<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/07/good-and-bad-news-on-attempts-to-implicate-dns-services-for-copyright-infringement-at-the-domains-they-resolve/>
"Two years ago
Techdirt wrote about an attempt by Sony Music in Germany to
implicate Quad9, a free anycast DNS platform (Cloudflare has technical details
on what “recursive” means in this context), in copyright infringement at the
domains it resolves. That was bad news for at least two reasons. First, because
Quad9 is operated by the Quad9 Foundation, a Swiss public-benefit,
not-for-profit organization, whose operational budget comes from sponsorships
and donations. It aims to protect tens of millions of users around the world
from malware and phishing, receiving nothing in return. More generally, success
in this lawsuit would create a terrible precedent for blaming a service that is
part of the Internet’s basic plumbing for what passes through its pipes.
Unfortunately, the Regional Court in Hamburg, where the case was heard, issued
an interim injunction ordering Quad9 to cease resolving the names of sites that
Sony Music alleged were infringing on its copyright. A more recent
Techdirt
post noted that Quad9 had appealed to the Hamburg Higher Regional Court against
the lower court’s decision. Around this time the Regional Court in Leipzig
handed down another ruling against the company. Quad9 said that it would be
appealing to the Dresden Higher Court against that decision. The good news is
that the court in Dresden has now ruled in favor of Quad9. A blog post by Quad9
summarizes what happened:
The appeal with the Higher Regional Court in Dresden follows a decision by
the Regional Court in Leipzig, in which Sony prevailed, and Quad9 was
convicted as a wrongdoer. Before that, Sony successfully obtained a
preliminary junction against Quad9 with the Regional Court in Hamburg. The
objection against the preliminary injunction by Quad9 was unsuccessful, and
the appeal with the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg was withdrawn by Quad9
since a decision in the main proceeding was expected to be made earlier than
the conclusion of the appeal in the preliminary proceedings."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
