A German court earlier this month upheld a previous ruling regarding the obligations of internet services company Cloudflare to block a piracy site from accessing its services. However, the Cologne Higher Regional Court did not extend that obligation to Cloudflare's DNS resolver 1.1.1.1.
This all relates to efforts in the German courts by Universal Music back in 2020 to force Cloudflare to block DDL-Music, a piracy service that was using the internet firm's CDN - or content delivery network. Cloudflare has always been resistant to requests from copyright owners to cut off websites accused of copyright infringement, generally only intervening if a court orders it to do so.
The major got such a court order in 2020, resulting in Cloudflare blocking DDL-Music. However, it nevertheless appealed the court's ruling, presumably nervous of the precedent set in the case. Earlier this month the Cologne Higher Regional Court confirmed that the original ruling was correct.
There is, however, another question over whether Cloudflare’s DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 should also be forced to block access to sites like DDL-Music. The music industry has become increasingly concerned in recent years that people can use third party DNS resolvers like 1.1.1.1 to circumvent blocks but in place against piracy sites by internet service providers.
To that end, the Italian music industry successfully sought a web-blocking order against Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 - and, in Germany, Sony Music has had some success pursuing legal action against another third party DNS resolver Quad9.
However, in the new Cloudflare judgement, the court was not willing to extend the internet firm's obligations to its DNS resolver, which, it said, "contributes to the connection of internet domains in a purely passive, automatic and neutral manner". It remains to be seen to what extent Quad9 now argues that the judgement in the Cloudflare case is relevant to its ongoing battle with Sony.