Justice forces him to block illegal retransmissions of MotoGP

In a movement that reminds us a lot of what is happening in these latitudes, Canal+ has made French justice recognize Cloudflare as responsible technical intermediary in its three capacities (DNS, CDN and inverse proxy), forcing it to implement blocks against websites that illegally retransmit the MotoGP 2025.

Why is it important. The Judicial Court of Paris feels a European precedent that could well influence the similar conflict that They keep LaLiga and Cloudflare in Spain on the blocking of websites that broadcast matches without rights.

The details:

• The sentence, issued at the end of March and which Xataka It has had access, states that Cloudflare must apply “all appropriate measures” to prevent access from French territory to fourteen concrete websites.
• The court has dismissed Cloudflare’s arguments about the alleged technical complexity and the excessive cost of applying these blockages.
• Technology must fulfill within a maximum period of three days after notification, without being fined at the moment.
• The ruling rejects the limitation of measures requested by Cloudflare and leaves him freedom to choose the technical modalities that he will use to make the blockages.

The foundations. The French court has determined that …

1. The DNS services of Cloudflare “allow access to a website thanks to its domain name” through conversion in IP address.
2. Its CDN network “reduces the data transmission time to the user and improves the safety and reliability of web pages”.
3. And defines its inverse proxy service as “a shield between user applications and the litigious site server.”

So the sentence concludes that these three capacities fulfill a “transmission function” that justifies the imposition of measures.

Meanwhile in Spain. LaLiga has been with legal actions against cloudflare for months for IPS blocks That, according to the entity, they affect “scarcely a few hundred” of legitimate websites, not “millions” as the technological alleges.

Cloudflare responded by presenting an incident of nullity against the Spanish sentence, claiming that LaLiga obtained “hiding the foreseeable damage to third parties.” Justice rejected it.

• The company chaired by Javier Tebas has accused Cloudflare of collaborating “through its technology with the commission of the most serious crimes such as child pornography, pimping, fraud, etc..”

Meanwhile in Europe:

The legal framework. The French sentence is based on the Sports Code and Intellectual Property regulations, in line with the European Directives on Copyright.

The ruling quotes jurisprudence of the EU Court of Justice that establishes that an “intermediary” is any person who transmits a commitment committed in a network. And in this case, the judicial “victim” is cloudflare.

In Xataka | This is how Ech works, the Technological Shield of Cloudflare that has put the operators between the sword and the wall

Outstanding image | MotoGP, Cloudflare