Remember, last May, the Paris court handed down a judgment forcing the DNS services of Cloudfare, Cisco and Google to block access to several pirate websites at the request of the Canal+ group.
This concerns broadcasts of sports competitions broadcast illegally by these portals. The French company believes that DNS are used by Internet users to circumvent the blocking measures already put in place for Internet service providers. Canal+ has not stopped there.
DNS in the spotlight
A few days ago, the Paris judicial court imposed the same measures on two other DNS services, Quad9 and Vercara, again at the request of Canal+. The judicial authority relies on article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code.
It targets sites which broadcast the Champions League football and the Top 14 rugby. As for the portals concerned, these are livestreaming sites, but also illegal IPTV services.
Quad9 will appeal
As explained TorrentFreakQuad9 does not intend to let this happen and will challenge this decision on appeal. The service denounces a “DNS censorship” and an app ” absurd “ of copyright law. He adds:
Quad9 has no relationship with the sites listed. They are not customers, do not pay Quad9 and have no contractual or formal relationship with Quad9. We have no interaction with them other than resolving their domain names, as we do with every other name on the Internet.
Another concern posed by this decision: it will not only impact France. Quad9 emphasizes in this regard:
Therefore, to remain compliant, we must block these sites for all users, across all domains. This amounts to applying French law on a global scale, but if Quad9 does not comply, Canal+ and the French courts can seek financial sanctions against us.
According to the specialized site, the supplier should argue in its appeal procedure that article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code does not apply to DNS resolvers, because they do not have “transmission function”. For the moment the Paris court has rejected this idea, but it is possible that other jurisdictions will be more sensitive to it.
What do you think of this strategy used by Canal+ which asks DNS providers to act? Tell us in the comments.
