Quad9 will withdraw its DNS service from France on 24 November

Quad9 will withdraw its DNS service from France on 24 November

22 October 2026: Quad9, the free public DNS resolver run by a Swiss non-profit foundation, will stop serving users in France from Tuesday 24 November, after a French court ruled on 21 October that it must block resolution of a set of domain names that beIN says infringe its sports broadcasting rights. Organisations in France that point networks, devices or security tools at 9.9.9.9 or its secondary addresses have about a month to move to another resolver.

Not yet independently verified. We have not read the court's decision; its reasoning, and the list of domains it covers, are as Quad9 describes them. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What the court ordered

According to Quad9, the ruling in beIN's favour obliges it to block recursive resolution of the domains for users located in France. The court cut the financial penalty from €580,000 to €1,000 per day, which Quad9 calls the good news. It also says that, if it does not comply, the daily penalty runs until the blocking period ends on 14 November, about €24,000 before legal costs, and that 20 similar cases are pending against it. heise reports that the ruling came from the third chamber of the Paris Judicial Court.

beIN, a Qatari broadcaster with offices in France, has pursued resolver operators rather than only the sites that carry the streams. Quad9 says it has no connection with the domains or their operators.

Why Quad9 says it cannot comply

Quad9's argument is technical as much as principled. It keeps no record of who its users are and has no way to tell which queries come from France. Blocking the names in its global threat list would apply a French order to every user in the world. Country-level filtering by IP address is the obvious workaround, but Quad9 tried it during a similar German case brought by Sony Music in 2021 to 2023; Sony showed the block could be bypassed with a VPN, and the court fined Quad9 for contempt. Quad9 eventually won that case, at a cost it puts in six figures.

"We categorically refuse to alter or lie to you about the DNS responses you receive," the foundation writes. With global blocking ruled out and geographic blocking already punished once, it has chosen to withdraw from France altogether.

Who needs to switch

Quad9 is widely used by small businesses, managed service providers and privacy-minded teams because its default address blocks known malware and phishing domains at no cost. After 24 November those protections stop for users in France, so routers, DHCP settings, endpoint agents and DNS-over-HTTPS profiles that name Quad9 should be changed before then, and a replacement resolver with comparable threat blocking chosen deliberately rather than falling back to an ISP default. Teams with staff or offices in several countries should also check whether VPN exit points or roaming devices would appear to Quad9 as being in France.

Company profile on TrustList: Quad9

Sources

• Quad9: Farewell, France, 22 October 2026
• heise online: Zensur-Urteil, DNS-Dienst Quad9 verlässt Frankreich, 22 October 2026