10 ms·

Quad9 wins appeal against Sony

310 points by madspindel 3y ago

ronsor 3y ago
I think the main moral of the story is not to base your company in Europe if you don't want to be subject to painful copyright litigation in German courts.
- alfanick 3y ago
  Which are not enforceable, as we can see. Living in Germany? Downloaded a torrent and sent 16KiB of that torrent back, got a letter from random lawyer to pay 350eur to somewhere? Not enforceable.
  - filterfiber 3y ago
    > Not enforceable. I'm not familiar with how lawsuits work in Europe/European countrys, but in the US anyone can sue anyone for any reason at any time (with very specific, few restrictions). If it's anything like the US, as long as it's not a completely spam/bogus lawsuit then it might not be enforcable but you still have to hire a lawyer and go through that painful process. AND it sounds to me like Europe is similar to the US in that you may be sued by a state/country you don't reside in as long as you technically operate there (which everyone does now with the internet).
    - alfanick 3y ago
      a) Law suit culture does not exist here, but yes you can, b) I'm truly speaking from experience... and a lot of people had that experience. You get a random useless letter from random useless agency that is making money from not lawsuits, but agreements from people who don't know they don't have to pay. It's a legalised scam kinda. Got a letter that you downloaded something sometime? Ignore. They want like 300-500eur to settle (it's not in court!). And they will not take it to court, because they instantly lose (and cover my costs of my lawyer) - they cannot actually prove *indeed you person* shared it, done. It's a business model of some shady (but legal) legal offices. Couple of edits after reading the OPs comment again: - most of the countries in Europe do not have precedence law, - you do not NEED to hire a lawyer, most things are easy.
      - galangalalgol 3y ago
        Does the loser always pay, or only if the judge rules the suit was frivolous? If it is always, that might cause the us not to have a lawsuit culture either.
        alfanick 3y ago
        In most cases the loser or a person who initiated the lawsuit pays. (If winner initiated, doesn't matter, if loser initiated, well they pay).
- cycomanic 3y ago
  Well the courts decided pro quad9 so I think this is good news? Or are you saying that in the US you can't be the subject to copyright lawsuits (Let alone DCMA takedown notices)?
  - thorncorona 3y ago
    Sony is now trying again in Italy :/
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    You absolutely can be subject to copyright lawsuits in the US. DMCA is also a US law. DCMA is the part of the US government that buys military parts from private companies :P German courts decided in favor of Quad9 on appeal, but they still had to go through a shitton of litigation to get there, which is scary. I will also point out that Germany is the reason why the US went to life+70 terms in the 90s, since they had the longest terms in the EU. Disney was able to play the EU off the US to get an extra few decades on Mickey Mouse. However, that seems only scarcely related to this lawsuit. Even if copyright terms were only a few years, we'd still have idiot companies trying to take down notorious markets through any intermediary they can yell at. And civil litigation is a horribly drawn out slog in every country. So I'm not sure what ronsor is saying other than a generic "fuck the EU" here.
- tremon 3y ago
  What a choice... painful copyright litigation in Europe, painful patent trolling in the US, or painful defenestration in Russia.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Now now, no self respecting data center has windows.
- dfawcus 3y ago
  The consequence is due to the impact of the Lugano Convention 2007, as the piece mentioned. So it is not just German courts, it is any court of an EU member state, plus those of Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Which is possibly the same mechanism whereby they're now subject to action in Italy.
theandrewbailey 3y ago
I guess Sony is resorting to lawfare so that you won't pirate those shows they're taking off the Playstation Store.
slow_typist 3y ago
Ruling (in English): https://www.quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e629b1f7b.pdf https://www.quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_...
dang 3y ago
Related. Others? Quad9 blocks pirate site globally after Sony demanded €10k fine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36878867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36878867 - July 2023 (65 comments) Quad9’s Opinion of the Recent Court Ruling in Leipzig - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35971915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35971915 - May 2023 (84 comments) DNS Resolver Quad9 Loses Global Pirate Site Blocking Case Against Sony - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35081507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35081507 - March 2023 (11 comments) Sony's Legal Attack on Quad9, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026403 - March 2023 (85 comments) Avoid Using Quad9 DNS: They Are Going to Start Blocking Pirate Websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31487630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31487630 - May 2022 (7 comments) DNS-Resolver Quad9 Loses First Pirate Site Blocking Appeal in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29458069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29458069 - Dec 2021 (2 comments) German Court Rules Against Internet Security Non-Profit Quad9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398455 - Nov 2021 (192 comments) Quad9 Files Official Objection Opposing Sony Music’s German Court Ruling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28434883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28434883 - Sept 2021 (25 comments) Quad9 and Sony Music: German Injunction Status - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620319 - June 2021 (227 comments)
RamRodification 3y ago
So in the end, the only difference Sony made, for me, is that I now know about that website on the domain they tried to block.
- aryonoco 3y ago
  Something... something... Streisand... something
- eviks 3y ago
  The other difference is the domain names you will never know about because they wouldn't exist
Racing0461 3y ago
> The court has also ruled that the case cannot be taken to a higher court and their decision is the final word in this particular case. How can a non supreme court rule this? Why won't all courts just do this if its allowed?
- krylon 3y ago
  It works differently in different countries. This is a German court, remember. I am German, but I am not a lawyer, so I am not what that means.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  I too am very curious about that. I've never heard of such a legal principle -- can anyone knowledgeable point out what it's called? I'm curious for the justification behind it, as it seems so contrary to the generally accepted principles of how legal systems usually work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- layer8 3y ago
  As I understand it: In Germany, a court of appeal at that level will generally only allow a further appeal if general questions of law are concerned, according to its assessment. This is likely in order to protect the higher instances from being flooded with appeals on non-fundamental issues. As mentioned by TFA, there is still a procedure to object to such a decision, but it comes with higher hurdles for providing justification for objecting.
  - slow_typist 3y ago
    The procedure is called Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde in Germany, and is generally possible if the claim exceeds 20,000 EUR according to § 544 ZPO [1]. At the BGH (highest civil court), the success rate is surprisingly high, less than 5% rejections in 2022 [2]. After a successful Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde you still have to win the case, and only legal arguments will be considered by the court, i.e. you cannot enter facts not already discussed in the lower instance, introduce new witnesses etc. [1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/ZPO/544.html https://dejure.org/gesetze/ZPO/544.html [2] https://www.rak-bgh.de/statistik-und-materialien/ https://www.rak-bgh.de/statistik-und-materialien/
raverbashing 3y ago
Offtopic, I now realize why they're called Quad9, and I wonder if they got the IP first then came up with the name or how it went?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > DNS (Domain Name Service) is a foundational element of internet infrastructure, matching IP addresses with domain names. The name “Quad9” is a reference to the IP address used by the service, which is 9.9.9.9. > “IBM has owned the 9.0.0.0/8 address block since the 1980s,” Paul Griswold, director of Strategy & Product Management at IBM X-Force, told eWEEK. “We were saving 9.9.9.9 for the right project, and the value Quad9 is going to bring to the public is just such a project. We have not used it for any commercial service in the past.” https://www.eweek.com/security/quad9-dns-service-debuts-to-help-improve-internet-security/ https://www.eweek.com/security/quad9-dns-service-debuts-to-h...
  - bigiain 3y ago
    And I'm pretty sure they chose to use 9.9.9.9 after Google made it's public DNS available at 8.8.8.8 (and I'd bet Cloudflare chose 1.1.1.1 for the same reason)
firebirdn99 3y ago
Funnily enough, I was watching the Spotify series on Netflix, The Playlist, and saw Sony Music Group's fight with the Pirate Bay(which covers similar themes) before Spotify exploded on to the scene. This was a real event too covered in the early episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial
xbar 3y ago
Since the rootkit, I have always voted with my dollars in non-Sony directions.
- okasaki 3y ago
  What's the point? All corporations are the same. The multiplicity is a ruse.
nneonneo 3y ago
Tangential, but why are people so terrible at redaction? The PDF at https://quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e629b1f7b.pdf https://quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e62... literally just drew black boxes over text that's still copyable :(
- filmgirlcw 3y ago
  Which was helpful for me to learn that all of this was about a freaking Evanescence album and not even the album with that one hit song but one from 2021. I cannot believe all of this was over an album that has under 100m streams on Spotify. What a waste of money for everyone involved. Evanescence is really the hill Sony Music wants to die on. Wow.
  - zitterbewegung 3y ago
    IANAL but IIRC If you don’t enforce your own copyright then it can set a precedent for you not having the protection of a copyright.
    - criddell 3y ago
      You're thinking of trademarks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Most people simply have no interest in PDF primitives, and rightly so. If you're a lawyer, it's not supposed to be your job to be an expert in PDF's underlying information structure. Every PDF editor ought to have a big flashing warning explaining to use a redaction tool instead, every time a user attempts to draw/move a black rectangle over text, or "highlight" text black. This is a crystal-clear case where it's not the users being dumb -- it's the technology failing the users.
  - 3y ago
jug 3y ago
Haha, I enjoy that Quad9 brought up the domain name in question, playing into the Streisand effect. Maybe just a little bit out of spite from having caused them such a hassle. So today I learnt about https://canna.to https://canna.to. Thank you, Sony. It wouldn't have happened without you.
- zzzcsgo 3y ago
  [dead]
- lucb1e 3y ago
  https://archive.is/https://canna.to/ https://archive.is/https://canna.to/ for other germans If you're wondering why you're getting a certificate warning for some cuii certificate, that's not a false positive but because your ISP is MITM'ing you "aus uheberrechteliche gruende" Edit: that homepage has a link to an article that describes the issue https://archive.is/o/XemRZ/https://board.canna.tf/app.php/canna-power-dns-sperre-umgehen https://archive.is/o/XemRZ/https://board.canna.tf/app.php/ca...
fxtentacle 3y ago
In my opinion, the critical part here is that Sony directly tried to force Quad9 to block resolving the domain canna.to WITHOUT first trying to approach canna.to directly. The court points that out as: "A blocking claim also does not exist because the plaintiff has not done enough to take legal action against the host provider of the disputed service."
stranded22 3y ago
Excellent news indeed
arcza 3y ago
Yet another thing irrelevant to me by spending 2 hours learning BIND and spinning up my own resolver... :)
Sami_Lehtinen 3y ago
Data over pure DNS is trivial. A simple demo site for anyone to try it out. https://dnskv.com https://dnskv.com $ dig txt quad9.dnskv.com
ikidd 3y ago
That's like going after the telephone book publishers for providing the number of the escort service.

310 points by madspindel 3y ago

I think the main moral of the story is not to base your company in Europe if you don't want to be subject to painful copyright litigation in German courts.

alfanick 3y ago
Which are not enforceable, as we can see. Living in Germany? Downloaded a torrent and sent 16KiB of that torrent back, got a letter from random lawyer to pay 350eur to somewhere? Not enforceable.
- filterfiber 3y ago
  > Not enforceable. I'm not familiar with how lawsuits work in Europe/European countrys, but in the US anyone can sue anyone for any reason at any time (with very specific, few restrictions). If it's anything like the US, as long as it's not a completely spam/bogus lawsuit then it might not be enforcable but you still have to hire a lawyer and go through that painful process. AND it sounds to me like Europe is similar to the US in that you may be sued by a state/country you don't reside in as long as you technically operate there (which everyone does now with the internet).
  - alfanick 3y ago
    a) Law suit culture does not exist here, but yes you can, b) I'm truly speaking from experience... and a lot of people had that experience. You get a random useless letter from random useless agency that is making money from not lawsuits, but agreements from people who don't know they don't have to pay. It's a legalised scam kinda. Got a letter that you downloaded something sometime? Ignore. They want like 300-500eur to settle (it's not in court!). And they will not take it to court, because they instantly lose (and cover my costs of my lawyer) - they cannot actually prove *indeed you person* shared it, done. It's a business model of some shady (but legal) legal offices. Couple of edits after reading the OPs comment again: - most of the countries in Europe do not have precedence law, - you do not NEED to hire a lawyer, most things are easy.
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      Does the loser always pay, or only if the judge rules the suit was frivolous? If it is always, that might cause the us not to have a lawsuit culture either.
      - alfanick 3y ago
        In most cases the loser or a person who initiated the lawsuit pays. (If winner initiated, doesn't matter, if loser initiated, well they pay).
cycomanic 3y ago
Well the courts decided pro quad9 so I think this is good news? Or are you saying that in the US you can't be the subject to copyright lawsuits (Let alone DCMA takedown notices)?
- thorncorona 3y ago
  Sony is now trying again in Italy :/
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  You absolutely can be subject to copyright lawsuits in the US. DMCA is also a US law. DCMA is the part of the US government that buys military parts from private companies :P German courts decided in favor of Quad9 on appeal, but they still had to go through a shitton of litigation to get there, which is scary. I will also point out that Germany is the reason why the US went to life+70 terms in the 90s, since they had the longest terms in the EU. Disney was able to play the EU off the US to get an extra few decades on Mickey Mouse. However, that seems only scarcely related to this lawsuit. Even if copyright terms were only a few years, we'd still have idiot companies trying to take down notorious markets through any intermediary they can yell at. And civil litigation is a horribly drawn out slog in every country. So I'm not sure what ronsor is saying other than a generic "fuck the EU" here.
tremon 3y ago
What a choice... painful copyright litigation in Europe, painful patent trolling in the US, or painful defenestration in Russia.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Now now, no self respecting data center has windows.
dfawcus 3y ago
The consequence is due to the impact of the Lugano Convention 2007, as the piece mentioned. So it is not just German courts, it is any court of an EU member state, plus those of Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Which is possibly the same mechanism whereby they're now subject to action in Italy.

theandrewbailey 3y ago

I guess Sony is resorting to lawfare so that you won't pirate those shows they're taking off the Playstation Store.

slow_typist 3y ago

Ruling (in English): https://www.quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e629b1f7b.pdf https://www.quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_...

dang 3y ago

Related. Others? Quad9 blocks pirate site globally after Sony demanded €10k fine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36878867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36878867 - July 2023 (65 comments) Quad9’s Opinion of the Recent Court Ruling in Leipzig - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35971915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35971915 - May 2023 (84 comments) DNS Resolver Quad9 Loses Global Pirate Site Blocking Case Against Sony - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35081507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35081507 - March 2023 (11 comments) Sony's Legal Attack on Quad9, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026403 - March 2023 (85 comments) Avoid Using Quad9 DNS: They Are Going to Start Blocking Pirate Websites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31487630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31487630 - May 2022 (7 comments) DNS-Resolver Quad9 Loses First Pirate Site Blocking Appeal in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29458069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29458069 - Dec 2021 (2 comments) German Court Rules Against Internet Security Non-Profit Quad9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29398455 - Nov 2021 (192 comments) Quad9 Files Official Objection Opposing Sony Music’s German Court Ruling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28434883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28434883 - Sept 2021 (25 comments) Quad9 and Sony Music: German Injunction Status - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27620319 - June 2021 (227 comments)

RamRodification 3y ago

So in the end, the only difference Sony made, for me, is that I now know about that website on the domain they tried to block.

aryonoco 3y ago
Something... something... Streisand... something
eviks 3y ago
The other difference is the domain names you will never know about because they wouldn't exist

Racing0461 3y ago

> The court has also ruled that the case cannot be taken to a higher court and their decision is the final word in this particular case. How can a non supreme court rule this? Why won't all courts just do this if its allowed?

krylon 3y ago
It works differently in different countries. This is a German court, remember. I am German, but I am not a lawyer, so I am not what that means.
crazygringo 3y ago
I too am very curious about that. I've never heard of such a legal principle -- can anyone knowledgeable point out what it's called? I'm curious for the justification behind it, as it seems so contrary to the generally accepted principles of how legal systems usually work.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
layer8 3y ago
As I understand it: In Germany, a court of appeal at that level will generally only allow a further appeal if general questions of law are concerned, according to its assessment. This is likely in order to protect the higher instances from being flooded with appeals on non-fundamental issues. As mentioned by TFA, there is still a procedure to object to such a decision, but it comes with higher hurdles for providing justification for objecting.
- slow_typist 3y ago
  The procedure is called Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde in Germany, and is generally possible if the claim exceeds 20,000 EUR according to § 544 ZPO [1]. At the BGH (highest civil court), the success rate is surprisingly high, less than 5% rejections in 2022 [2]. After a successful Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde you still have to win the case, and only legal arguments will be considered by the court, i.e. you cannot enter facts not already discussed in the lower instance, introduce new witnesses etc. [1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/ZPO/544.html https://dejure.org/gesetze/ZPO/544.html [2] https://www.rak-bgh.de/statistik-und-materialien/ https://www.rak-bgh.de/statistik-und-materialien/

raverbashing 3y ago

Offtopic, I now realize why they're called Quad9, and I wonder if they got the IP first then came up with the name or how it went?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
> DNS (Domain Name Service) is a foundational element of internet infrastructure, matching IP addresses with domain names. The name “Quad9” is a reference to the IP address used by the service, which is 9.9.9.9. > “IBM has owned the 9.0.0.0/8 address block since the 1980s,” Paul Griswold, director of Strategy & Product Management at IBM X-Force, told eWEEK. “We were saving 9.9.9.9 for the right project, and the value Quad9 is going to bring to the public is just such a project. We have not used it for any commercial service in the past.” https://www.eweek.com/security/quad9-dns-service-debuts-to-help-improve-internet-security/ https://www.eweek.com/security/quad9-dns-service-debuts-to-h...
- bigiain 3y ago
  And I'm pretty sure they chose to use 9.9.9.9 after Google made it's public DNS available at 8.8.8.8 (and I'd bet Cloudflare chose 1.1.1.1 for the same reason)

firebirdn99 3y ago

Funnily enough, I was watching the Spotify series on Netflix, The Playlist, and saw Sony Music Group's fight with the Pirate Bay(which covers similar themes) before Spotify exploded on to the scene. This was a real event too covered in the early episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial

xbar 3y ago

Since the rootkit, I have always voted with my dollars in non-Sony directions.

okasaki 3y ago
What's the point? All corporations are the same. The multiplicity is a ruse.

nneonneo 3y ago

Tangential, but why are people so terrible at redaction? The PDF at https://quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e629b1f7b.pdf https://quad9.net/uploads/URT_05_12_2023_en_Korr_MH_en2_2e62... literally just drew black boxes over text that's still copyable :(

filmgirlcw 3y ago
Which was helpful for me to learn that all of this was about a freaking Evanescence album and not even the album with that one hit song but one from 2021. I cannot believe all of this was over an album that has under 100m streams on Spotify. What a waste of money for everyone involved. Evanescence is really the hill Sony Music wants to die on. Wow.
- zitterbewegung 3y ago
  IANAL but IIRC If you don’t enforce your own copyright then it can set a precedent for you not having the protection of a copyright.
  - criddell 3y ago
    You're thinking of trademarks.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 3y ago
Most people simply have no interest in PDF primitives, and rightly so. If you're a lawyer, it's not supposed to be your job to be an expert in PDF's underlying information structure. Every PDF editor ought to have a big flashing warning explaining to use a redaction tool instead, every time a user attempts to draw/move a black rectangle over text, or "highlight" text black. This is a crystal-clear case where it's not the users being dumb -- it's the technology failing the users.
- 3y ago

jug 3y ago

Haha, I enjoy that Quad9 brought up the domain name in question, playing into the Streisand effect. Maybe just a little bit out of spite from having caused them such a hassle. So today I learnt about https://canna.to https://canna.to. Thank you, Sony. It wouldn't have happened without you.

zzzcsgo 3y ago
[dead]
lucb1e 3y ago
https://archive.is/https://canna.to/ https://archive.is/https://canna.to/ for other germans If you're wondering why you're getting a certificate warning for some cuii certificate, that's not a false positive but because your ISP is MITM'ing you "aus uheberrechteliche gruende" Edit: that homepage has a link to an article that describes the issue https://archive.is/o/XemRZ/https://board.canna.tf/app.php/canna-power-dns-sperre-umgehen https://archive.is/o/XemRZ/https://board.canna.tf/app.php/ca...

fxtentacle 3y ago

In my opinion, the critical part here is that Sony directly tried to force Quad9 to block resolving the domain canna.to WITHOUT first trying to approach canna.to directly. The court points that out as: "A blocking claim also does not exist because the plaintiff has not done enough to take legal action against the host provider of the disputed service."

stranded22 3y ago

Excellent news indeed

arcza 3y ago

Yet another thing irrelevant to me by spending 2 hours learning BIND and spinning up my own resolver... :)

Sami_Lehtinen 3y ago

Data over pure DNS is trivial. A simple demo site for anyone to try it out. https://dnskv.com https://dnskv.com $ dig txt quad9.dnskv.com

ikidd 3y ago

That's like going after the telephone book publishers for providing the number of the escort service.