Internet Domain Blocking: Current Legal Situation and Outlook on the Current Revision of the Telecommunications Act#

Simon Schlauri - Ronzani Schlauri Attorneys

• Why: Not technical, but directly operationally relevant to any Swiss ISP: prosecutors are ordering access providers to block domains, and the talk documents the actual cases, the technical-refutation expert opinion, and the draft legislation. For a PM whose products sit on Swiss networks, this is where content-blocking obligations are heading.
• What: A case history from 2025–2026: Vaud and Valais prosecutors ordered providers to "seize" domains (reinterpreted as blocking after the fact), imposed a CHF 6,000 fine on a non-compliant provider, and ordered blocking of a climate-activist group's URLs — even though the site was hosted in Switzerland and the prosecutor never asked the host to take it down. The Vaud Cantonal Court lifted that block in May 2026 but dodged the core legality question; a Federal Supreme Court appeal is pending.
• How: Legal analysis plus a decisive technical contribution: a Switch expert opinion establishing that individual URLs cannot be blocked via DNS at all, and that the only practicable ISP measure is blocking an entire domain on their resolver — which over-blocks (all services under the domain, including email) and violates net neutrality. The proposed new Art. 6a Telecoms Act would mandate blocking of fraud-related second-level domains on fedpol notification — narrow, but still without judicial review or a hearing for site operators. The speaker's position: "delete, don't block" — go after the hosting source, and if blocking exists at all, only by statute with a court weighing interests.
• Where applicable: Swiss access providers and anyone operating DNS resolvers there. Jurisdiction-specific, but the pattern — courts accepting "the other providers comply" as proof of feasibility — is a caution for operators everywhere.