Quad9 will stop serving France rather than block sports-piracy domains under a court order
The nonprofit DNS resolver explains why it says it can't comply with a French ruling won by beIN.
Quad9, a free, nonprofit DNS resolver run by a Swiss foundation, says it will withdraw its service from users in France on November 24 after a French court ruled for broadcaster beIN, which wants Quad9 to block resolution of domains it says pirate its sports broadcasts. The court cut the daily penalty from €580,000 to €1,000, but Quad9 says the issue is principle: it refuses to alter DNS answers, keeps no record of which users are in France, and says blocking the names globally would impose a French ruling on everyone. It cites a German case in which a plaintiff used a VPN to get around its geo-blocking and the court fined Quad9, and says it faces about 20 other pending cases.
On Hacker News, Quad9's CTO said it will probably geo-block French users after leaving. Commenters debated whether resolvers should be held responsible for content at all, comparing it to fining a phone book, and whether copyright enforcement has gone too far.
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DNS blocking
After exploring Farewell, France | Quad9, for how this kind of blocking works, read DNS blocking.
A strategy for making specific domains hard to reach by altering DNS answers; the page covers its uses and criticisms.
Wikipedia · Wade · 5 min
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