French Court’s Site-Blocking Orders Drive Quad9 Out Of France

A nonprofit service that protects internet users’ privacy is leaving France. Quad9, a free DNS resolver, has said it will reluctantly stop serving users in France on November 24. This follows a French court order that Quad9 must block access to websites that are accused of infringing the copyrights of a sports broadcaster. Forcing a responsible privacy service out of an important market is a predictable result of trying to force infrastructure providers to be copyright police.

When you visit a website, a DNS resolver reads the domain name you type in—like eff.org— and translates it into a numerical IP address that’s used to direct data across the internet. A DNS resolver can see the names of websites you connect to, so its privacy policies are important. Quad9 is an NGO that’s incorporated in Switzerland, in part to protect its users from data demands. The company also helps protect users from malware and phishing by blocking domains that are known to be malicious. Services like Quad9 offer an alternative to the DNS resolvers of local internet service providers and wireless carriers, which are vulnerable to demands from law enforcement, censorship, and commercial surveillance.

In a blog post explaining its decision, Quad9 explains that the French court’s order forces it to make a decision that, either way, is bad for users. It could either “extend French law to the whole world (blocking globally)” or try to identify and block users only in France—something that it can’t do reliably, and a move that could leave the company facing massive fines if it fails to block websites perfectly within France. Quad9 says it is facing about 20 other lawsuits in France seeking similar blocking orders.