A French court has rejected a flurry of arguments presented by the privacy-focused Swiss VPN operator ProtonVPN for why it shouldn’t be forced to block its users from accessing various sports streaming pirate services. Which means the VPN is now obligated to block the targeted sports piracy sites in France.
For music companies it’s an important ruling as web blocking has become a core part of the toolkit copyright owners are using in the perpetual battle against online piracy, as they look to force internet companies - including VPNs - to crack down on infringement by users.
Among other things, ProtonVPN said that the French web-blocking orders violated the European Union’s Open Internet Regulation, which seeks to safeguard ‘net neutrality’ across Europe, so that all internet traffic is treated equally, and people can access and distribute content without discrimination.
But, according to Torrentfreak, the Paris Judicial Court recently concluded there “is no basis for granting Proton’s claim of non-compliance with European law”, insisting that that claim was too vague, failing to identify which specific elements of the EU regulation were violated by the sporty web-blocks.
Proton also argued that the French web-blocks were technically and unnecessarily complex, and would inevitably impact on users outside of France. But the court wasn’t convinced, stating “no quantifiable and verifiable technical evidence corroborates the technical difficulties of implementation cited by the defence”.
Web-blocking - where courts order internet companies to block their users from accessing specific piracy services - have been an anti-piracy tactic of choice for the music industry for years now, in those countries where courts are willing to issue such orders, like the UK and France.
Originally it was internet service providers that were ordered to block piracy sites. Some ISPs initially objected, but most ultimately complied. However, a web-block put in place by an ISP can often be relatively easily circumvented if a person uses an independent ‘DNS resolver’ or a ‘virtual private network’, aka a VPN. Which is why music companies, and other copyright owners, have started seeking web-blocking orders that target a wider range of internet companies.
Sony Music and Universal Music have both sought web-blocking orders against DNS resolvers like Quad9 and Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 in Germany and Italy - with mixed success. Ultimately the German courts ruled that 1.1.1.1 didn’t have to instigate web-blocks against music piracy sites because a DNS resolver “contributes to the connection of internet domains in a purely passive, automatic and neutral manner”.
More recently, it’s broadcasters enforcing broadcast rights for football and rugby that have been trying to expand the reach of web-blocking in Europe to VPNs, including in France and Spain. And as it currently stands, they seem to be having more success.
VPNs, like DNS resolvers, generally insist they shouldn’t have to instigate web-blocks, raising both legal and technical issues, while also arguing that web-blocking as an anti-piracy tactic doesn’t really work. But the recent judgements in France suggest VPNs need to find some better arguments than those used by Proton in this latest dispute.