Paris Court Orders Webhosters to Cut Off Fake Stream Sites

Paris, France. Photo Credit: Margarida Louro

A French court has reportedly determined “that enabling streaming fraud is illegal” and will therefore require hosting company OVH to “refrain from providing” its services to two alleged fake stream operations.

The Paris Judicial Court handed down the corresponding decision yesterday, with France’s SNEP having initiated the overarching action back in June 2024. As many know, the litigation represents the latest in a line of moves to decommission services offering fake streams.

In fact, one of the two platforms already affected by the French court’s ruling, JustAnotherPanel, faced a crackdown in Brazil closer to 2025’s beginning. With the assistance of local law enforcement, “a large-scale disruption operation” purportedly uprooted a number of “illegal local services” and north of 1,000 “foreign re-sellers” of fake streams, per the IFPI.

Evidently, the campaign to end fake streams isn’t through yet. With its ruling also extending to BuyBestSuperfans, which per its Instagram page dealt in social followers, SEO results, and streams alike, the Paris Judicial Court is requiring Roubaix-headquartered OVH to abstain from hosting the sites, the IFPI indicated.

“This is an important result for the industry’s ongoing work against streaming fraud in music,” IFPI CEO Victoria Oakley added. “Yesterday’s decision confirms that enabling streaming fraud is unlawful in France and empowers the music industry to act against those offering these damaging services in the country.

“Streaming fraud is illegal. Those who carry it out must be prevented from diverting earnings away from artists, misleading music fans and damaging music’s ecosystem. This success clearly demonstrates our commitment and those of our DSP partners to tackling streaming fraud both in France and around the world,” Oakley concluded.

DMN reached out to OVH for comment but didn’t immediately receive a response. Furthermore, BuyBestSuperfans’ site looked to be down at the time of writing; JustAnotherPanel, for its part, was still up and (seemingly) running – with the appropriate homepage pointing to a cumulative total of 849 million completed orders.

It’s unclear whether the staggering number is accurate, and in any event, not all the orders involved streaming.

But the figure attests to the scope of the fake stream issue, which has allegedly fueled multimillion-dollar manipulation operations in Sweden, the U.S., and elsewhere.

Of course, the ability to instantly pump out AI tracks isn’t helping the situation, which ultimately diverts fans and royalties from proper artists. And given the inherent persistence of sites dealing in artificial plays, likes, and follows, targeting the problem at the webhosting level makes sense.

Nevertheless – and despite encountering a couple hurdles – site-specific takedown efforts have delivered some results as well. A closing example: The IFPI last year decommissioned Pimpyourfollower.de in Germany, but a replica service quickly took its place.

Now, said service’s operators have apparently decided that fake streams’ legal headaches outweigh the revenue upside. While the replica site itself remains live – and is presumably providing all manner of followers and likes – it’s no longer offering Spotify streams, the homepage shows.