Quad9 to Pull Free DNS Service Out of France

Quad9, the Swiss non-profit that runs the free 9.9.9.9 DNS service, says it will stop serving users in France from 24 November, after a Paris court put it under a daily penalty for failing to block websites that the broadcaster beIN Sports France says pirate its sports coverage.

In a statement published on 22 October, Quad9 said that “starting November 24, Quad9 will no longer be able to offer its free cyberprotection service to users located in France”. It called compliance “technically unfeasible” and said an appeal is pending.

The Paris court imposed €1,000 a day until 14 November

The ruling, which Quad9 has published in full, was handed down by the tribunal judiciaire de Paris on 21 October. It orders Quad9 to carry out blocking measures set by an earlier judgment of 13 May, under a penalty of €1,000 for every day of delay, running from the date of the ruling until those measures end.

According to the judgment, the May order required Quad9 to prevent access from French territory to unauthorised streaming sites showing the 2026 WTA tennis season, for which beIN holds rights. That season, and the blocking obligation, runs until 14 November. Quad9 says that if it does not comply, it faces penalties of €24,000 by that date, “not including our legal defense”.

The judgment sets out beIN’s case. The broadcaster said that only six of the 58 domain names ordered blocked, by the court and later by the French audiovisual regulator Arcom, were unreachable through Quad9 from France, and that Quad9 had ignored a formal notice sent on 12 June. beIN asked for €10,000 a day for each domain left accessible. Quad9 says the court reduced the penalty “from €580,000 to €1,000 per day”.

Quad9 told the court, according to the judgment, that its chief technology officer had confirmed none of the domains had ever been blocked by Quad9, and that it had repeatedly offered beIN a deal under Arcom’s supervision on how to carry out the order and share the costs. The court dismissed both points. It said Quad9 had not shown that geographically limited blocking was impossible, and pointed to Quad9’s own description of the automated filtering it applies worldwide against malicious domains. Because Quad9 said it was taking no steps at all to comply, the court found a penalty was justified.

A 2023 German case shapes Quad9’s refusal to block by location

Quad9 says it cannot single out French users because it holds “no database of users associating them with jurisdictions” and keeps no records that would identify them. Blocking the domains globally, through the same list it uses for malware and phishing protection on 9.9.9.9, would satisfy the court, it says, but would apply a French decision to every user worldwide.

It rules out location-based blocking because of its earlier dispute with Sony Music in Germany. Quad9 says it tried geoIP blocking there, Sony then reached the content through a VPN, and Quad9 was fined for contempt. Quad9 said in December 2023 that the Higher Regional Court in Dresden had ruled in its favour on appeal. It now says that win took “several years, six figures of cost” and wasted time.

beIN’s position beyond the judgment is not available. TorrentFreak reported on 5 October that the company would not comment on the ongoing procedure. The same report says OpenDNS suspended its service in France in 2024 after the first such order, and that Quad9 said that year it would block targeted sites globally to comply.

Quad9’s exit date falls after the order it objects to expires

Set side by side, the two documents show the exit comes after the order lapses. The judgment ties the penalty to the WTA order, which lapses on 14 November. Quad9’s withdrawal takes effect on 24 November, ten days later. Leaving France does not change what Quad9 could owe under this ruling; by its own count, that liability stops at €24,000.

Quad9 explains the timing in its statement. It says it “cannot survive the accumulation of penalties yet to be assessed in 20 other pending cases”, and that around 20 lawsuits in France seek blocks on hundreds of names from Quad9 and other resolver operators. The 13 May order shows the risk was signalled early: the court rejected beIN’s first request for a €2,000-a-day penalty only because nothing then showed Quad9 intended to resist, and found that none of the defendants had proved France-only blocking would be costly or technically impossible.

That finding goes to the heart of Quad9’s case. The German appeal ended with Quad9 noting that a resolver can still be required to block as a last resort. In France, the court has twice declined to accept that geographic blocking is unworkable. Quad9 says it expects many of the pending cases to “escalate to the same conditions”, and it will stop serving the country rather than block.

French public bodies appear on Quad9’s list of users

Quad9 published a partial list of French networks it sees traffic from, drawn from about an hour of network metrics. It includes the state digital directorate DINUM, EDF, SNCF, France Télévisions and several hospitals and local authorities. Quad9 says those networks are not a reliable guide to where individual users are.

Public DNS has featured in other TSN coverage this week, including a security firm’s claim that Meta Muse share links can be found through public DNS. Google has also added new suspicious-site warnings to Chrome’s Enhanced Protection. Quad9’s statement urges French users to tell Arcom and lawmakers that “looking up names is not a criminal offense”. Separately, the EU has opened a Digital Services Act case into Booking.com.

Quad9 says it hopes “30 days will be sufficient time” for French users to switch, and admits the message “will undoubtedly not reach some users in time”.