OpenDNS shuts down service in France due to Canal+ piracy ban order * TorrentFreak

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This month, a French court followed Canal+’s request to tighten anti-piracy measures already in place. The court ordered Google, Cloudflare and Cisco to spoof their DNS records to prevent these third-party services from acting as workarounds to existing blocks on piracy websites. Cisco’s response was clear on Friday when the company withdrew its OpenDNS service from across the country.

In 2023, broadcaster Canal+ went to court in France seeking an order requiring local ISPs to block over 100 pirate sports streaming sites.

The French court complied with the request and ISPs such as Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free and Bouygues Télécom were ordered to take technical measures to prevent access to Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info and Catchystream.com, as well as dozens of others.

Since ISPs have their own DNS resolvers for their customers, they have been configured to provide inauthentic answers to deny access to the websites in question. Not surprisingly, some ISP users have reconfigured their machines to use third-party DNS servers, including those from Cloudflare, Google and Cisco.

Canal+ targets DNS providers

To prevent these workarounds, Canal+ took legal action last year against three popular public DNS providers – Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8) and Cisco (208.69.38.205) – demanding blocking measures similar to those already implemented by French ISPs under Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code.

The Paris court responded in May with two injunctions, one concerning Premier League matches and the other Champions League matches. The court ordered Google, Cloudflare and Cisco to take measures to prevent French internet users from using their services to access around 117 pirate domains.

Google had previously indicated that it would comply, and in the last 24 hours OpenDNS has also complied, although perhaps not in the way Canal+ or the court had expected.

OpenDNS shuts down the entire service for the whole of France

Reports of problems with the OpenDNS service apparently began on Friday, and it didn’t take long for the cause to be found. The technical problems were limited to France and apparently also to parts of Portugal. An explanation appeared on the OpenDNS website probably as early as Thursday evening.

“Effective June 28, 2024: Due to a court order in France under Article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code and a court order in Portugal under Article 210-G(3) of the Portuguese Copyright Code, the OpenDNS service is currently unavailable to users in France and certain French territories, as well as in Portugal. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the announcement said.

At the time of writing, OpenDNS does not appear to have explained its decision in detail, but it is entirely possible that the operators of this technical information service will strongly object to being instructed to undermine its accuracy.

Canal+’s demands, which are fully supported by courts in France and Portugal, effectively require OpenDNS to lie about DNS queries. It’s not hard to see why this would be a problem for operators of a completely neutral internet infrastructure, not least because this order will almost certainly not be the last of its kind.

It’s a bold move that some will no doubt criticise. Others see the OpenDNS decision as the kind of dramatic counter-punch needed to focus attention on anti-piracy measures that are increasingly interfering with the vital mechanisms of the Internet itself.