Cisco has suspended operations in France and Portugal after legal action by Canal Plus aimed at blocking pirate-run streaming sites.
In recent months Canal has intensified is battle against the pirates, obtaining court injunctions to block sites that have been illegally redistributing Champions League, the Premier League and the TOP 14 rugby championship from its sports portfolio.
Having succeeded in part, Canal has turned its attention to the providers of DNS services, such as Cisco, Cloudflare and Google. They want them to modify the DNS to prevent users from bypassing their ISP to allow access to the blocked sites.
The French ruling also impacted part of Portugal leading Cisco to publish this statement: “Due to a court order in France issued under Article L.333-10 of the French Sport code and a court order in Portugal issued under Article 210-G(3) of the Portuguese Copyright Code, the OpenDNS service is not currently available to users in France and certain French territories and in Portugal. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
