Background:
> The case centers around Sony Music’s demand that Quad9’s servers located in Germany stop resolving DNS names of third-party sites which are claimed to have URLs that contain copyright infringements.
> The case centers around Sony Music’s demand that Quad9’s servers located in Germany stop resolving DNS names of third-party sites which are claimed to have URLs that contain copyright infringements.
In many other EU countries DNS-based blocking of various piracy sites is just standard procedure by ISPs, so courts aren't even asked.
In Germany there are very few sites which are actually blocked, and usually just for single ISPs because every single one requires a specific court order.
Last week I was in the Netherlands and found that multiple sites which work perfectly at home in Germany were blocked by the Dutch ISP.
A few of the biggest torrent sites are blocked, along with some proxies. That’s it. It still requires a court order. The only difference is that there’s a covenant that requires BREIN (sort of an off-brand RIAA) to only sue big providers for a site block and in a round robin fashion, and in return the ISPs agree to implement the block in aggregate if the court case is lost.
And unlike Germany, we don’t get sued for hundreds to thousands of euros for downloading a single file. Only extreme sharers are warned and later on sued.
Not that things aren’t stupid here. We used to have a ruling where we paid a “thuiskopieheffing” (“home copy levy”) of a few % on any digital storage, including devices. In trade, you were legally allowed to download anything, so long as it was for private use only.
A few years back that exception got nullified, but somehow the levy stayed.
> German court decisions are normally limited to Germany, which is why Quad9 has implemented geoIP on its infrastructure in Germany to prevent the domain names in question to be resolved for users querying from Germany. However, there are loopholes, such as VPNs, beyond Quad9’s control. The court deemed this not to be sufficient. The court’s decision ignored the VPN concept and implies that Quad9 must block these domains regardless of how users reach them or from what nation those intentionally disguised queries originate. Quad9 believes this is an exceptionally dangerous precedent that could lead to future global-reaching commercialized and political censorship if DNS blocking is applied globally without geographic limitations to certain jurisdictions.[1]
Also no, no EU ISP blocks sites without specific orders from government bodies. In my country the government ban list is public, with explanations given for each site, and every ISP must enforce it.
Also, it's much more difficult to enforce light copyright infringements for personal use in other EU countries compared to how easy and often corporations do it in Germany willy-nilly. No other EU country fines you hundreds to thousands of Euros for downloading a mp3/mkv. That's just preposterous.
And in Germany there is no "government ban list" at all. Which was exactly my point: You made it sound like Germany was worse than other EU countries, but the opposite is currently true: Many other EU countries have public ban lists which ISPs are required to follow with no courts involved. Germany doesn't.
Jeepers, I had no idea that it was this common for piracy sites to be blocked :/. Here in South Africa, I haven't had issues with torrents since uncapped ADSL became common, nor any piracy sites blocked.