Following a recent court decision, French Internet service providers will have to block around sixty sites offering illegal downloading or streaming of content.
Bad news if you are a fan of illegal downloading or streaming: in application ofa decision of the Paris Judicial Court dating from February 2024, the main French Internet access providers (Bouygues Telecom, Free, Orange and SFR) will have to block around sixty sites offering pirated content, mainly films, series and music. This measure follows a complaint from several audiovisual production companies and organizations defending rights holders, such as Gaumont, Paramount Pictures Corporation, the National Federation of Film Publishers (FNEF), the Digital Video Editing Union (SEVN ), the Association of Independent Producers (API) and the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNCIA).
This court decision stipulates that ISPs will have to prevent access to a series of specific sites – more precisely to domain names – by applying appropriate measures. “These measures must be implemented without delay, and at the latest upon the expiration of a period of 15 days following notification of this decision, and for a period of 18 months”specifies the text which explicitly gives the list of areas concerned.
- coflix.cam
- coflix.nu
- empire-stream.net, empire-streaming.eu, empire-stream.com, empire-streaming.app;
- emule-island.eu
- extreme-down.moe, extreme-down.cam, extreme-down.casa, extreme-down.art, extreme-down.red, extreme-down.work, extreme-down.fun
- filmostream.top
- filmscultes.online, filmscultes.me
- filmvf.io
- fmoviesz.to
- french-stream.art
- french-streamy.com
- gratfilm.org
- gratseries.com
- nfseries.com
- papadustream.net
- sadisflix.top
- series-fr.co
- streamingdivx.buzz
- streaminze.org
- torrent411.to
- tvfranc.top
- voirfilms.st
- seeseries.icu
- wi-flix.top
- wiflix.voto, wiflix.surf, wiflix.studio, wiflix.site, wiflix.re, wiflix.kiwi, wiflix.fan, wiflix.family, wiflix.cool, wiflix.city, wiflix.audio
- wowfilms.buzz
- yggtorrent.wtf, yggtorrent.se, yggtorrent.re, yggtorrent.is, yggtorrent.fi, yggtorrent.ch, yggtorrent.to, yggtorrent.si, yggtorrent.nz, yggtorrent.lol, yggtorrent.li, yggtorrent.la
- yts.mx, yts.lt, yts.com, yts.ag
As we can see, the list includes very popular sites like Yggtorrent, T411 or Extreme Download, but also many lesser-known services like French Streamy, Coflix or Voirfilms. On the other hand, we may be surprised not to see other very popular platforms included, such as Darkino, Tirexo or Wawacity (see our article) which have nevertheless been established on the Web for several years. For the next round of bans?
If we do not know precisely the measures which will soon be put in place by the FAI, we imagine that it will simply be a classic DNS blocking: a common technique which is however very easy to divert by using alternative DNS servers as we explain in our practical sheet. Not sure therefore that this official blocking is very effective in practice, especially since the text of the court decision clearly gives the URLs and therefore the addresses of the targeted sites, giving them a bit of publicity…