Paris court rejects beIN's bid for daily penalties against VPNs and Cloudflare over WTA piracy blocks
in plain words
A French court said VPN companies and Cloudflare did enough to block websites that showed tennis matches illegally. So it refused a broadcaster's request to make them pay a large fine for every site still open. The broadcaster can still appeal.
Full summary
In May, the Paris Judicial Court ordered several VPN providers to block ten pirate sites and IPTV services that streamed WTA tennis matches. The order was requested by beIN Sports, which holds the exclusive French rights to most WTA tour matches. The broadcaster obtained a similar order against Cloudflare the following day.
The first request asked for penalties of €2,000 per day for each domain that two of the VPN providers failed to block. The court refused, because nothing showed the providers intended to disobey. It said the parties could return if problems arose, and beIN did so.
beIN then asked the court for a daily penalty of €10,000 for every domain that remained accessible, complaining that VPN providers and Cloudflare had not fully blocked the sites. Cloudflare, Surfshark and NordVPN, all represented by the same lawyer, cited technical constraints and said they had done their best. Proton was also targeted but did not attend the hearing.
The blocking was incomplete. Cloudflare blocked three of four sites, only through its CDN. Surfshark and NordVPN blocked six of eleven, only through the DNS Domain Name System The internet's directory that links domain names to computer addresses. Full definition of DNS service on their servers in France. The court nonetheless found these measures sufficient. In two rulings issued on October 7, it held that the intermediaries must make a reasonable effort to block the sites but need not guarantee the outcome, in line with EU Court of Justice case law. The case files showed that all companies had carried out the orders at least in part.
The court said the requested penalty did not appear necessary or proportionate, weighing the protection of copyright and neighboring rights against the freedom to conduct a business. The original blocking orders remain in effect until the end of the WTA season, currently set for November 14. beIN can still appeal.
The outcome mirrors the Paris court's ruling last month in Canal+'s case against Cloudflare, where daily penalties of €50,000 per site were refused.
The VPN providers are also contesting the blocking orders directly. NordVPN, Proton and CyberGhost appealed one of the first VPN blocking orders, obtained by the French football league LFP in May 2025. On September 30, at the VPN providers' request, the Paris Court of Appeal put that case on hold. It will wait for France's Supreme Court, the Cour de cassation, to decide appeals against seven earlier rulings issued in March and May this year, which upheld blocking orders Canal+ obtained against DNS provider A company that runs the name servers for a domain, which may differ from the registrar. Full definition of DNS provider. The appeals court said the cases are not identical but share many legal questions, including who can be ordered to help stop piracy, whether the French blocking law complies with EU law, how infringements must be proven, and when blocking is proportionate. It believes the Supreme Court outcome could affect the VPN case, though no date for that ruling is known.