Back in 2011 and 2012, one of the central technical objections that helped kill SOPA and PIPA was about DNS blocking. Engineers, internet architects, and cybersecurity experts all lined up to expla…
There appears to be no legitimate end to this one, which is wild
As long as DNS blocking stops some subset of users from reaching pirate sites, the court ruled, it’s “proportionate.” Under that line of thinking, any measure that inconveniences even a fraction of would-be pirates is legally justified, no matter how much collateral damage it causes for everyone else.
The court’s core reasoning — that any entity technically capable of blocking must do so, that circumvention doesn’t make blocking disproportionate, and that the “neutral and passive” function of an intermediary is irrelevant — creates a legal framework that can reach basically anything. If a DNS resolver can be conscripted because it’s “in a position to help,” what about browsers? What about operating systems? What about CDNs, or cloud hosting providers, or certificate authorities? The logic has no brake pedal. Every layer of the internet stack is, in some sense, “in a position to help” block access to content. The question the court’s reasoning cannot answer is: where does it end?
Left off their list is hardware, should your router and modem deny IP requests to known servers? Even if they’re on shared hardware? What about the networking card in your PC?
There appears to be no legitimate end to this one, which is wild
Left off their list is hardware, should your router and modem deny IP requests to known servers? Even if they’re on shared hardware? What about the networking card in your PC?