Question of the Fortnight
Will foreign TV companies start blocking your VPN?
Legal action in France threatens your ability to watch anything from anywhere
A
legal case brought by one of France’s biggest broadcasters and the French football league could ultimately prevent you from watching your favourite US show through your
VPN
.
Canal+ has teamed up with Ligue de Football Professionnel in an attempt to force the likes of NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, CyberGhost and Surfshark to block ‘pirate’ sites that illegally let viewers watch paid-for football matches for free.
It follows the broadcaster’s successful case last year against DNS resolvers, including Cloudflare, Google and OpenDNS. These are services that turn URLs into IP addresses, and can be used to access content illegally. Canal+ argued that viewers were using them to watch football on their channels without paying for it. A Paris court ordered the services to block access to over 100 pirate sites.