Slashdot has reported:

Cloudflare will not face penalties in France for leaving pirate sports streaming sites accessible through its 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver, after the Paris Judicial Court rejected Canal+’s request for fines of 50,000 euros per site, per day. The court accepted Cloudflare’s position that it blocks the sites through its content delivery network (CDN), but not through the DNS resolver. Its conclusion relied in part on statistics provided by Canal+, the French pay-TV provider.

The decision means Cloudflare is not penalized under the orders, although 1.1.1.1 continues to resolve the sites in question. The company has long said it does not interfere with its DNS service. In its latest transparency report, Cloudflare stated: “To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver.”

Cloudflare has made similar statements in recent transparency reports, despite orders from courts in France and Italy. Its CDN blocking figures for France, however, show geoblocking of 1,238 domains in the second half of 2025 under one court order. In the first half of that year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders.

The company recently set out its position to the European Commission in a submission to a consultation for the Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. It argued that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access. Instead, Cloudflare pointed to a real-time programme that lets vetted rights holders flag pirate streams running through its network.

Cloudflare says it disrupts flagged streams “within seconds” without blocking DNS or IP addresses. In its submission to the Commission, it said: “For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds.”

Cloudflare can continue blocking pirate sites through its CDN while leaving 1.1.1.1 untouched. Canal+ retains the option to appeal the rulings, so the dispute may continue.