Quad9 to Withdraw Free Cyberprotection Service From France

Quad9 to stop serving French users

Quad9 said it will no longer offer its free cyberprotection service to users in France starting November 24. The Swiss nonprofit said a French court ruling in favor of beIN forces it to block recursive DNS resolution for a number of domain names for users located in France.

The court reduced the financial penalty from 580,000 euros to 1,000 euros per day. Quad9 said compliance over the long term would conflict with its mission to protect privacy, defend users against cyber threats, and preserve internet integrity. Quad9 also said that if it does not comply, it faces a daily penalty of 1,000 euros until blocking concludes on November 14, totaling 24,000 euros, excluding legal defense.

Dispute over sports broadcasts

beIN, described by Quad9 as a Qatari company with offices in France, sought to force Quad9 to block resolution for domain names it asserts are participating in copyright infringement of its audiovisual rights on sports event broadcasts. Quad9 said it has no association with those domain names or the operators of the websites.

Quad9 said it does not condone content piracy and believes such issues should be addressed at the source, where infringing content is published. It said DNS recursive resolvers are the wrong actors to address piracy and that legal pressure on Quad9 could harm the cybersecurity of many internet users.

Why Quad9 says compliance is impossible

Quad9 said it has no database linking users to jurisdictions, does not require sign-up, and does not keep dossiers of users. It said recursive DNS is fundamental to internet operation and there is no reliable way to map users' jurisdictions. It also said it cannot determine which users the ruling applies to.

Quad9 said global blocking of the names would apply French legal decisions to internet users worldwide, which it called unworkable. It cited a similar German case from 2021 to 2023 involving Sony Music Entertainment GmbH, in which geoIP blocking was circumvented through a VPN and Quad9 was fined for contempt of court before eventually winning.

Appeal and next steps

Quad9 said it will not block the domains in question and will instead make its services unavailable to French users. It said an appeal is pending and it will continue to defend its position. The group also said about 20 lawsuits are pending in France against Quad9 and other recursive resolver operators, demanding blocking of hundreds of names.

Quad9 said users seeking blocked content may shift to other open DNS systems, possibly with lower trust, safety, and reliability. It urged French citizens to contact legislators and ARCOM, the regulatory authority, about the precedent.

Sources: quad9.net