The Swiss non-profit foundation faced a request from beIN Sports for penalties of up to €580,000 a day, as Quad9 chose not to block pirate tennis streams.
Yesterday the Paris Court ruled on the matter and not in favor of Quad9. As a direct result, the foundation decided that it will no longer offer its services to users in France starting November 24.
€1,000 a Day
The court ordered Quad9 to implement the May blocking order, which since expanded to 58 domain names, or face a penalty of €1,000 a day, which is a fraction of beIN’s demands.
beIN had asked for €10,000 per day for every domain that remained accessible through Quad9. The court set the penalty at €1,000 per day in total instead. This runs until the blocking measures end on November 14, which Quad9 calculates adds up to €24,000, not counting its own legal costs.
Quad9 told us that it understands it is now subject to the penalty, as it won’t block the domains before the order ends.
In its ruling, the court points to Quad9’s own statements. According to the court, Quad9 has to make reasonable efforts to block the domain names, but it decided to take no action at all, for reasons it previously explained.
That’s a different outcome than earlier this month, when the Paris court refused beIN’s penalty requests against Cloudflare and several VPN providers. These companies had blocked at least some of the domains, which the court considered a reasonable effort.
Canal+ also lost a similar penalty request against Cloudflare in September. Quad9, however, hasn’t blocked a single domain, as it also confirmed in a statement submitted to the court.
Leaving France
For Quad9, the case was never just about money. The foundation sees recursive DNS resolution as a neutral service and doesn’t want to tamper with it.
“We categorically refuse to alter or lie to you about the DNS responses you receive in a way that opposes your expectations,” Quad9 writes in a statement.
The Swiss foundation also says that it can’t accurately block for French users only. Its free service requires no sign-up and it says that there is no reliable way to tell which users are in France.
Blocking the domains for all users would also satisfy the court, Quad9 confirms. However, the DNS resolver refuses to apply a French court order to Internet users worldwide.
How Quad9 will stop serving French users hasn’t been decided yet. The foundation told us that it’s still evaluating its options, which it believes are all imperfect.
Blocking wouldn’t help much either, Quad9 argues, as there are plenty of workarounds. People who want to access the pirate sites can simply switch to one of the thousands of other open DNS resolvers.
“This is like holding a piece of newspaper in front of a stadium full of people to block the view of a concert,” the foundation says.
More Blocking Cases
The decision to leave isn’t just about this beIN case. Quad9 notes that roughly 20 other blocking cases are pending in France and the foundation expects many of them to ultimately lead to more blocking pressure and potential fines.
“Quad9 cannot survive the accumulation of penalties yet to be assessed in 20 other pending cases, nor those of future cases similar to the one brought by beIN,” it notes.
Quad9 isn’t the first public DNS resolver to make this move. In 2024, OpenDNS suspended its service in France in response to a Canal+ blocking order.
For Quad9, it’s also a matter of principle. The foundation fears that blocking demands which seem reasonable today will turn into a flood of new ones.
“Once the tools of censorship are built, they are rarely used sparingly or justly,” Quad9 writes.
An appeal is pending and Quad9 says it will continue to fight court-ordered DNS blocking. For now, French users have until November 24 to switch to another DNS resolver.
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A copy of the Paris Judicial Court’s ruling (RG 26/11882) is available here (pdf).
