Quad9 will leave France rather than block piracy domains for a Qatari broadcaster

A €1,000-a-day order and a 30-day exit

According to Quad9's announcement, the French ruling came on 21 October 2026 in a case brought by beIN, a Qatari company with French offices. It requires Quad9 to block recursive DNS resolution for a list of domains for users in France. The court reduced the penalty from €580,000 to €1,000 per day. The post gives two dates (blocking concluding on 14 November, withdrawal on 24 November) and does not reconcile them. An appeal is pending.

Quad9 says it will not block the domains. It keeps no user database and cannot identify French users, and it argues the content stays online while users switch resolvers. It points to a 2021-2023 German case brought by Sony Music, where geo-IP blocking was circumvented with VPNs, a court held it in contempt, and Quad9 eventually won after years and substantial cost.

Why leaving counts as consistency

The thread's most useful voice is Quad9's own, answering the question of how it would block French users after saying geo-blocking fails.

"We would be admitting that we think this solves the problem - it does not. We would be admitting that we will do this for an ever-increasing number of names - we will not." — Quad9's CTO, who says he deals with the lawyers

He adds that geo-IP filtering will probably be used after 24 November anyway, to stop serving France altogether. The logic: the blocking would be a service decision, not a concession that DNS is the right place to enforce copyright.

The charge of doublespeak

Not everyone buys the premise. A commenter points at Quad9's own threat-blocking page:

"It's strange that Quad9 openly does malicious domain filtering … using what it terms "threat intelligence feeds", but apparently filtering piracy domains is technically impossible and not the right place for this to happen." — a commenter citing Quad9's own threat-blocking page

Another asked why Quad9 would still block French users if it also needs to exit the jurisdiction. Nobody in the visible replies answered that, and the pending appeal is where a French court would. Its outcome decides whether other resolvers face the same choice.