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Quad9 announced it will stop resolving DNS queries for users located in France starting November 24, 2026. The Swiss nonprofit foundation, which operates one of the most widely used free DNS resolvers on the planet, prefers to shut down the service in that country rather than alter the responses it gives its users. Quad9’s departure from France is the first time the project has restricted its geographic coverage because of a court order.
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The ruling, issued by a French court in favor of the Qatari company beIN, reduced the daily fine weighing on Quad9 from 580,000 to 1,000 euros. But according to the foundation itself, the problem was never the money: it’s a matter of principle.
TL;DR
- Quad9 stops resolving DNS in France starting November 24, 2026, following a court ruling in favor of beIN.
- The French court lowered the daily fine from 580,000 euros to just 1,000 euros, but Quad9 is withdrawing on principle.
- beIN, a Qatari company, demanded the blocking of domains allegedly involved in sports piracy that Quad9 neither operates nor controls.
- Twenty other similar pending cases complicate the situation: Quad9 says it cannot identify French users.
- The Swiss foundation rejects a global block because it would extend the French ruling to users worldwide.
What Is Quad9
Quad9 is a Swiss nonprofit foundation that operates a free recursive DNS resolution service, used by millions of people to browse with more privacy and automatic protection against malware and phishing. The Quad9 case in France now exposes the legal limits of that neutral model when faced with national courts.
The service runs on the anycast address 9.9.9.9 (and its unfiltered variant, 9.9.9.10), and was founded in 2016 by IBM, Packet Clearing House, and the Global Cyber Alliance. Unlike Google Public DNS or Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, Quad9 doesn’t charge, doesn’t sell data, and publicly maintains that it keeps no logs that could identify an individual user or their location.
What Happened
The lawsuit was filed by beIN, a Qatari company with offices in France that broadcasts sporting events. beIN asked a court to force Quad9 to block the resolution of a set of domains that, according to the company, were involved in pirating its broadcasts. Quad9 insists it has no relationship whatsoever with those domains or the people operating them: Quad9’s DNS resolver only translates domain names into IP addresses, just as it does for any other site.
The court ruled in favor of beIN and set a fine that, in its original version, reached 580,000 euros per day of noncompliance. On appeal, the judges lowered it to 1,000 euros per day, a figure Quad9 details in the statement explaining its departure. Even with the reduced fine, the foundation estimates that, without blocking the domains, it would accumulate 24,000 euros between the ruling and November 14, not counting the costs of its legal defense.
Faced with that scenario, Quad9 chose to shut down the service for French users rather than alter a single DNS response. “We categorically refuse to alter or lie about the DNS responses you receive, in a way that contradicts your expectations,” the foundation wrote.
Context and History
Quad9 was founded in 2016 with an explicit mission: to offer free DNS resolution that protects privacy and blocks known threats, without filtering content for reasons other than security. The foundation stresses that it doesn’t tolerate piracy, but argues that fighting it by blocking a DNS resolver attacks the messenger rather than whoever hosts the infringing content.
The litigation with beIN isn’t an isolated case. Quad9 says it faces 20 other similar proceedings in different jurisdictions, in addition to whatever may arise in the future over the same type of claim. For an organization that doesn’t charge for its service, accumulating that kind of legal proceedings, even if each individual fine is manageable, ends up being unsustainable.
The technical and legal backdrop is a clash of categories: French courts treat Quad9 as if it were a content intermediary, comparable to a hosting provider or a streaming platform. Quad9, by contrast, defines itself as a neutral, passive infrastructure layer, just like an internet transit provider.
Technical Details
Recursive DNS resolution works like a distributed phone directory: when the browser asks for a domain’s IP address, the recursive resolver (Quad9, in this case) asks the corresponding authoritative servers and returns the real answer to the user. By design, that resolver doesn’t decide what content exists on the internet: it just translates names into addresses.
Complying with the court order would require Quad9 to identify which queries come from France and, only for those, return a different response than the real one (an NXDOMAIN or an IP that leads nowhere) for the domains flagged by beIN. The problem, according to the foundation, is that Quad9 keeps no database linking users to jurisdictions: the service is anonymous and requires no registration or identification.
That’s where the alternative Quad9 itself rules out comes in: blocking those domains in its global threat database, the same one it uses to stop malware and phishing on 9.9.9.9. That would solve the technical problem, since there would be no need to identify the user, because the block would apply to everyone, but it would have an effect Quad9 calls extraterritorial: a decision by a French court would end up applying to users in Brazil, India, or Canada, for the commercial benefit of a single private company.
There’s another technical limitation that Quad9 doesn’t emphasize as much in its statement but that’s obvious: any block based on source IP is bypassed simply by switching resolvers or using a VPN. A French user who manually configures a different DNS, or routes their traffic through a server in another country, is no longer subject to the block. In practice, the court order only affects those who use the default configuration.
| Option | What It Involves | Advantage | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block only in France | Identify and filter queries from French users | Complies with the order without affecting other countries | Technically unfeasible: Quad9 doesn’t associate IPs with jurisdictions |
| Global block on 9.9.9.9 | Add the domains to the threat database used by the whole service | Technically simple to implement | Extends the French ruling to users worldwide |
| Withdraw from France (chosen) | Stop answering DNS queries from French IPs starting November 24 | Preserves the service’s neutrality for the rest of the world | Leaves French users without this private DNS alternative |
sequenceDiagram
participant U as User in France
participant Q as Quad9 Resolver 9.9.9.9
participant A as Authoritative Server
U->>Q: DNS query for the flagged domain
alt Without the court order
Q->>A: asks for the real IP
A-->>Q: responds with the real IP
Q-->>U: delivers the real IP
else With the court order
Q-->>U: should respond with NXDOMAIN or a fake IP
end
Note over U,Q: Quad9 says it has no way of knowing that U is in France⚠️ Heads up: if the French court’s reasoning is repeated in other countries, resolvers like Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 or Google Public DNS could face the same type of lawsuits from sports or media rights holders.
Impact of Quad9 in France and the Rest of Europe
For French users, Quad9’s departure from France leaves a concrete gap: they lose a free resolver that doesn’t sell their browsing data and that complies with the European data protection standard. The alternatives that will keep operating in the country (their internet provider’s DNS, Google Public DNS, Cloudflare) don’t offer the same privacy guarantees that Quad9 advertises, or could face similar lawsuits in the future.
The case also sets an uncomfortable precedent for the rest of the European Union: a national court ordering a global DNS resolver to filter content, under threat of a fine, opens the door for any European country to try the same thing with any resolver operating within its borders. Quad9 frames it as a threat to the neutrality of the DNS layer, the principle that a recursive resolver responds the same way regardless of who’s asking or what they’ll do with the answer.
For beIN, by contrast, the ruling is a partial victory: it gets the block it was seeking, though at the cost of the resolver itself choosing to leave the country rather than apply it.
What’s Next
The clock is ticking: if Quad9 doesn’t act, the blocking obligation remains in effect until November 14, 2026, accumulating fines. The foundation has already decided that, once November 24 arrives, it will simply stop responding to DNS queries from IP addresses located in France, using standard IP geolocation data for that border.
Quad9 doesn’t rule out returning if the legal framework changes. In the meantime, the future of Quad9 in France depends on whether other European courts adopt the same reasoning as the French one or whether, instead, some regulatory body intervenes in the upcoming similar cases Quad9 says it has pending.
In the short term, French users who want to keep a private DNS will have to look toward paid providers or set up encrypted DNS (DoH or DoT) per the RFC 8484 standard with another resolver, knowing that resolver could end up in the same legal situation.
Try it yourself: before November 24, check your router or network settings to see if your DNS points to 9.9.9.9, and if you live in France, switch it to an encrypted resolver so you don’t lose DNS resolution overnight.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Quad9 and how does it differ from other public DNS services?
Quad9 is a Swiss nonprofit foundation that resolves DNS for free and automatically blocks malware and phishing domains, without selling browsing data or requiring registration, unlike resolvers operated by advertising companies.
Why did beIN sue Quad9?
beIN, a Qatari sports broadcasting company, accuses a group of domains of pirating its broadcasts and asked a French court to force Quad9 to block DNS resolution of those domains for users in France.
What happens to Quad9 users in France after November 24?
They’ll no longer be able to use Quad9’s 9.9.9.9 and 9.9.9.10 addresses: the resolver will stop answering DNS queries coming from IP addresses identified as French, and users will have to choose another provider.
Could Quad9 resume operating in France?
The foundation doesn’t rule it out if the legal framework changes, but as long as the court order requires selectively blocking domains, Quad9 maintains that complying is technically unfeasible without compromising its privacy model.
Does the ruling against Quad9 affect other DNS resolvers like Cloudflare or Google?
There’s no equivalent order against Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 or Google Public DNS yet, but Quad9 warns that the same legal reasoning could apply to any resolver operating in France that receives a similar claim.
References
- Quad9: official statement “Farewell, France” where the foundation explains the ruling, the fine, and its decision to withdraw.
- Quad9: official site of the free recursive DNS service and its privacy policy.
- Wikipedia: history and founding of Quad9 in 2016 by IBM, Packet Clearing House, and Global Cyber Alliance.
- RFC 8484 (IETF): the DNS over HTTPS (DoH) standard that encrypts DNS queries between client and resolver.
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Featured image: Foto de Zulfugar Karimov en Unsplash
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