Quad9, the free, nonprofit DNS resolver, says it will stop serving users in France on 24 November 2026. The trigger is more specific than early coverage suggested. The Paris Judicial Court (3rd chamber, 3rd section) ruled on 21 October 2026 in case RG 26/11882, brought by beIN Sports France against the Quad9 Foundation. It set a penalty of €1,000 per day for failing to carry out a 13 May 2026 order to block sites streaming the WTA tennis tournament (ruling). The legal basis cited is Article L.333-10 of France's sports code, not general copyright law. This is a story about intermediary-blocking design, not CNIL data-protection enforcement, and the distinction matters for what should change.
The case for the French system
The strongest argument for French site-blocking is that live sports are perishable. A pirate stream taken down after the final whistle has already done its damage, so rightsholders need speed and need orders that bind every intermediary able to make a pirate site unreachable. A judge whose orders cannot be enforced is not doing the job. The court said as much: it held that Quad9 owes an obligation of means and that Quad9 itself said it had implemented none of the measures ordered.
The judgment also contains a point critics of Quad9 will cite. The court found Quad9 had not shown that geolocated blocking was impossible, observing that Quad9 says it already applies automated filtering for cybersecurity at global scale. Quad9 answers that it has "no database of users associating them with jurisdictions" and calls compliance technically unfeasible (Quad9).
Where the design breaks
The order is dynamic. The court recorded that the May order named six domains and that the regulator Arcom had since notified more, for 58 in total. The model was built for French internet service providers, which know where their customers are. A recursive resolver that answers queries from anywhere is a different kind of intermediary. When a French order cannot be confined to France, compliance means one of two things: apply French law to every user worldwide, or leave. Quad9 chose to leave.
The money shows how far the dispute has drifted from the stated problem. According to TorrentFreak, beIN first sought €2,000 per domain per day, then €10,000 per domain per day, which Quad9 put at up to €580,000 a day across 58 domains (TorrentFreak, 5 October). The court granted €1,000 a day in total, explaining that a penalty exists to pressure compliance. Because the tournament runs to 14 November, Quad9 calculates the exposure at €24,000.
That sum is small. What drives the exit is the queue behind it. Quad9 says about 20 suits against it and other recursive resolvers are pending, and that it "cannot survive the accumulation of penalties yet to be assessed" (TorrentFreak, 22 October). A nonprofit cannot price a risk that repeats twenty times, each with a different rightsholder and a different list.
The framework is also set to get faster. TorrentFreak reports that a sports law both chambers adopted on 21 July 2026 lets Arcom push new targets to providers during live events and audit them afterwards, with implementation expected later this year (TorrentFreak, 28 July). If that regime reaches resolvers, a provider would have to act on a list it cannot review beforehand, which raises the risk of over-blocking.
What this costs
The EFF calls the loss of a responsible privacy service from an important market a predictable result of this approach (EFF). French users lose a privacy-focused resolver option and fall back on their ISP's resolver or a large commercial one, both easier to compel. Meanwhile pirate sites stay reachable by other routes, such as changing DNS provider or using a VPN, so the measure removes a privacy option while leaving much of the piracy in place.
A proportionate fix
France does not need to abandon site-blocking. Four changes would keep its enforcement aims and cut collateral damage:
- Define the target by capability. Orders should ask whether an intermediary can limit blocking to French users. Where it cannot, the law should offer something narrower than global compliance or exit.
- Scale penalties to means. A nonprofit resolver and a national ISP should not face the same enforcement logic.
- Keep review before blocks reach infrastructure layers. After-the-fact audit suits ISPs with appeal channels. It is a weaker safeguard for a service that cannot see which French users are affected.
- Publish the lists. A public list of blocked domains with a fast appeal route would let outsiders check for over-blocking.
Quad9 says its appeal is pending, and the court noted that the May judgment is under appeal before the Paris Court of Appeal. That court can still shape how far a French order may reach beyond France's borders. Until it does, the practical result is that a free privacy service is leaving the country because it cannot tell where its users are.