Quad9 to withdraw its DNS resolver from France after beIN court ruling

Quad9, a Swiss public-benefit, nonprofit foundation that runs a free recursive DNS resolver, has announced it will withdraw its services from France as of Tuesday, November 24 (the post gives the year as 2026). The trigger is a French court ruling, handed down the day before the post, in favour of beIN, a Qatari company with offices in France. The ruling forces Quad9 to block recursive DNS resolution for a number of domain names for users located in France. beIN asserts those domains take part in copyright infringement of its audiovisual rights on sports event broadcasts. Quad9 says it has no association with the domains or the operators of the sites.

The court did cut the financial penalty sharply, from €580,000 to €1,000 per day. Quad9 says money was never the main issue: it calls it a matter of principle. It describes recursive DNS as a neutral and passive service and says it categorically refuses to alter or lie about the DNS responses users receive. If it does not comply, Quad9 says it faces €1,000 a day until the blocking concludes on November 14, which the post totals as €24,000, not counting legal defence costs. It adds that it could not survive the accumulated penalties from 20 other pending cases, or from future cases like beIN's, so doing nothing is not an option.

Quad9 gives three reasons it cannot comply. First, it says compliance is technically unfeasible: it keeps no database of users tied to jurisdictions, the service needs no sign-up or proof of identity, and it has no list of French users. Second, it could add the names to its global malicious-domain blocking database, which feeds the protective resolvers (9.9.9.9 and secondaries, but not the non-protective 9.9.9.10). That would satisfy the court, but it would apply French decisions to every user worldwide, for the benefit of a single private, foreign-owned company. Quad9 rejects that and warns it would set a precedent for any nation to impose its laws through DNS blocking. Third, it says geoIP blocking is a trap. In a German case from 2021 to 2023, it used geoIP blocking early on. The plaintiff, Sony Music Entertainment GmbH, used a VPN to get around it, the court agreed Quad9 was noncompliant, and Quad9 was fined for contempt of court. Quad9 says it eventually won that case, but it took several years and six figures of cost, a debt it is still paying.

Quad9 also says it does not condone content piracy and believes piracy should be tackled at the source where the content is published. It argues the ruling is ineffective: blocking domain names does not remove content or affect the servers hosting it, and users can simply switch to any of thousands of other open DNS services, some possibly run from countries with weaker privacy and security records. It compares the measure to holding a newspaper in front of a stadium crowd to block their view of a concert.

The beIN case is not the only one. Quad9 says about 20 lawsuits are pending in France against it and other recursive resolver operators, demanding blocks on hundreds of different names, and it expects many to escalate to the same conditions. From its high-level traffic statistics it knows it has many users in France, including infrastructure, national security, finance, education, ISP and mobile networks, and says all will lose service on November 24. The post says Quad9 will not block the domains in question; the text of the section on what it will do from November 24 is cut off after that.

Key facts

• Quad9, a Swiss nonprofit, says it will withdraw its free DNS resolver service from France on November 24, 2026.
• A French court ruled for beIN and ordered Quad9 to block recursive DNS resolution of certain domains for users in France; the daily penalty was cut from €580,000 to €1,000.
• Quad9 says it cannot geolocate users, will not block globally, and was fined for contempt in a 2021-2023 German case after Sony used a VPN against its geoIP blocking.
• About 20 further French lawsuits, covering hundreds of domain names, are pending against Quad9 and other resolver operators.
• Quad9 argues DNS blocking does not take content offline and says it does not condone piracy.

Why it matters

A DNS resolver is pulled out of a whole country rather than rewrite its answers on a court's order. Quad9 frames it as a clash between court-ordered blocking by intermediaries and a resolver's promise to return honest answers. The post also sets out the dilemma such orders create: either block for every user worldwide, or try to guess who is in France, which Quad9 says cannot be done reliably and has already cost it a contempt fine in Germany.

Who it affects

Users in France who rely on Quad9's protective resolvers (9.9.9.9 and secondaries) lose that malware and phishing filtering on November 24. Quad9 says its French traffic includes infrastructure, national security, finance, education, ISP and mobile networks. Other recursive resolver operators are also named as defendants in the roughly 20 pending French lawsuits. beIN, the claimant, is a Qatari company with offices in France.

How to use it

The post gives no migration steps in the visible text. It notes that Quad9 runs protective resolvers at 9.9.9.9 and secondaries, and non-protective ones at 9.9.9.10 and secondaries; the global blocking database applies only to the protective set. It also says thousands of other open DNS services exist, though it describes them as lower in trust, safety and reliability. French network operators using Quad9 would need to choose another resolver before November 24.

How solid is it

This is a first-party announcement by Quad9, so the ruling, the penalties and the technical claims are all Quad9's account. The court's name, the case number, the ruling's calendar date and the list of blocked domains are not given; the ruling is dated only as "yesterday". The post says the penalty runs until blocking concludes on November 14 and totals €24,000, while the departure is set for November 24; it does not explain the gap. The text of the section on what Quad9 will do from November 24 is cut off, so what happens beyond not blocking the domains is not visible.

Risks and caveats

Quad9's assertions that compliance is technically impossible, that the French courts misunderstood the internet and that beIN will see no change are its own views, not findings. The source does not say whether Quad9 will appeal. Quad9 warns that French users who switch to other free resolvers may end up with services it describes as less trustworthy on privacy and security. It also expects other pending French cases to escalate in the same way, so the risk it describes extends beyond this one order.

“Once the tools of censorship are built, they are rarely used sparingly or justly.”

— Quad9, in its announcement