17 ms·

German Court Rules Against Internet Security Non-Profit Quad9

298 points by pgl 5y ago

thayne 5y ago
Is Quad9 being targeted because they are headquartered in Germany? Or is sony also suing every other DNS provider that has records for sites that may contain illegal copies of copyrighted material?
- massenpunkt 5y ago
  Quad9 is "operated by the Swiss-based Quad9 Foundation".
- vander_elst 5y ago
  I don't know all the details, but I would find it pretty strange that this is the only DNS provider that resolves the domain. Maybe they file a lawsuit against a weak player so that they can reuse the result against other bigger players.
- mijoharas 5y ago
  They have some servers in Germany.
spongechameleon 5y ago
The onus is on Sony to engage in legal battle with the website hosting the infringing content. Nobody else should be coerced to help them. This is ridiculous.
- PixelOfDeath 5y ago
  Sony the Rootkit installer company?
VortexDream 5y ago
I am so incredibly tired of Germany being a legal and technical internet backwater. It's exhausting and depressing and I hate it so much. I wish the old people would fuck the hell off, because they simply don't belong in positions that represent our society in a modern world.
- brnt 5y ago
  I recently went to work in Germany (not Berlin). It surprised me how conservative the country is, in many ways, not just the use of tech. Its lack of tech is a reflection of that attitude is my impression. Unfortunately the pandemic has made it difficult to get to know people personally and study this in a bit more detail.
- xijingpooh 5y ago
  France isn't a lot better in this regard. You need a permit from the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel to operate a public open wlan. They had a three strike policy for sharing infridging content but they just gave up for some reason. Maybe they finally realised it's a waste of public servant time to go after people in the benefit of a few corporations.
  - maeln 5y ago
    Big copyright holders hold a lot of political power in France. That's why France has been one of the country in the E.U fighting the most against piracy and taxing pretty much everything you can store music file on (we used to buy blank CD/DVD in germany or spain because they where close to 10 time cheaper). The three strike / hadopi bullshit was clearly a political move to satisfy the biggest copyright holder, a lot of it was completely unenforceable and even unconstitutional from the start. In the end, very few people even got to the third strike, and they couldn't even do what they "promised" (forbidding the person from having an internet connection) and had to go through costly court procedure just to give fines in the end. It was just a machine to burn public money for the miniscule benefit of a few. It died very fast because nobody wanted to try to make this bullshit actually work and burn even more money when they have to get re-elected.
- hvgk 5y ago
  A good friend of mine is German. She moved out of the country a couple of years back because it was crammed with backwards ideologies and Ludditism to use her own words. Her father ran a small shop which went bankrupt because he was closed at lunch times and weekends (when everyone wanted to go in there) and only took cash and this was everyone else’s fault apparently. She came here (UK) and was surprised you could actually pay pretty much anywhere with a phone for example and says we live in a technology utopia compared to there.
dtx1 5y ago
This has been another INSANE ruling by the courts in Hamburg. They are well known to be little more than industry stooges and I can't count how many insane of their insane rulings have been overruled by higher courts.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Is there any "punishment" for a judge whos' ruling is overturned by a higher court? It would seem to me that the definition of a good judge is one who always predicts how a higher court would act, and acts the same.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    I'm also surprised there isn't a stronger protection against litigants effectively choosing their judges. I remember reading about a system that Bulgaria(?) implemented for randomly assigning cases to judges, to avoid corruption, and how it had a flaw that let administrators make multiple requests to the system for the same case, until they got the judge they wanted.
    - cedilla 5y ago
      This is a matter of great debate. Germany does have a system that assigns courts to cases in a fair way, however the first step is determining the place of venue, which usually depends on the place of residence of the defendent, or it hinges on whereever the unlawful event that lead to the case happened. In cases of press and internet law, many lawyers argue that the event happened everywhere in Germany, and that they are accordingly free to choose whatever place of venue they like. Since the system works alright in general there's not much love from law professionnels for a change. This internet thing is just a fad anyway.
      - Semaphor 5y ago
        > This internet thing is just a fad anyway. It’s uncharted land for all of us - Angela Merkel 2016, translated.
dane-pgp 5y ago
> There is no component of the claimed copyright infringement that Quad9 participates indirectly, nor is there any infringing data on Quad9’s servers, nor does Quad9 have any business relationship with the site in question. We're approaching a situation where even electricity providers, not to mention OS and browser providers, can be forced to do the bidding copyright holders, to the detriment of everyone else.
- nicce 5y ago
  When you think about it, isn’t it indeed identical situation to ask browser(s) to block domains in this matter? Just more effective to ask ISP (all in once)
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    This is why SpaceX's StarLink will be interesting because I cant see how some court bailiff can enforce actions on satellites, and what one country bans, another will disagree with. I can see Govt's in particular NSA, GCHQ, aka 5 eyes, 7 eyes etc losing alot of control over the internet in the foreseeable future.
    - er4hn 5y ago
      Starlink satalites know where they are serving, geographically. Wouldn't they just comply with local laws or risk having their ability to do business in that region disrupted?
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        Presumably, but that hasn't worked out so well in countries like India. Adding insult to injury (or potentially comedy), the Indian government doesn't have an easy way to hunt down the existing Starlink users, so they're merely asking citizens not to buy them until they can strongarm Starlink into becoming a registered internet provider in India.
        5y ago
sebow 5y ago
This is why i don't buy the "germany is big on privacy" rhetoric.Not having google street view doesn't mean you have "privacy". Not to mention known links between BND and US agencies, de facto acting as a proxy for them in Europe. Some of the people may be more sympathetic towards privacy-first tools than the european average, but that doesn't mean the government/leadership is. Quad9 was the most interesting free DNS service out there, better than google/CF imo.And i'm not saying this as an "anti-german" talking-point,but there are actually very few countries were privacy was pushed as a principle in institutions, see Nordic countries or even to an extreme: CH(where if i recall correctly you cannot record someone even in public w/o their permission). However this smells like something that is not germany-specific but colluded across countries & big corporations: keep cracking down on piracy(even though it's basically a fact that these P2P methods of sharing copyrighted content actually made Sony/Hollywood/etc more money than not)
timcosta 5y ago
so does this mean that (for example) the olympics can require quad9 to stop resolving youtube because someone uploads a video to youtube that is a copyright infringement? what stops a malicious actor from claiming copyright infringement and causing sites like youtube, netflix, and hulu to be taken offline entirely while it's worked out?
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Presumably YouTube would be able to intervene to convince the court that this is a disproportionate response, given that YouTube already has a system in place for copyright holders to request individual videos to be taken down. Whether this defence against collateral damage is, on balance, good for web users is a more complicated strategic question.
  - mijoharas 5y ago
    Playing devils advocate, there already is a system in place for copyright holders to request that any website is taken down that obviates the need for any DNS level blocking (ISP level blocking).
endofreach 5y ago
I am eager to read the Urteil. Especially considering that this kind of liability was the norm in germany, at least always questioned. Then, in 2017 there was a law to „fix“ that. And now there is a ruling contradicting the idea of the law (§ 8 Telemediengesetz) as it seems. Main problem with german law is that the courts have too much freedom because they know, the lawmakers produce low quality laws nowadays. Just compare any old law with any of the newer ones… Germany is losing it, sadly.
- dathinab 5y ago
  I might be misremembering but I feel like the Hamburg Regional Court did pop up multiple times because of legally questionable decisions in recent years. Is that just me?
  - sabjut 5y ago
    Can't they just escalate the case to a higher (and more competent) instance?
    - dathinab 5y ago
      They did. But it costs time, money and should not be necessary.
    - cedilla 5y ago
      Yes and no. Yes, they will get the chance to argue in front of a higher court. But they can't skip the lower court. If I understand it correctly (Quad9 is a bit sparse on details here), this was a decision to uphold the original injunction. This decision is open to immediate appeal to a higher court, but Quad9 will have to show that there's an especially high urgency for that. Otherwise they will have to wait for the judgment in the principal case.
  - rndgermandude 5y ago
    No, the Hamburg court is well known for playing fast and loose with everything copyright or everything personal rights. They create jaw dropping rulings all the time, and quite often are reversed in part or fully by a higher court. The Oberlandesgericht Hamburg was particular known for a Richter with the name Buske. He was well know for his "interesting" rulings. It went so far that IP/copyright/personal rights/media lawyers coined the term "Buskeismus" (Buskeism). He is retired since about a year, but his spirit seems to still live on especially in Hamburg's courts.
rwbhn 5y ago
So, if I'm reading this right, Quad9 is just a recursive dns resolver here. Why are they being enjoined rather than whoever runs the authoritative server?
- rvnx 5y ago
  Because when you see it from Sony's perspective, Quad9 is a provider/tool that allows people to circumvent restrictions / legal decisions to block the website.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    More importantly unlike other DNS providers (like the root servers) it censors the domain names that it will resolve, Sony's argument is that because it chooses some domains it should censor the ones that it wants too
freeflight 5y ago
Germany does not like anything non-profit security related. A few years back they raided a German host of the Riseup email service due to some alleged online threat [0] They didn't just stop there, they also moved on to the nearby CCC maker space, for which they didn't even have a permit, and also raided that. Among the things they found there was 3D printers, chemicals to feed said 3D printer, and a small 3D printed model of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. They confiscated all of that under the suspected offense of "trying to create an explosive device" [1] Can't make this stuff up, reality is stranger than fiction. [0] https://www.golem.de/news/zwiebelfreunde-polizei-durchsucht-raeume-von-tor-aktivisten-1807-135310.html https://www.golem.de/news/zwiebelfreunde-polizei-durchsucht-... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/hausdurchsuchungen-bei-netzaktivisten-chaos-computer-club-kritisiert-polizeivorgehen-a-1216463.html https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/hausdurchsuchungen-bei-n...
- nix23 5y ago
  Yeah Germany is terrible, they buy'd NSO licenses because their own bundes-troyaner is bullshit, every second year they want to introduce "child safety measures" aka you need to identify yourself so you can browse anything else then the lego website, and many many more examples...just like this one, germany is a shame in this regard. But Julia Reda, the CCC and netzpolitik.org are just great!
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > every second year they want to introduce "child safety measures" It's always the same excuse every single time. I have to wonder if this stuff actually protects children.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      12 years olds will always have more digital competency in evading such barriers than their parents, even the newer smartphone and tablet generations.
    - nix23 5y ago
      Look i am absolutely not against protecting children's from harmful stuff, but it has to be the other way around, it's not like i had to insert my ID card into the DVD player too show that i am this old...NO you put the DVD's away your children's are not supposed to watch. I have a new revolutionary idea....setup internet filters ON your children's devices, and there are tons of websites with pre made filters (often every country has his own) and even crazier most ISP/Routers already have them implemented, on the Mobile-phones you setup VPN (back to your home-router (also already implemented from most ISP's) so even the Phones have those filters) ;) Too much work?* Then shut up talking about protecting your/our children's, and let them browse every f*ing social media network including 4chan, tictok and that terrible facebook owned thing. *Not talking to the parent obviously, but to everyone who thinks it should be any other way.*****
e4e5 5y ago
> Quad9 will continue to implement DNS blocking for the domain name named in the injunction which resolves to a website that is claimed to be offering links to copyrighted material. Huh? So what does Quad9 do? Block or not block?
ddtaylor 5y ago
A reminder of why E2EE for everything is needed ASAP and centralized/federated services need to be replaced with fully decentralized solutions.
kingcharles 5y ago
They should at least force Amazon (AWS), Facebook, Google Search, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest's DNS offline too as all those sites host or link to masses of illegal content. It's only fair.
sinuhe69 5y ago
Germany is truly backwater when it comes to internet and the new economy. I doubt the court can even comprehend the role of DNS providers. All they have are age-old cases and and a relict understanding of things in the past. Perhaps Quad9 lawyers should try to compare DNS service with a telephone book (die Gelbe Seite). It’s unimaginable that the Bundespost should revise their phone books or applying some redaction due to the disputes of some businesses. Even when a business deemed illegal in the past, die Bundespost was never demanded to remove their listings. Perhaps then will these verehrende Richter be able to grasp the matter.
- hef19898 5y ago
  When Angela Merkel stated that "the internet is undiscovered land for all of us" (Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland), she was mocked. Also by myself. Now I am convinced she just stated a fact, a true one at that. As sad as it is.
  - ketzu 5y ago
    I think in the context of law, how it applies and should/could be enforced on the internet, societal implications like fake news, privacy and state surveilance (last was the actual context of the quote) she was right back then and is right still. We have little experience with the problems, discover new problems every other year and have no solutions that work well - hence, uncharted land. Not limited to germany.
    - throwaway14356 5y ago
      i look at this as running a small ferry to the island on a lake and the state demanding that i refuse passengers as a punishment for crimes they were never convicted of. Even if they had their day in court i should not be forced to punish anyone. Then i should also pay for implementation? First the offender should pay for his persecution, then tax, then the victim but never some random citizen.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Hey, Dorothee Bär has an iPhone and understands Clubhouse! What more can you whish for? /S
croes 5y ago
The Hamburg Courts are notorious for their bad judgments regarding the Internet. That's why content providers like to file lawsuits there, but because of that, the rulings are often overturned in the next instance. The regional court were the ones according to which the operator of a commercially operated website is liable for copyright infringing content that he links to, even without knowledge. The local court is even worse regarding copyright infringement.
- patall 5y ago
  It's sad that your comment isn't higher up. General consensus in multiple German forums is that this judgment won't last and will be indeed just another Hamburger Landgericht misjudgment. Well, let's hope and see.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
maltris 5y ago
Coming from Germany I strongly believe that this ruling is based on the mere fact that those ruling over the topic, simply do not understand the topic. I imagine explaining DNS and internet to my grandparents which never had anything to do with computers or computer technology. Its simply impossible. Needless to say that there is billions of recursive DNS around the world. Their own FritzBox runs a damn recursive DNS server that is able to resolve whatever they request. What - will they now sue themselfes to make that right? The spooky internet made me do it!!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ketzu 5y ago
After reading the comments I feel I will go against a strong current here: I think DNS blocks are the right approach and the judges do understand DNS sufficiently. When it comes to laws and their enforcement, I often wonder what HN users think would be a good approach. Most often my impression is that the favored approach seems to be of the form "the internet does not need any laws" paired with a condescending tone that everyone else doesn't understand the internet. Explanation: DNS blocks are the easiest hurdle to put up to deterrent most people. Sure DNS blocks can be easily circumnavigated, but so can locks. (It being easily avoided by more informed users might actually be a plus, preventing overzealous censorship being too effective.) Actual enforcement of domestic law on providers based in other countrs (of the deemed illegal content) is not realistically possible/not a good tradeoff of using resources and most importantly: Not their business. But that does not mean that a country has to accept everything that is legal somewhere (or at least not persecuted in that jurisdiction). Similar reasons prohibit enforcement on foreign DNS zones. Therefore, local DNS resolvers, even if just relaying to those foreign ones, would be the target of enforcement.
- nix23 5y ago
  Forcing a Non-Profit to block information just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem. Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube? Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future? Would you like that? Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it? ...oh i know why, because it's not enough to block it, Sony knows it and the hordes of lawyers at telecom etc knows it, so you go after the easy prey. That's the problem!
  - ketzu 5y ago
    > just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem. Yes, that is a problem, but not the one I thought people complain about. Maybe the comments doing so stuck with me the most and I overestimate how many there were, but even rereading most comments with what the problem is according to you in mind, many do not seem to address this problem at all. > Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube? > > Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future? > > Would you like that? No. Quad9 was also provided with a deadline way too short to implement anything. But after researching that bit a bit more, I changed my mind a bit about the process: I initially wrote that quad9 is in the wrong, I don't believe that anymore. On one hand it would be more efficient to directly contact the providers that can do something about the infringement (youtube, DNS providers, whatever your prefered target would be), on the other hand it makes it easier to abuse. I still don't know of any good solution that's not just telling one side to go and shove it. > Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it? My understanding was that this is also a DNS block and is frought with the same criticism (I may have accidentally projected that topic on the commenters here though, as the complaints seem to be the same). I'd gladly change that understanding :)
gigatexal 5y ago
Ex-pat living in Germany: The only thing I don't care for other than the terrible customer service at restaurants and other places is Germany's stance on copyright and how militant they are about things. It's ridiculous. It's like the MPAA's wet dream.
xafnuaetrf8764 5y ago
> Quad9 is a free service that replaces your default ISP or enterprise Domain Name Server (DNS) configuration. Who or what pays their bills, though? Servers burn up electricity, consume bandwidth and require maintenance. None of that is free.
- xafnuaetrf8764 5y ago
  What, did I ask something forbidden, why the downvotes?
- wut42 5y ago
  https://www.quad9.net/about/sponsors https://www.quad9.net/about/sponsors
- sjagoe 5y ago
  https://quad9.org/about/sponsors https://quad9.org/about/sponsors > Quad9 is a not-for-profit organization whose operational budget comes entirely from sponsorships and donations.
T3RMINATED 5y ago
[dead]
legrande 5y ago
More energy should be spent taking down the actual server used to host pirated works. Otherwise this is just shooting the messenger. Imagine if after hearing a certain person committed a crime, and then trying to remove them from a phonebook? Piracy has its uses, but becomes problematic when people are selling pirated works for money, or are profiting substantially off it. That's my stance. By all means, keep the torrent sites up, but as for streaming sites that charge a fee and are profiting off piracy: that's where I draw the line.

298 points by pgl 5y ago

Is Quad9 being targeted because they are headquartered in Germany? Or is sony also suing every other DNS provider that has records for sites that may contain illegal copies of copyrighted material?

massenpunkt 5y ago
Quad9 is "operated by the Swiss-based Quad9 Foundation".
vander_elst 5y ago
I don't know all the details, but I would find it pretty strange that this is the only DNS provider that resolves the domain. Maybe they file a lawsuit against a weak player so that they can reuse the result against other bigger players.
mijoharas 5y ago
They have some servers in Germany.

spongechameleon 5y ago

The onus is on Sony to engage in legal battle with the website hosting the infringing content. Nobody else should be coerced to help them. This is ridiculous.

PixelOfDeath 5y ago
Sony the Rootkit installer company?

VortexDream 5y ago

I am so incredibly tired of Germany being a legal and technical internet backwater. It's exhausting and depressing and I hate it so much. I wish the old people would fuck the hell off, because they simply don't belong in positions that represent our society in a modern world.

brnt 5y ago
I recently went to work in Germany (not Berlin). It surprised me how conservative the country is, in many ways, not just the use of tech. Its lack of tech is a reflection of that attitude is my impression. Unfortunately the pandemic has made it difficult to get to know people personally and study this in a bit more detail.
xijingpooh 5y ago
France isn't a lot better in this regard. You need a permit from the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel to operate a public open wlan. They had a three strike policy for sharing infridging content but they just gave up for some reason. Maybe they finally realised it's a waste of public servant time to go after people in the benefit of a few corporations.
- maeln 5y ago
  Big copyright holders hold a lot of political power in France. That's why France has been one of the country in the E.U fighting the most against piracy and taxing pretty much everything you can store music file on (we used to buy blank CD/DVD in germany or spain because they where close to 10 time cheaper). The three strike / hadopi bullshit was clearly a political move to satisfy the biggest copyright holder, a lot of it was completely unenforceable and even unconstitutional from the start. In the end, very few people even got to the third strike, and they couldn't even do what they "promised" (forbidding the person from having an internet connection) and had to go through costly court procedure just to give fines in the end. It was just a machine to burn public money for the miniscule benefit of a few. It died very fast because nobody wanted to try to make this bullshit actually work and burn even more money when they have to get re-elected.
hvgk 5y ago
A good friend of mine is German. She moved out of the country a couple of years back because it was crammed with backwards ideologies and Ludditism to use her own words. Her father ran a small shop which went bankrupt because he was closed at lunch times and weekends (when everyone wanted to go in there) and only took cash and this was everyone else’s fault apparently. She came here (UK) and was surprised you could actually pay pretty much anywhere with a phone for example and says we live in a technology utopia compared to there.

dtx1 5y ago

This has been another INSANE ruling by the courts in Hamburg. They are well known to be little more than industry stooges and I can't count how many insane of their insane rulings have been overruled by higher courts.

londons_explore 5y ago
Is there any "punishment" for a judge whos' ruling is overturned by a higher court? It would seem to me that the definition of a good judge is one who always predicts how a higher court would act, and acts the same.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  I'm also surprised there isn't a stronger protection against litigants effectively choosing their judges. I remember reading about a system that Bulgaria(?) implemented for randomly assigning cases to judges, to avoid corruption, and how it had a flaw that let administrators make multiple requests to the system for the same case, until they got the judge they wanted.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    This is a matter of great debate. Germany does have a system that assigns courts to cases in a fair way, however the first step is determining the place of venue, which usually depends on the place of residence of the defendent, or it hinges on whereever the unlawful event that lead to the case happened. In cases of press and internet law, many lawyers argue that the event happened everywhere in Germany, and that they are accordingly free to choose whatever place of venue they like. Since the system works alright in general there's not much love from law professionnels for a change. This internet thing is just a fad anyway.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      > This internet thing is just a fad anyway. It’s uncharted land for all of us - Angela Merkel 2016, translated.

dane-pgp 5y ago

> There is no component of the claimed copyright infringement that Quad9 participates indirectly, nor is there any infringing data on Quad9’s servers, nor does Quad9 have any business relationship with the site in question. We're approaching a situation where even electricity providers, not to mention OS and browser providers, can be forced to do the bidding copyright holders, to the detriment of everyone else.

nicce 5y ago
When you think about it, isn’t it indeed identical situation to ask browser(s) to block domains in this matter? Just more effective to ask ISP (all in once)
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  This is why SpaceX's StarLink will be interesting because I cant see how some court bailiff can enforce actions on satellites, and what one country bans, another will disagree with. I can see Govt's in particular NSA, GCHQ, aka 5 eyes, 7 eyes etc losing alot of control over the internet in the foreseeable future.
  - er4hn 5y ago
    Starlink satalites know where they are serving, geographically. Wouldn't they just comply with local laws or risk having their ability to do business in that region disrupted?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Presumably, but that hasn't worked out so well in countries like India. Adding insult to injury (or potentially comedy), the Indian government doesn't have an easy way to hunt down the existing Starlink users, so they're merely asking citizens not to buy them until they can strongarm Starlink into becoming a registered internet provider in India.
      - 5y ago

sebow 5y ago

This is why i don't buy the "germany is big on privacy" rhetoric.Not having google street view doesn't mean you have "privacy". Not to mention known links between BND and US agencies, de facto acting as a proxy for them in Europe. Some of the people may be more sympathetic towards privacy-first tools than the european average, but that doesn't mean the government/leadership is. Quad9 was the most interesting free DNS service out there, better than google/CF imo.And i'm not saying this as an "anti-german" talking-point,but there are actually very few countries were privacy was pushed as a principle in institutions, see Nordic countries or even to an extreme: CH(where if i recall correctly you cannot record someone even in public w/o their permission). However this smells like something that is not germany-specific but colluded across countries & big corporations: keep cracking down on piracy(even though it's basically a fact that these P2P methods of sharing copyrighted content actually made Sony/Hollywood/etc more money than not)

timcosta 5y ago

so does this mean that (for example) the olympics can require quad9 to stop resolving youtube because someone uploads a video to youtube that is a copyright infringement? what stops a malicious actor from claiming copyright infringement and causing sites like youtube, netflix, and hulu to be taken offline entirely while it's worked out?

dane-pgp 5y ago
Presumably YouTube would be able to intervene to convince the court that this is a disproportionate response, given that YouTube already has a system in place for copyright holders to request individual videos to be taken down. Whether this defence against collateral damage is, on balance, good for web users is a more complicated strategic question.
- mijoharas 5y ago
  Playing devils advocate, there already is a system in place for copyright holders to request that any website is taken down that obviates the need for any DNS level blocking (ISP level blocking).

endofreach 5y ago

I am eager to read the Urteil. Especially considering that this kind of liability was the norm in germany, at least always questioned. Then, in 2017 there was a law to „fix“ that. And now there is a ruling contradicting the idea of the law (§ 8 Telemediengesetz) as it seems. Main problem with german law is that the courts have too much freedom because they know, the lawmakers produce low quality laws nowadays. Just compare any old law with any of the newer ones… Germany is losing it, sadly.

dathinab 5y ago
I might be misremembering but I feel like the Hamburg Regional Court did pop up multiple times because of legally questionable decisions in recent years. Is that just me?
- sabjut 5y ago
  Can't they just escalate the case to a higher (and more competent) instance?
  - dathinab 5y ago
    They did. But it costs time, money and should not be necessary.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    Yes and no. Yes, they will get the chance to argue in front of a higher court. But they can't skip the lower court. If I understand it correctly (Quad9 is a bit sparse on details here), this was a decision to uphold the original injunction. This decision is open to immediate appeal to a higher court, but Quad9 will have to show that there's an especially high urgency for that. Otherwise they will have to wait for the judgment in the principal case.
- rndgermandude 5y ago
  No, the Hamburg court is well known for playing fast and loose with everything copyright or everything personal rights. They create jaw dropping rulings all the time, and quite often are reversed in part or fully by a higher court. The Oberlandesgericht Hamburg was particular known for a Richter with the name Buske. He was well know for his "interesting" rulings. It went so far that IP/copyright/personal rights/media lawyers coined the term "Buskeismus" (Buskeism). He is retired since about a year, but his spirit seems to still live on especially in Hamburg's courts.

rwbhn 5y ago

So, if I'm reading this right, Quad9 is just a recursive dns resolver here. Why are they being enjoined rather than whoever runs the authoritative server?

rvnx 5y ago
Because when you see it from Sony's perspective, Quad9 is a provider/tool that allows people to circumvent restrictions / legal decisions to block the website.
- Taniwha 5y ago
  More importantly unlike other DNS providers (like the root servers) it censors the domain names that it will resolve, Sony's argument is that because it chooses some domains it should censor the ones that it wants too

freeflight 5y ago

Germany does not like anything non-profit security related. A few years back they raided a German host of the Riseup email service due to some alleged online threat [0] They didn't just stop there, they also moved on to the nearby CCC maker space, for which they didn't even have a permit, and also raided that. Among the things they found there was 3D printers, chemicals to feed said 3D printer, and a small 3D printed model of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. They confiscated all of that under the suspected offense of "trying to create an explosive device" [1] Can't make this stuff up, reality is stranger than fiction. [0] https://www.golem.de/news/zwiebelfreunde-polizei-durchsucht-raeume-von-tor-aktivisten-1807-135310.html https://www.golem.de/news/zwiebelfreunde-polizei-durchsucht-... [1] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/hausdurchsuchungen-bei-netzaktivisten-chaos-computer-club-kritisiert-polizeivorgehen-a-1216463.html https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/hausdurchsuchungen-bei-n...

nix23 5y ago
Yeah Germany is terrible, they buy'd NSO licenses because their own bundes-troyaner is bullshit, every second year they want to introduce "child safety measures" aka you need to identify yourself so you can browse anything else then the lego website, and many many more examples...just like this one, germany is a shame in this regard. But Julia Reda, the CCC and netzpolitik.org are just great!
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > every second year they want to introduce "child safety measures" It's always the same excuse every single time. I have to wonder if this stuff actually protects children.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    12 years olds will always have more digital competency in evading such barriers than their parents, even the newer smartphone and tablet generations.
  - nix23 5y ago
    Look i am absolutely not against protecting children's from harmful stuff, but it has to be the other way around, it's not like i had to insert my ID card into the DVD player too show that i am this old...NO you put the DVD's away your children's are not supposed to watch. I have a new revolutionary idea....setup internet filters ON your children's devices, and there are tons of websites with pre made filters (often every country has his own) and even crazier most ISP/Routers already have them implemented, on the Mobile-phones you setup VPN (back to your home-router (also already implemented from most ISP's) so even the Phones have those filters) ;) Too much work?* Then shut up talking about protecting your/our children's, and let them browse every f*ing social media network including 4chan, tictok and that terrible facebook owned thing. *Not talking to the parent obviously, but to everyone who thinks it should be any other way.*****

e4e5 5y ago

> Quad9 will continue to implement DNS blocking for the domain name named in the injunction which resolves to a website that is claimed to be offering links to copyrighted material. Huh? So what does Quad9 do? Block or not block?

ddtaylor 5y ago

A reminder of why E2EE for everything is needed ASAP and centralized/federated services need to be replaced with fully decentralized solutions.

kingcharles 5y ago

They should at least force Amazon (AWS), Facebook, Google Search, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest's DNS offline too as all those sites host or link to masses of illegal content. It's only fair.

sinuhe69 5y ago

Germany is truly backwater when it comes to internet and the new economy. I doubt the court can even comprehend the role of DNS providers. All they have are age-old cases and and a relict understanding of things in the past. Perhaps Quad9 lawyers should try to compare DNS service with a telephone book (die Gelbe Seite). It’s unimaginable that the Bundespost should revise their phone books or applying some redaction due to the disputes of some businesses. Even when a business deemed illegal in the past, die Bundespost was never demanded to remove their listings. Perhaps then will these verehrende Richter be able to grasp the matter.

hef19898 5y ago
When Angela Merkel stated that "the internet is undiscovered land for all of us" (Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland), she was mocked. Also by myself. Now I am convinced she just stated a fact, a true one at that. As sad as it is.
- ketzu 5y ago
  I think in the context of law, how it applies and should/could be enforced on the internet, societal implications like fake news, privacy and state surveilance (last was the actual context of the quote) she was right back then and is right still. We have little experience with the problems, discover new problems every other year and have no solutions that work well - hence, uncharted land. Not limited to germany.
  - throwaway14356 5y ago
    i look at this as running a small ferry to the island on a lake and the state demanding that i refuse passengers as a punishment for crimes they were never convicted of. Even if they had their day in court i should not be forced to punish anyone. Then i should also pay for implementation? First the offender should pay for his persecution, then tax, then the victim but never some random citizen.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Hey, Dorothee Bär has an iPhone and understands Clubhouse! What more can you whish for? /S

croes 5y ago

The Hamburg Courts are notorious for their bad judgments regarding the Internet. That's why content providers like to file lawsuits there, but because of that, the rulings are often overturned in the next instance. The regional court were the ones according to which the operator of a commercially operated website is liable for copyright infringing content that he links to, even without knowledge. The local court is even worse regarding copyright infringement.

patall 5y ago
It's sad that your comment isn't higher up. General consensus in multiple German forums is that this judgment won't last and will be indeed just another Hamburger Landgericht misjudgment. Well, let's hope and see.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

maltris 5y ago

Coming from Germany I strongly believe that this ruling is based on the mere fact that those ruling over the topic, simply do not understand the topic. I imagine explaining DNS and internet to my grandparents which never had anything to do with computers or computer technology. Its simply impossible. Needless to say that there is billions of recursive DNS around the world. Their own FritzBox runs a damn recursive DNS server that is able to resolve whatever they request. What - will they now sue themselfes to make that right? The spooky internet made me do it!!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ketzu 5y ago

After reading the comments I feel I will go against a strong current here: I think DNS blocks are the right approach and the judges do understand DNS sufficiently. When it comes to laws and their enforcement, I often wonder what HN users think would be a good approach. Most often my impression is that the favored approach seems to be of the form "the internet does not need any laws" paired with a condescending tone that everyone else doesn't understand the internet. Explanation: DNS blocks are the easiest hurdle to put up to deterrent most people. Sure DNS blocks can be easily circumnavigated, but so can locks. (It being easily avoided by more informed users might actually be a plus, preventing overzealous censorship being too effective.) Actual enforcement of domestic law on providers based in other countrs (of the deemed illegal content) is not realistically possible/not a good tradeoff of using resources and most importantly: Not their business. But that does not mean that a country has to accept everything that is legal somewhere (or at least not persecuted in that jurisdiction). Similar reasons prohibit enforcement on foreign DNS zones. Therefore, local DNS resolvers, even if just relaying to those foreign ones, would be the target of enforcement.

nix23 5y ago
Forcing a Non-Profit to block information just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem. Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube? Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future? Would you like that? Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it? ...oh i know why, because it's not enough to block it, Sony knows it and the hordes of lawyers at telecom etc knows it, so you go after the easy prey. That's the problem!
- ketzu 5y ago
  > just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem. Yes, that is a problem, but not the one I thought people complain about. Maybe the comments doing so stuck with me the most and I overestimate how many there were, but even rereading most comments with what the problem is according to you in mind, many do not seem to address this problem at all. > Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube? > > Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future? > > Would you like that? No. Quad9 was also provided with a deadline way too short to implement anything. But after researching that bit a bit more, I changed my mind a bit about the process: I initially wrote that quad9 is in the wrong, I don't believe that anymore. On one hand it would be more efficient to directly contact the providers that can do something about the infringement (youtube, DNS providers, whatever your prefered target would be), on the other hand it makes it easier to abuse. I still don't know of any good solution that's not just telling one side to go and shove it. > Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it? My understanding was that this is also a DNS block and is frought with the same criticism (I may have accidentally projected that topic on the commenters here though, as the complaints seem to be the same). I'd gladly change that understanding :)

gigatexal 5y ago

Ex-pat living in Germany: The only thing I don't care for other than the terrible customer service at restaurants and other places is Germany's stance on copyright and how militant they are about things. It's ridiculous. It's like the MPAA's wet dream.

xafnuaetrf8764 5y ago

> Quad9 is a free service that replaces your default ISP or enterprise Domain Name Server (DNS) configuration. Who or what pays their bills, though? Servers burn up electricity, consume bandwidth and require maintenance. None of that is free.

xafnuaetrf8764 5y ago
What, did I ask something forbidden, why the downvotes?
wut42 5y ago
https://www.quad9.net/about/sponsors https://www.quad9.net/about/sponsors
sjagoe 5y ago
https://quad9.org/about/sponsors https://quad9.org/about/sponsors > Quad9 is a not-for-profit organization whose operational budget comes entirely from sponsorships and donations.

T3RMINATED 5y ago

[dead]

legrande 5y ago

More energy should be spent taking down the actual server used to host pirated works. Otherwise this is just shooting the messenger. Imagine if after hearing a certain person committed a crime, and then trying to remove them from a phonebook? Piracy has its uses, but becomes problematic when people are selling pirated works for money, or are profiting substantially off it. That's my stance. By all means, keep the torrent sites up, but as for streaming sites that charge a fee and are profiting off piracy: that's where I draw the line.