[19] This is the first instance in which the copyright-holder industry has sought to compel a recursive DNS operator to block access to Internet domain names, so this is a novel interpretation of German law and is thought to be a precedent-setting case with far-reaching consequences.

Quad9's General Manager John Todd was quoted in the press as saying "Our donors support us to protect the public from cyber-threats, not to further enrich Sony" and "If this precedent holds, it will appear again in similar injunctions against other uninvolved third parties, such as anti-virus software, web browsers, operating systems and firewalls."

Legal expert Thomas Rickert of eco, the German Internet association, commented: "I cannot imagine a provider who is further removed from responsibility for any illegal domains than a public resolver operator."

[20][21][10][22][23][24][25][26][27] Clemens Rasch, the attorney leading Sony's team, has not clearly stated whether any attempts were made to contact canna.to, the site widely suspected by the press to be behind the redactions in the court documents, saying only that Sony would have done so "if they could have been identified", while confirming that the site has been operating continuously for the past twenty two years.

[28] On August 31, 2021, Quad9 filed an objection to the injunction, citing a number of flaws in the legal arguments made by Sony, but principally hinging on the fact that ISPs (which actually have a business relationship with infringing parties) are exempted from third-party liability, despite the fact that they also operate DNS recursive resolvers, and that it's a misinterpretation of the law to exclude independent recursive resolvers from that exemption.