cases involved various rightsholders, including Canal+ companies, who sought to protect their interest in sports broadcasts.

In one case, they want ProtonVPN to block 16 pirate sites (full list here) that streamed Premier League matches, and the other case targets the same number of domain names, focusing on sites that stream the Top 14 Rugby competition.

The Paris Judicial Court ultimately granted both orders, which is in line with previous blocking injunctions. In the Rugby case, one domain was excluded from the blocklist due to an oversight; the court noted that the URL tested during the investigation didn’t match the domain name Canal+ actually requested to be blocked.

ProtonVPN Fought Back Hard

While Proton was excluded from the legal process in Spain, the Swiss company was allowed to defend itself before the Paris court. This is precisely what it did, with the VPN provider raising a wide variety of defenses.

The VPN provider raised jurisdictional questions and also requested to see evidence that Canal+ owned all the rights at play. However, these concerns didn’t convince the court.

The same applies to Proton’s net neutrality defense, which argued that Article 333-10 of the French sports code, which is at the basis of all blocking orders, violates EU Open Internet Regulation. This defense was too vague, the court concluded, noting that Proton cited the regulation without specifying which provisions were actually breached.

“Under these circumstances, the argument is unfounded. There is no basis for granting Proton’s subsidiary claim of non-compliance with European law,” the court concluded.

Additionally, Proton argued that forcing a Swiss company to block content for French users restricts cross-border trade in services under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services. The court dismissed this argument, as the proposed blocking measures are limited in scope and duration, which should be allowed under the WTO agreement.

Overblocking Concerns Dismissed

Proton’s defense didn’t stop there; the company also argued that the blocking measures are technically unrealizable, costly, and unnecessarily complex.

Crucially, the VPN provider argued that a block cannot be technically restricted to France. Therefore, forcing the company to block these domains in France would effectively force an international, global blockade, which is highly disproportionate to the localized rights Canal+ holds.

The Paris Court was not swayed by these technical and cost-related concerns, including the fears of a global blockade.

“It must be noted that no quantifiable and verifiable technical evidence corroborates the technical difficulties of implementation cited by the defense,” the court concluded.

The Battle Continues

While ProtonVPN was allowed to defend itself, unlike in Spain, the end result is similar. The VPN provider has to block access to the 31 domain names.

That said, the court didn’t grant Canal+ everything it asked for. The broadcaster wanted ProtonVPN to publish the ruling on its website for three months, but the court concluded that this would unfairly put the VPN provider in a bad light, disproportionately associating it with the pirate sites. Canal+’s €30,000 cost claim didn’t survive either.

Both orders are dynamic in nature, meaning that rightsholders can report new pirate domains or mirror sites directly to ARCOM, the French media regulator. After ARCOM verifies these new domains, ProtonVPN has to add them to their blocklist.

The legal battle over VPN blocking is far from over yet. Proton previously said it would take VPN blocking to Europe’s highest court.

Meanwhile, however, French rightsholders show no sign of slowing down. These two Proton orders came alongside a parallel Google DNS blocking order for the same Premier League domains, as well a massive ISP blocking order covering 150+ IPTV domains.

At this point, the question isn’t whether French courts will keep ordering VPN blocks. They will. The question is whether Europe’s highest court will eventually set any limits or not.

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Copies of the court orders (in French) are linked below, alongside all targeted domain names.

Premier League Case (16 Domains):

– abbasport.online
– antenaplanet.store
– antenawest.store
– daddylive.dad
– foot22.ru
– miztv.top
– tous-sports.ru
– andrenalynrushplay.cfd
– vidembed.re
– bleedfilter.net
– alldownplay.xyz
– catchthrust.net
– 4kultramedia.fr
– smart.stella.cx
– franceiptvabonnement.fr
– slayvision.xyz

Top 14 Rugby Case (15 Domains):

– abbasport.online
– antenashop.site
– antenawest.store
– canalsport.ru
– daddylive2.top
– sporttuna.click
– antenaplanet.store
– veplay.top
– catchthrust.net
– lefttoplay.xyz
– home.sporttuna.vip
– sporttuna.website
– zukiplay.cfd
– iptv-pro.co
– atlaspro.tv

(Additionally, here is the simultaneous Google DNS order that targets the same 16 Premier League domains, and the massive ISP order targets roughly 150+ domains tied to seven major IPTV operations).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

https://torrentfreak.com/protonvpn-fights-french-pirate-site-blockades-but-court-rejects-overblocking-fears/

https://torrentfreak.com/?p=276877