The fight against piracy in France took a new turn, with VPN services now the main target.
In what comes as a legal first, on May 15, 2025, the Paris Judicial Court ordered five of the best VPN providers on the market – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, and CyberGhost – to block access to 203 domains linked to illegal sports streaming sites.
While Canal+ and Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), the organizations that issued the court order back in February, are cheering on the ruling, the VPN world warns against what it sees as an “ill-conceived extension of blocking obligations” that could set a “dangerous precedent.”
We talked to some providers to understand how the VPN blocking order will play out and what’s at stake for all VPN users in France (and beyond).
Technically feasible? Not really
As per the ruling, five VPN providers are required to implement “all measures to prevent access” from French territories to the 203 domains indicated in the judicial order, which are linked to illegal sport streaming, as well as to similar pirated sites that aren’t yet identified.
The targeted services – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, and CyberGhost – are known to operate under strict no-log policies. This means that they don’t log any activities or other data linked to the users.
Is it therefore feasible for these providers to fulfill this request? How are they planning to do so?
A NordVPN spokesperson told TechRadar that a solution to identify customers in French territories while preserving the services’ privacy obligations does not exist at the time of writing. The team is currently evaluating if and how this will be possible.
Surfshark also confirmed it lacks a specific blocking mechanism that would allow it to fulfill the French authorities’ request.
“While with lots of limitations, blocking domains through a VPN to some extent is possible, implementing these measures alone comes with considerable operational and technical overhead,” said NordVPN, pointing out that this will lead to diverting critical resources from essential cybersecurity initiatives to meet these compliance demands.
AdGuard VPN also adds that what France is demanding VPN providers do requires altering the core infrastructure of how a virtual private network (VPN) software works.
Commenting on this point, CPO of AdGuard VPN Denis Vyazovoy, said: “A VPN could, in theory, begin blocking or even logging traffic – but at that point, it ceases to function as a true privacy tool. This undermines the very reason people rely on VPNs in the first place.”
Privacy and security at risk
Beyond technicalities, the VPN industry believes that France’s blocking order will have a chilling effect on people’s online privacy and security.
VPNs are not tools for piracy
Denis Vyazovoy, AdGuard VPN
“While we agree that protecting intellectual property is essential, mandating that intermediaries implement content restrictions brings up critical issues related to freedom of expression, proportionality, and the protection of user rights,” said Surfshark, while deeming this approach “both disproportionate and counterproductive.”
With the blocking order solely targeting popular VPN providers at the time of writing, NordVPN fears that French users could be pushed toward less secure or even malicious free VPN services instead. This, warns the provider, will eventually create an “increased cybersecurity risk across France.”
Adding to this point, Vyazovoy from AdGuard said: “VPNs are not tools for piracy – they are technologies built to safeguard users’ digital rights. The core values underpinning VPN services – security, anonymity, and internet freedom – must not be sacrificed in the name of combating illegal streaming. This latest court ruling in France threatens to do exactly that, setting a dangerous precedent.”
More harm than good
Supporters of anti-piracy measures can argue that VPN users who do not engage in illegal streaming won’t be affected by these blocks. Well, this may not be entirely true. Similar blocking orders have already proven to lead to dangerous overblocking incidents in the past.
In Italy, the country’s Piracy Shield system caused widespread service outages on other platforms such as Google Drive. Then, following the decision to require VPN and DNS providers to block pirated content, a VPN provider (AirVPN) had already stopped accepting new Italian subscribers.
Overblocking is only one of the unintended consequences that the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), an industry-led consortium that aims to promote VPN best practices, has warned against. According to the group, whose members include some of the providers targeted by France’s blocking order, these demands could even lead to wider content-related Internet fragmentation.
In a public statement released a day after the ruling, the VTI wrote: “Infrastructure-level blocking on content-neutral services is an imprecise enforcement strategy that creates outsized harm relative to its intended purpose. Even when deployed with the best intentions, these measures frequently manifest as overreach, service disruption, and misplaced liability exposure.”
“Most importantly, they do not eliminate offending content from the Internet,” the VTI added.
The ineffectiveness of these anti-piracy measures is a recurring theme among the VPN providers we talked with.
For example, Windscribe‘s co-founder and CEO, Yegor Sak, described the French case as “a total waste of time” for everyone involved, adding that this ruling “will do absolutely nothing to curb piracy.”
He said: “That’s because it doesn’t address the core problem: why does piracy exist at these scales? There are many answers to that, but the most obvious one is the fact that sports streaming hasn’t caught up with modern times, and largely pretends that the internet does not exist.”
Also for NordVPN, blocking orders are rather short-lived solutions than a permanent fix, as they fail to tackle piracy at its roots.
“The focus should be on education, easily accessible legal alternatives, and international cooperation on digital rights management. A year from now, piracy levels will likely remain unchanged, while the cybersecurity landscape in France will suffer from unintended consequences.”
What’s next?
Both NordVPN and Surfshark (two of the five VPN providers targeted by France’s ruling) have confirmed to TechRadar to have already begun the appeal process to challenge the ruling.
What’s certain, however, is that increasingly more governments in Europe see blocking as the solution to illegal streaming, despite expert backlash.
From internet service providers (ISPs) to alternative DNS and proxy services, VPNs are indeed only the last casualties in the fight against piracy. A fight that has been especially intensifying across France, Italy, and Spain lately.
Cloudflare‘s Co-founder and CEO, Matthew Prince, strongly criticized the online blockade enforced by Spain’s La Liga recently, too.
A huge percentage of the Internet sits behind us, including small businesses and emergency resources in Spain. We’ve always been happy and willing to work with rights holders in conjunction with judicial bodies to protect their content. We have a clear process that works around…May 20, 2025
“It’s only a matter of time before a Spanish citizen can’t access a life-saving emergency resource because the rights holder in a football match refuses to send a limited request to block one resource versus a broad request to block a whole swath of the Internet,” he wrote in a post on X.
Now, France has inaugurated a new era of anti-piracy blocking – and the VPN industry fears other countries may soon follow suit.
“This trend is troubling for the entire industry, said Vyazovoy from AdGuard. “There is a growing concern that similar legal demands could be extended to more VPN services, especially in countries where digital control is tightening.”
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chiara.castro@futurenet.com (Chiara Castro)
