Quad9 Leaves France: When a DNS Resolver Becomes a Censorship Tool

Quad9, the Swiss nonprofit behind the free 9.9.9.9 resolver, announced on October 22 that it will stop serving users in France on November 24, 2026. Not because it wants to, but because a Paris court wants it to lie about DNS answers for a sports broadcaster.

I run networks for a living, and I have pointed a lot of people at Quad9 over the years. This one bothers me, and not because of tennis.

What the court ordered

The ruling of October 21, 2026 (Tribunal judiciaire de Paris, RG 26/11882) follows an earlier judgment of May 13, 2026, won by beIN Sports France. That judgment ordered Quad9 to block access from French territory to unauthorized IPTV sites and services showing the WTA tennis tour, which beIN broadcasts, until the last match of the 2026 season on November 14. Quad9 did not block them. The new ruling enforces the May order with a penalty of 1,000 euros per day of delay until the measures end.

beIN had asked for a lot more. According to Quad9, the court cut the penalty "from €580,000 to €1,000 per day." The court also noted that Quad9 had appealed the May judgment, but said the appeal did not suspend it, because that judgment is provisionally enforceable.

Why Quad9 says it cannot comply

Quad9's argument is technical, and it is correct. A public resolver has no idea who is French. Quad9 says it has "no database of users associating them with jurisdictions," no sign-up, and no proof of identity. That leaves two bad options:

• Block globally. Put the domains on its worldwide block list, and a French court decides what every Quad9 user on the planet can resolve, for the commercial benefit of one company. Quad9 calls that "extraterritorial," and it is.
• Block by GeoIP. Guess who is in France from their IP address. Quad9 has already learned how that ends. In its German case against Sony Music, it tried GeoIP blocking, the plaintiff bypassed it with a VPN, and the court fined Quad9 for contempt anyway.

Quad9 eventually won that German case, but by its own account it took several years and six figures in costs. It also says about 20 similar lawsuits are pending against it and other resolver operators in France. A small nonprofit cannot fight them all one at a time.

So it will do the only thing left that keeps its answers honest: stop serving France. It also says "An appeal is pending," and that it will keep defending its position in court.

My take: resolvers are not content filters

A recursive resolver answers one question: where does this name live? The moment a court can make a resolver answer "nowhere" for a private company's commercial interests, the resolver stops being neutral infrastructure and becomes a censorship tool. Quad9 put it well: "Once the tools of censorship are built, they are rarely used sparingly or justly."

And it does not even work. The pirate streams keep running on their servers. Anyone who wants them changes one DNS setting, or uses one of the thousands of other open resolvers, many with far worse privacy and security than Quad9. The people who lose are ordinary French users, plus the networks Quad9 says rely on it for malware and phishing protection, who now lose that protection for nothing.

Piracy should be fought where the content lives: at the hosts, the payment channels, and the operators. Going after the phone book is easier for a lawyer, but it breaks the internet for everybody else and stops nobody.

If you are a Quad9 user in France, plan your switch before November 24. Everyone else should watch the appeal. Today it is a sports broadcaster in France. The same playbook works for anyone with enough lawyers, anywhere.

Sources: Quad9, "Farewell, France" (Oct 22, 2026), Tribunal judiciaire de Paris ruling of October 21, 2026 (PDF, French), Quad9 on the Sony case in Dresden.