In what is a first for the Polish market, Canal+ has reached an “amicable agreement” with the operator of three pirate sites that distributed its content illegally.
The sites in question – rapidu.net, darkw.pl and freshfile.pl – were disabled by their operator following the actions of many entities and law enforcement agencies. They then concluded an agreement with Canal+ and transferred the domains rapidu.net and darkw.pl to Canal+ Polska and paid an unspecified amount for the infringement of copyright. The transferred domains are currently being used to build awareness among their users about receiving the Canal+ online service legally.
Canal+ Polska notes that between January 2019 and February 2022 its anti-piracy division detected over 240,000 items of pirated content on the rapid site alone.
It also says that in the case of the rapidu.net, Google, at the request of over 600 entities from around the world, including Canal + Polska, HBO, Fox, Disney, Netflix, CD Projekt, TVN and many others, removed over 12.6 million URLs, which places this website on the 20th place in the global ranking.