Quad9 will stop providing service in France on November 24 after losing a lawsuit against beIN

LaLiga is not the only one that fights to reduce freedoms on the Internet at the expense of its interests. Now, we have known that Quad9 will stop providing its DNS service to users in France as of November 24. The reason? Very similar to LaLiga. And the Swiss non-profit foundation has made the decision after losing a lawsuit against beINthe Qatari company with offices in France that demanded the blocking of a series of domains for alleged violation of its audiovisual rights on sports broadcasts.

The court reduced the daily penalty from 580,000 to 1,000 euros, although the entity maintains that the problem has never been economic.

Two possible exits and none that the foundation can accept

The reason for the closure is that complying with the sentence is unviable as the service is set up. Quad9 doesn’t charge, requires no registration or identification, and doesn’t keep user lists by country, so you have no way of knowing who is connecting from France.

An alternative would be add those domains to your global block basewhich would extend a French decision to all users on the planet for the benefit of a private company. The other would involve geoIP filtering, a path that they already tried in Germany during their lawsuit with Sony Music and that ended with a fine for contempt when the plaintiff accessed the content through a VPN.

The foundation reminds that DNS resolution is a neutral and passive service. And, for this reason, it refuses to alter the answers it returns to those who consult them. Also points out that the blockade does not remove the content from circulationsince the servers that host it are still intact and there are thousands of alternative open resolvers. Added to this is the accumulated risk, since there are around twenty pending procedures with similar demands.

As the foundation recalls, the march will affect public administration networks, research centers, hospitals, universities and energy and transport operators, among many others. The appeal continues and Quad9 maintains its defense in court.