Quad9 To End France Service After Court Orders Piracy Site Blocking
The case tests whether a free DNS resolver can be told to filter content by one country's court without taking on the role of content regulator everywhere, and Quad9 is choosing to leave rather than set that precedent.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Quad9, the free DNS service run by a Swiss nonprofit, will stop serving France on November 24, 2026, after a French court accepted broadcaster beIN's demand to block domains it says infringe copyright. The October 21, 2026 order carries a fine for noncompliance. Quad9 says it cannot reliably tell where users are, and blocking only listed domains would mean accepting content regulation at the DNS layer. It faces about 20 similar suits in France and is appealing.
Quad9 runs without accounts or identity checks, so it says it cannot accurately determine which country a user is in. IP-based geolocation is the fallback, but a VPN hides the origin.
That is why the exit plan is to block French users wholesale rather than filter the disputed domains. Quad9's CTO said on Hacker News that a method halting service to French users entirely would not require changing DNS response content, while blocking only specific sites would mean Quad9 itself accepting content regulation via DNS. In France the service is used by government agencies, educational institutions, and financial networks.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.