"french ips" don’t mean anything as the post said; see their case in Germany.

no, its different, in german case they served germany as a whole but for queries that where supposed to be blocked in germany they did not serve those to germans.

so you operated in germany and your "tricky" way to follow the regulations did not work. if you dont resolve to german customers at all, like you dont exist then nobody can theoretically say you are operating in german. so that is the difference for me.