Quad9 does not make money. Quad9 is a public-benefit not-for-profit foundation. It's supported by donations. Which are very much appreciated right now, because German lawyers aren't free.
If you are an individual: Quad9 relies entirely on sponsorship and support from individuals and companies who believe in our mission, and who benefit from our protection of end users. We need resources to fight this ruling, and to continue our mission of providing security and privacy to end users. Your comments on social media to amplify the awareness of this issue and engage in civil discussion on the topic are welcome. Please help by donating via Paypal.
> Quad9’s first step towards continuing this fight will be appealing the decision reached by the Leipzig Regional Court.
> Being a small, non-profit organization, litigation has put a financial and operational strain on Quad9 as they continue funding its defense. They ask that anyone capable and inclined consider donating to maintain the foundation of a free and open Internet. Quad9 relies on donations and grants to continue providing cybersecurity and privacy services to our users.
Quad9 is based in Switzerland, so the German court should only have jurisdiction over whatever servers are in Germany. It seems like the worst case scenario is that Quad9 shuts down their German servers, but still serves German requests from servers in neighboring countries.
That said this is still terrible and I hope the German court reconsiders their decision. The free flow of information is more valuable than protecting copyrights, because the former benefits many more people. Most of the copyright holders who feel threatened by piracy are not even German! The court is protecting big American businesses over individual Germans.
I agree that wasn't a good way to put it but it might not be entirely irrelevent to mention Crypto AG considering Quad9 is sponsored by the Manhattan DA and City of London Police.
Quad9 is based in Germany which isn't much better than France for this kind of thing. They have already been ordered to implement DNS-level censorship in other cases.
Quad9 is a public-benefit not-for-profit. Our purpose is to improve privacy and security. What else did you have in mind?
Quad9 is special in that it's the only recursive resolver of any size that's not headquartered in the jurisdiction of the Northern District of California federal courts. All three others of the "big four" are, and Quad9 was until it moved to Switzerland so as to be bound by criminal privacy law, and to get out from under USG data-collection requirements.
But Quad9 is _not_ the only one being attacked by Sony. Sony has already won against Cloudflare in other venues, but that's a much easier target.
Quad9 doesn't sell hosting services to pirate sites, so has no connection with the alleged infringers. Which is the point of all this. Quad9 is being attacked _because_ it has no relationship with infringing parties. If Sony can establish a precedent that Quad9 can be forced to censor, then that precedent is, in principle, applicable to all parties. Firewall manufacturers. Operating system publishers. Wifi hotspot manufacturers. Open-source software authors. Etc.
So, saying that "Quad9 are going to start blocking" is quite a strong claim. Maybe this kind of title could be kept for after the German court settles on a final decision.
reply