Quad9 (DNS Resolver) to Exit France

(quad9.net)

372 points | by farrokhi 3 hours ago

32 comments

  • nadermx 2 hours ago
    "The plaintiff (Sony Music Entertainment GmbH) then used a VPN to access the blocked content from Germany in circumvention of the geoIP blocking. The court agreed with Sony in their assertions of noncompliance, and we were fined for contempt of court."

    Imagine doing everything possible to stop something. They then circumvent your protections with yet another service, and you get fined.

    I wish I could even suggest what someone could do against these trolls.

    This is like saying "we put a lock requested by court and where found guilty because plantif hacked us after"

    • bitpush 2 hours ago
      > Imagine doing everything possible to stop something. They then circumvent your protections with yet another service, and you get fined.

      Isnt this what gets all tech companies into trouble all the time. Something objectionable happens (ChatGPT helping someone bulid a bomb for instance) and we go like "Do better".

      • zamadatix 1 hour ago
        I think, usually, in those cases it's that people believe the company did not really do anywhere near everything it could - it did the bare minimum it thought it could get away with then seemed shocked it wasn't enough to matter.

        Here, if any pair of countries have conflicting rules then you simply can't expose your service to both because it's plain impossible for you to block all means of VPN/proxy regardless of how perfect your service tries to detect it. There's no payment, there's no account, there's no anything - you're just serving DNS to an IP that reports to be out of Germany according to German law. At some point it stops being a mistake/malintent of the company and one of the user. Where that transitions probably depends on the person though.

        • yorwba 12 minutes ago
          > if any pair of countries have conflicting rules then you simply can't expose your service to both

          Yes. This is also how physical products work. The internet makes it easy and the default to offer a service worldwide, hence also making it easy to get in conflict with the law worldwide. You have to pick and choose which laws to break, which laws to comply with by minimizing exposure, and which laws to comply with by making a tailor-made version for a specific market.

        • warkdarrior 1 hour ago
          > I think, usually, in those cases it's that people believe the company did not really do anywhere near everything it could - it did the bare minimum it thought it could get away with then seemed shocked it wasn't enough to matter.

          Yes, and Quad9 could have done better in the German court case. At a minimum they could have asked users to register and provide proof of residency, and then could have ensured that their DNS service is offered only to registered users.

          • crote 54 minutes ago
            > At a minimum they could have asked users to register and provide proof of residency

            This would have been a massive burden to them, and (as we have seen from the ongoing data leaks) a gigantic privacy risk to its users. It would have also been a big overreach, as the German ruling would have mostly impacted non-German users.

          • zamadatix 51 minutes ago
            Let's take this level of user tracking for DNS would be accepted & fine by Germany as well as what folks were thinking was feasible for the company to do as a given, how does it prove the user+ip who registered is the user+ip who submitted the request instead of the place it got proxied? Or malware enabling the same?

            If you can solve this for me it would actually help a lot at work :D

      • matheusmoreira 1 hour ago
        As we should. These corporations are rent seeking monopolists. Like many Japanese companies, Sony is an intellectual property absolutist. PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi called our objections to the "you'll own nothing" future a "mentality issue".

        I have sympathy for my fellow man. There isn't enough liability in the world for these corporations.

        • warkdarrior 59 minutes ago
          > These corporations are rent seeking monopolists. Like many Japanese companies, Sony is an intellectual property absolutist.

          The whole intellectual property space is pure rent seeking. Everybody wants name recognition and/or money whenever some text, code, image, or video they produced is used or remixed. It is pure rent seeking, from FSF to Sony to Metallica.

          • 10111001 28 minutes ago
            > The whole intellectual property space is pure rent seeking. Everybody wants name recognition and/or money whenever some text, code, image, or video they produced is used or remixed. It is pure rent seeking, from FSF to Sony to Metallica.

            If that's true, so is the private property space in general.

            But what you say isn't true. The "intellectual property space" is not pure rent seeking. If someone labors to write a novel, they're no less justified to get economic benefit from it than someone who labored to build an apartment building.

            Intellectual property critics have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are problems with IP, but those specific should be fixed through reform.

            • 8note 14 minutes ago
              the labourer who built the apartment doesnt get a hundred year claim to economic benefit from that apartment though?

              are you saying that electricians should get a monthly rent fee from any circuit theyve touched?

              i think we can do just fine treating IP like other work - you pay for the creation of it, not the consumption

            • logicchains 13 minutes ago
              > If someone labors to write a novel, they're no less justified to get economic benefit from it than someone who labored to build an apartment building.

              They absolutely are, because an apartment building is a _rival_ good, as are all physical goods, meaning that you and somebody else cannot both own and use it at the same time. Intellectual property is a non-rival good, meaning if somebody else copies your song or story, you still have that song/story! It's a very different moral claim; the apartment is "I built it, so nobody should be able to take it away from me without paying", while the IP is "I built it, so nobody else should be able to copy it without paying".

    • irusensei 1 hour ago
      Lately Sony Corpos have been really getting into their supervillain arc aren’t they?
    • mitxela 1 hour ago
      And for contempt of court nonetheless. That's meant for when you blatantly don't do the thing the court told you to do, not when you did it but it didn't work how the court wanted.
  • JokerDan 2 hours ago
    DNS resolvers getting sued should stop resolving domains/properties of the companies suing them too when they are forced to take these kinds of actions/steps off the back of a legal decision like this.
    • drdexebtjl 1 hour ago
      Keep resolving, but instead of resolving multiple A records, resolve just one. Fuck that one server in particular.

      Delay updates by 1 week.

      Answer randomly with the up-to-date or the out-of-date records.

    • WhyNotHugo 57 minutes ago
      While I agree in spirit, this also makes the resolver away from being able to claim they're just a neutral service which just delivers existing records without being opinionated
      • rpdillon 49 minutes ago
        Fair point. I'd say "We're neutral, unless you attack us, in which case we stop being neutral about you, in particular". I'd still use them if this were the policy.
    • tredre3 47 minutes ago
      Hopefully the leadership of public resolvers isn't as a childish as you are.

      That kind of action would penalize their users far more than it would hurt the evil corporation that slighted them. Not to mention they'd lose users. People who choose quad9 likely aren't too keen with DNS tempering.

      But yeah, take that sony-or-whatever!

    • polski-g 46 minutes ago
      Redirect porn websites domains to them.
    • raverbashing 1 hour ago
      Obviously

      The problem is that these types of companies are started by naive idealistic techs who only know how to play by the rules and can't figure out why people would misuse their products

      They were very well described by the "rubber hose crypto" XKCD

      (Not that I don't think a DNS company stays at the same level of complexity - both legal and technological - as a VPN company, but still)

      • anonymous908213 1 hour ago
        Or, get this, anything that is useful can be misused, so maybe we should go after the people misusing things rather than locking all of society in a cage to pre-emptively prevent misuse.

        "The problem is that these types of companies [kitchen knife manufacturers] are started by naive idealistic [craftsmen] who only know how to play by the rules and can't figure out why people would misuse their products [by stabbing people]."

      • AspireOne 1 hour ago
        What "types" of companies do you mean exactly?
        • raverbashing 1 hour ago
          Tomato sauce companies?

          Or companies that sit between tricky legal and technical questions without having f-you money but especially lacking on f-you legal advice

          (One thing about these founders is that they also have a hard time understanding context and follow-up questions)

  • euio757 55 minutes ago
    Seems they're following Cisco similar move 2y ago of exiting the market

    > Canal+ has been busy getting web-blocking injunctions in France against sports piracy sites which stream sporting events for which it has the exclusive broadcast rights within the French market. It previously targeted DNS resolvers operated by Google, Cloudflare and Cisco.

    > All three unsuccessfully opposed the web-blocking orders. Google and Cloudflare, therefore, have been forced to instigate them. However, Cisco just pulled its OpenDNS service out of the French market entirely.

    (Per https://completemusicupdate.com/quad9-vows-to-fight-absurd-w..., https://completemusicupdate.com/opendns-pulls-plug-on-france...)

  • babarock 2 hours ago
    Punishing the DNS resolver is weird. Would you punish the phone book company for having the number of a criminal listed?
    • teroshan 2 hours ago
      Same reason copyright abusers threaten people that help remove the DRM from their Amazon-bought e-book so it can be read on their non-Amazon bought e-reader with a $250,000 fine and five years in prison for circumventing a digital lock using DMCA, because it's what the legal API allows them to achieve their end goal.

      It's not about if it makes sense from a moral point of view.

    • astrobe_ 31 minutes ago
      The same method is used to block sites that don't respect the decisions the French people have made regarding the limits of the freedom of speech (no hate speech, no terrorist proselytism, no pedo, etc.).

      Granted, that's the theory.

      When the demands come from a company on the basis of copyright/intellectual property (that is, exclusive broadcasting rights), one can feel less comfortable about this affair; even thought the judgement mentions that the case is backed by the ARCOM, the french authority for broadcasting, which should instead IMHO deal with a couple or two of private TV channels that are obvious vectors of fake news.

      But, this is the same copyright that can protect you when you publish programs, source code, images, etc., even when you use a free and open license; the licence has meaning thanks to the copyright.

    • JoshTriplett 1 hour ago
      The most likely answer is that they didn't think about it or didn't understand or didn't care. But on the off chance they did, perhaps they thought the DNS provider would enforce the ruling worldwide.
    • rdtsc 1 hour ago
      It shows maliciousness (we can bully this smaller player for a win) and/or total incompetence (we don't even understand how internet works, but we'll issue rulings anyway).
    • pixl97 2 hours ago
      Because they can.

      Attacking the people doing the actual bad things is hard, attacking a single unified organization is easy.

    • crote 52 minutes ago
      Sue the government for providing the road that criminals walk on!
    • mitxela 1 hour ago
      You would if you could and it'd probably work.

      I believe the position of the French government is that anyone in the path of a crime can be ordered to block the part of the crime that relates to them, without having any liability for the crime. So quad9 are not criminals for not blocking pirate sites, but still have to block specific sites when ordered.

      • iamnothere 1 hour ago
        Where does this line of reasoning end though? Shouldn’t the browser makers be blocking the sites too? What about curl? What about the OS and local DNS resolvers (unbound etc)? Maybe Ethernet and wifi cards should contain blocking logic? At some point you have to draw a line!
        • progval 14 minutes ago
          Potentially all of the above as long as they are not tested in court.
        • iAMkenough 8 minutes ago
          The line is drawn wherever a particular judge decides it's drawn, and each judge has a different ability to understand the broader implications of the line being drawn on any individual case.
          • iamnothere 5 minutes ago
            Then it might be worthwhile for legislators to put some fences around this ASAP before copyright extremism completely disassembles modern computing.
  • 0x0000000 1 hour ago
    Maybe i missed it in the post, but how are they going to implement it? They mentioned geoIP is insufficient for complying with the block, so if they dont have a way to block only these domains for users in France, how will they block all requests for users in France?

    To be clear I dont think they should comply with the block, but i didn't grasp how they're going to block everything if they dont have a way to only block some things.

    • eloisant 1 hour ago
      They're removing all presence they have in France, their servers mostly.

      They want to be out of reach of French courts basically.

      • keoneflick 1 hour ago
        Do you think they will geoblock in addition to physically leaving?
        • punchmesan 11 minutes ago
          Probably. They will want to do everything possible to be able to prove that they took all measures at their disposal to stop serving the French market on top of taking all measures to have their business operations be outside of French jurisdiction.
    • OptOutDesk 1 hour ago
      [flagged]
    • disiplus 1 hour ago
      You stop serving anything for french ips. Its like you dont exist.
      • hk__2 1 hour ago
        "french ips" don’t mean anything as the post said; see their case in Germany.
      • djha-skin 1 hour ago
        ...That's just geoIP blocking, which he covered in his comment.
  • artooro 2 hours ago
    Quad9 is getting picked on because they do not have a large financial backing. Not because it makes any logical sense. France is shooting themselves in the foot.
  • DemiGuru 2 hours ago
    I mentioned not too long ago that Mullvad was handing its resolver users over to Quad9. Sadly, I didn’t realize how accurate my concerns would be. Quad9 is a good operator, they actually fought Sony in a German court instead of quietly complying. Yet, they were still ordered to block the content. That’s the core problem. A blocking order is only as damaging as the resolver it impacts. Every time an operator shuts down and redirects its users to Quad9, it pools more users into one place. This makes the next blocking order even more valuable and effective for whoever files it. And now we're seeing Quad9 backing out of a market.
  • this_user 1 hour ago
    Whenever people talk about why you should host in the EU, this is just the most recent example for why should shouldn't.
    • nairboon 1 hour ago
      Host in Switzerland, that's where Quad9 operates from.
      • drnick1 8 minutes ago
        Switzerland is not in the EU, thankfully. And it seems to be one of the few places left in Europe where privacy is taken somewhat seriously.
  • LoganDark 1 minute ago
    Love to see some Lavabit action in response to government overreach. (Not that it's fun to see a provider have to shut down operations in an area, but more that I prefer to see them sticking to their principles rather than showing the government that this behavior is tolerated.)
  • _imnothere 1 hour ago
    Time to boycott Sony, they deserve no money from anyone, and I meant anyone.

    They're just f*ing with people without getting anyone good stuff.

    Suppose they're doing this for copyright, it's not like the pirates would be stopped by a mere DNS block rule set anyway.

    • antiframe 1 hour ago
      > Time to boycott Sony, they deserve no money from anyone, and I meant anyone.

      Because when they installed rootkits on user's machines wasn't that time?

      Because when they removed content users purchased from their machines wasn't that time?

      Because when they spy on what users watch on their TVs in the privacy of their home wasn't that time?

      Sony is like a tree. The best time to boycott Sony was decades ago. The second best time is today.

    • raquuk 1 hour ago
      Yes, but in this case the plaintiff is beIN SPORTS France.
  • Bender 1 hour ago
    I am curious if a large number of people stood up their own DoH/DoT servers:

    - Would France go after each one, even if they were not operating servers physically in France? It only takes a few minutes to configure Unbound+LetsEncrypt to accept DoH+DoT internet traffic. A few minutes longer to compile support for DoQ.

    - Could they realistically expect individual operators of small DoH/DoT/DoQ open servers to block domains at their behest?

  • modeless 21 minutes ago
    Seems unlikely to resolve their legal issues, as the French lawyers will use the same tactic as the German ones, using a VPN to access the services from France to justify continuing their lawsuits. Perhaps they should consider relocating out of Europe.
  • Helmut10001 25 minutes ago
    > The French courts have fundamentally misunderstood the working of the internet and the role of the domain name system

    I think thus is the real problem. And you can easily replace France with Germany or US here.

    • petcat 23 minutes ago
      The US doesn't compel ISPs to block websites. The FBI will occasionally seize a domain after a court order, but that's it.

      This is a pretty uniquely EU thing.

  • nish__ 2 hours ago
    How have our democracies not abolished copyright law yet? These laws only serve the 1%. I have no idea why we still put up with them.
    • numpad0 1 hour ago
      FOSS depends on copyright laws. Oldest versions of Linux and UNIX are more than 20 years old, so early versions of both would be hypothetically now in public domain in the absence of Disney-lobbied maximalist versions of copyright laws, or in the total absence of one.
      • skrause 16 minutes ago
        And this would be a problem how? If copyright expired after 20 years and an evil commercial company privately forked the public domain Linux kernel 2.6.18, what would we lose?
      • pessimizer 15 minutes ago
        FOSS only "depends" on copyright laws in the sense that it is a hack to get around the existence of them (and now their children, anti-circumvention laws.)
      • nish__ 1 hour ago
        No it doesn't. Most projects are MIT or some other permissive liscense.
        • tredre3 39 minutes ago
          > Most projects are MIT or some other permissive liscense.

          Exactly, most projects have a license of some kind, they aren't "free-for-all-do-whatever."

          MIT requires attribution. Forcing enforcement of this cannot be done without copyright law. You can argue that attribution is stupid and nobody deserves credit for their work (which might be increasingly true in a post-LLM world), but you can't speak on behalf of all projects that chose those license and say "it's what they want!"

        • numpad0 15 minutes ago
          Aside what was already said: a lot of people do genuinely think GPL is a stupid idea that needs to go and Linux could have been licensed under MIT or even CC0; however, I think one should be cognizant of the fact that virtually no mass produced product other than Macs and PS4/PS5 use BSD and the rest uses Linux, often begrudgingly, but benefiting tremendously from both free-beer and forced-libre nature of it.
    • dist-epoch 1 hour ago
      How do you feel about OpenAI training on all of the books in the world.
      • christophilus 1 hour ago
        Fine, as long as they aren't the only ones who get to do it. Having the world's knowledge at everyone's fingertips is a goal I think we should aim for.
        • drnick1 0 minutes ago
          This. Some people here are now acting as if AI was a bad thing. People need to realize that human knowledge is so vast nowadays that such tools (which effectively perform data compression and interpolation) are absolutely necessary. I don't feel bad for copyright holders at all because copyright shouldn't probably exist at all.
      • nish__ 1 hour ago
        It makes me feel like the rules are "for thee, not for me." Like it proves that the rich can just do whatever they want.
      • sham1 1 hour ago
        The irony with these AI corpos is that they're okay with scraping all of human creative endeavours yet they get annoyed at others doing distillation on their models.

        Compensating authors would be a moral thing to do, but morals aren't really a thing for corpos, so whatever. However the fact that they then turn around and get annoyed at other actors for scraping their stuff is very hilarious and shows how much they care about the social contract :)

    • cyanmagenta 1 hour ago
      > How have our democracies not abolished copyright law yet? These laws only serve the 1%

      Yeah, fuck those billionaire authors and artists in coffee shops not wanting people to rip off the books and art they create without compensation.

      • roblabla 1 hour ago
        I find it extra funny that you think copyright protect small time authors and artists, when we have _very clear_ examples of it not protecting them for shit, even before the entire IA saga. Remember the Disney/Star Wars saga where they refused to pay the Star Wars author for the books they were selling?

        https://archive.bookstr.com/article/royalty-wars-over-star-w...

        Copyright doesn't protect small-time authors - because small-time authors don't have the means to harness the legal system to their advantage the way that big corpos that take advantage of them do.

        • numpad0 27 minutes ago
          Authors and artists have no basis for payment in the absence of copyright laws. Like, anything they make would be literally free to steal. Literally... 1700s? Late 1600s?

          What would be controversial is the current form of copyright that had been extended and expanded multiple times even during lifetime of many of us alive, often said semi-jokingly said to have been forced by Disney to keep Mickey Mouse covered under it until it had finally expired 70 years after the first publication and long after the death of its creator.

        • cyanmagenta 1 hour ago
          I don’t necessarily disagree, but by that same logic we shouldn’t have any civil laws because regular people can’t afford to hire lawyers to sue people.

          But still, if someone posts a copy of your book or painting online, you can pretty cheaply file a DMCA request that it be taken down, and most large players will comply. If you throw out copyright law altogether, you get rid of that too.

          • warkdarrior 47 minutes ago
            > But still, if someone posts a copy of your book or painting online, you can pretty cheaply file a DMCA request that it be taken down, and most large players will comply. If you throw out copyright law altogether, you get rid of that too.

            Good, get rid of copyright law! It has only lead to pure rent seeking.

      • AndroTux 1 hour ago
        The 1% just copied all available data without consequence. Yet, Quad9 gets sued and loses.
      • nish__ 1 hour ago
        Copyright laws don't benefit independent artists. They only work for you if you can afford a litigation team.
      • surgical_fire 1 hour ago
        AI companies already ripped those things off.

        Copyright is a sham. It does not protect the small guy, only the rich corporations.

        I am back to piracy, now on a moral imperative. I can pay for stuff, but I think the morally superior thing to do is to pirate away.

      • sham1 1 hour ago
        While your point is valid enough -- although it could have been made without this kind of snarky and sarcastic snide -- it seems clear that global copyright legislation is a lot more beneficial to the wealthy capital owners rather than the artists that you were alluding towards. Now, this is no insurmountable obstacle at least in theory. The laws could be modified in a way that lets small artists etc focus on following their passions without starving, without allowing capital to do what is essentially the intellectual equivalent of enclosure of the Commons.

        Of course, one thing needed for this is the political will as well as getting rid of the idea of defending exploitation by the billionaire class by conflating their needs with the needs of starving artists because one can technically argue that copyright helps both, despite everyone knowing that one party is benefiting a lot more from it than the other.

        • rickydroll 48 minutes ago
          All copyright does is give you standing to sue if somebody reproduces your work, in whole or in part. To sue "successfully," you need more financial resources than the copier.

          The small artist copyright is a red herring. I think the number of small artists who make money from their work is frightfully small. For example, my partner makes some rather nice jewelry that is different from anything out there. We're doing the craft fair circuit to see if she can sell any and if it's worth continuing to make them.

          She sells a relatively small number of pieces at each fair. Occasionally it's even enough to cover expenses.

          Would copyright help her? No, because we wouldn't have the money to sue. Small copyright violations might be worth a cease and desist. Large copyright violations would have more money than us for the lawsuit. We would need that Goldilocks-sized violation. They are small enough to be responsive to the threat of a lawsuit but big enough that they have enough money that would be worthwhile suing them, i.e. enough to pay our lawyer.

  • 49369201837 7 minutes ago
    Better cut all ties to that failed state as quickly as possible.
  • declan_roberts 2 hours ago
    Europe needs to strengthen its free speech protections. It turns out, even though the US founders had no idea what DNS was, they still created the right framework to protect it.
    • AndroTux 1 hour ago
      As long as you don’t say Artificial Intelligence instead of Super Intelligence, you’re all good.
  • jeroenhd 1 hour ago
    Sports broadcasters truly are the bane of society. May they get DDoS'd during important matches until they're bankrupt.
    • intrasight 1 hour ago
      Sports is the only thing left of value in broadcasting. I can totally understand why they're gonna fight tooth and nail to protect it.
  • trentor 2 hours ago
    Crazy. A company that actually exits the market they threatened to leave. Meta and Twitter should take note.
  • whh 1 hour ago
    > The plaintiff (Sony Music Entertainment GmbH) then used a VPN to access the blocked content from Germany in circumvention of the geoIP blocking. The court agreed with Sony in their assertions of noncompliance, and we were fined for contempt of court.

    I knew courts were dumb, but didn't think they were this dumb.

    "The neighbour's dog bit me, so they put up a fence. I climbed over it and got bitten again. The fence doesn't count."

  • egorfine 53 minutes ago
    Why stopping serving french IPs though? Remove your legal presence in France, sure. But block IP ranges from reaching your servers.. just why?
    • rpdillon 47 minutes ago
      Most likely, so they have legal standing to say "We don't operate in your country or serve your citizens, your laws do not apply". Also, punishment for a stupid ruling.
      • egorfine 42 minutes ago
        > We don't operate in your country

        Yes, by leaving french jurisdiction.

        > or serve your citizens

        This is not necessary. At all.

  • Felger 2 hours ago
    "There are more important reasons geoIP blocking will not work."

    Okay, now waiting to see how they will technically block those french users from the 24th nov onward...

    • burnte 1 hour ago
      They don't have to. Despite Europe's best efforts, national laws are not enforceable outside the borders without lots of cooperation, and tech regulation is not an area where people are collaborating.
  • 9cb14c1ec0 42 minutes ago
    Sometimes I wonder if the days of a global internet are drawing to a close.
  • gumby 2 hours ago
    Why does it matter that it’s a recursive resolver? They mention this a lot but it seems like the decision would just as much apply to a non-recursive resolver.

    I didn’t attempt find the ruling; perhaps the lawsuit was written in an odd way.

    • ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago
      It is difficult to envision a "non-recursive DNS resolver" in public service. Recursion is the usual and customary way that DNS names are resolved by the leaf servers, because they are not authoritative for much of anything.

      The most common configuration for non-recursive DNS servers is with forwarders. The DNS server accepts queries and simply forwards all of them upstream to another resolver, which... makes its own recursive queries.

      It is simply not feasible to avoid having recursive resolvers in the chain of lookups. That's how things work with DNS.

      • gumby 2 hours ago
        We used to just leave that responsibility to the querying host’s own resolver. I don’t fetishize the end-to-end principle (though I come close) so I suppose a recursive resolver service could be a sort of optimization (plenty of ppl look up, say, gmail.google.com so why not cache it).

        In any case, if all resolvers these days are recursive why mention it?

        I know this is far from the most important question on the topic of this thread!

        • toast0 1 hour ago
          > We used to just leave that responsibility to the querying host’s own resolver.

          When? I didn't get online until the 90s, but resolv.conf delegating recursion to some other node was the way of the world back then. And still is. Some people do run a recursive resolver locally, but it's not so common afaik.

          > In any case, if all resolvers these days are recursive why mention it?

          Quad9 is named as a recursive resolver in contrast to being an authoritative server. Quad9 and the server I run for my domain are both DNS servers, both provide name resolution, but one is recursive and the other isn't. Used to be, you might run one server for both jobs, but that fell out of fashion for good reasons.

          • lokar 1 hour ago
            Back then most computing was done in office, lab, university settings. Running recursive resolvers for the local network was part of the standard IT setup.
            • toast0 46 minutes ago
              While I agree it was common, running a centralized recursive resolver for the local network is not the same as "leave that responsibility to the querying host’s own resolver"
              • lokar 43 minutes ago
                Sure, but it goes with a more centralized approach to systems management in general. The attitude was often that all of the computers were one thing.
  • rafram 1 hour ago
    They are in a difficult position because the entire point of their DNS resolver is that it blocks malicious sites (malware, phishing, etc.). Very easy for Sony to say, why can't they add piracy to the list? They "refuse to alter or lie to you" in their DNS responses - how would a malware block be lying if those other blocks are not?
    • dmantis 1 hour ago
      I guess the issue is that they are ordered to block it for all users, not only those particular users who picked some particular lists.

      And nobody would pick a piracy list, why'd you do it as a user.

  • gaiagraphia 21 minutes ago
    I wonder what pressure Qatar put on France to force this through?

    BeIn is owned by the Qatari state, who just so happen to own Paris St Germain.

    Their owners Yousef Al-Obaidly and Nasser Al-Khelaifi (for both the network and the club) are outspoken about piracy and 'the damage it causes football and creative industries'.

    They've also been in and out of court a fair bit on corruption charges, and seems they've paid their way out of trouble through fines. Seems just last month a new case opened:

    https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260920-psg-president...

    Nation state meddling, dodgy characters, corruption and greed is more of a threat to football than a DNS resolver, tbh.

  • Jepacor 1 hour ago
    Welp, I've been using quad9 and I'm French, does anyone have an alternative I can switch to?
    • capitol_ 1 hour ago
      I recommend Norway, they have lovely fjords.
      • drcongo 1 hour ago
        This comment made my day, beautiful.
  • martinjc 2 hours ago
    Sony being sleazy again. You start to wonder why they pick on the wrong people.
    • coldfloor 1 hour ago
      What's with all the Sony comments? This has nothing to do with Sony.
  • greatgib 1 hour ago
    Sadly no-one responsible from this situation will care.

    French authorities and network operator will in fact prefer that you don't have alternative than using the dns servers that they are providing.

    So it sucks that Quad9 is closing their resolver to french IPs. If they stand by their values, they should continue to accept the requests, just leave all office and business ties with France.

    Similar to ofcom things against 4chan.

  • jiveturkey 39 minutes ago
    how do they not see the self-inconsistency?

    they "cannot" blacklist the domains on geoIP basis, yet the "can" withdraw from France? via what method? Removing the French servers is clearly insufficient, so why can they deny France entirely via geoIP, but not block the domains just via geoIP?

    they do claim a value-based reason (good on them for it), but they are very very insistent about the "impossibility" anyway. can't have it both ways.

  • Onavo 2 hours ago
    Another user commented on

    > €580,000 to €1,000 per day. But deleted his/her comment.

    To put this into perspective, €365K a year is roughly the fully loaded total comp cost of a high-senior to low staff level software engineer or a mid level ML engineer at a frontier lab in Cali.

    • HackerThemAll 1 minute ago
      What exactly are you trying to convey here? That this penalty is not an issue? Would you be willing to pay it from your pocket then? Quad9 is not Cloudflare nor Google. It's a nonprofit, in case you blinked right at the sentence that mentioned this.
    • jubilanti 2 hours ago
      Per each infraction. They said they currently have 20 other cases pending. And who knows how many would be to come.
  • nmwp 2 hours ago
    [dead]