5 ms·

Even if the censorship implications are a bit obvious, it's good that: - we have more alternatives - we add to the global network for resilience - we increas

Even if the censorship implications are a bit obvious, it's good that: - we have more alternatives - we add to the global network for resilience - we increase our independence from the USA for something so critical - we get more control over our little part of the internet in case of a digital attack Provided we can always switch to an alternative DNS server from inside the EU if we need to, it's a net positive.

Shadonototra 5y ago
> Even if the censorship implications are a bit obvious, it's good that: LOL, sure, we better at the mercy of the american censorship and 'tracking' system
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
There is one problem. If the change in question is related to just having an alternate DNS stucture, that's perfectly fine. Because it doesn't mean users are forced to use it: at any moment, I can force my machine to use any DNS server I choose and it will respect that. However, if they actually implement URL filtering, it might mean something completely different: that IP addresses of SciHub/Libgen will be blocked by the ISPs in the whole of EU no matter DNS server I use. Not all countries would individually agree to that.
- azernik 5y ago
  I don't know where you're getting that IP-level filtering is the only way to "actually implementing URL filtering" - if they're talking about URL filtering as a feature of a new DNS infrastructure, then the most likely assumption is that they're talking about DNS-level filtering.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    My assumption is based on the fact that DNS-based filtering ("of URLs leading to illegal content") simply doesn't work and is trivial to circumvent both by the client and the server, so the countries that block Libgen&co. do so at the ISP level using IP filtering.
    - azernik 5y ago
      It is trivial to circumvent. And countries and ISPs still do it all the time, because most consumers are not capable of even the trivial step of changing DNS servers. e.g. in the UK blocking is usually just implemented by DNS filter.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Unless they go full on Great Firewall and block VPNs all they'd achieve is to make VPNs go even more mainstream (and while many adults may still not be used to VPNs, they can ask their kids - most of my sons friends all have VPNs set up for everything from evading region blocks for content to ban evasion from game servers)
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  The way I read it, the proposal is that ISPs and other providers of recursive resolvers MAY implement "value-added" filtering services. I didn't see anything about some central filtering agency that had the power to force some filter-package into every recursive resolver in the EU.
kasey_junk 5y ago
Pardon my ignorance but in what way are EU citizens dependent on US DNS infrastructure prior to the introduction to this? And how does this infrastructure remove that dependence?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  In every way. The US controls the TLDs and many of the core resolvers.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    The US doesn't control the national TLDs nor the .eu TLD in any way. The core resolvers can be replaced at a moment's notice in case of problems.
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    This doesn’t address the tld issue and does it matter if a lot of people use US authoritative resolvers? Each domain can choose and the protocol isn’t biased towards US controlled infrastructure. I can see the value in dns as public utility (though one I’d be skeptical about using or paying for) but this doesn’t seem to do what the OP suggests on the US independence front because DNS is already independent. I’d be a lot more understanding of a public email provider than DNS to promote a break with US infrastructure.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Email would be fun. Beyond the rhetoric, a lot of EU governments are actually quite tyrannical when it comes to intercepting or seizing communications, compared to the US.
- Medowar 5y ago
  All big public DNS Resolvers are US-based. Google, Cloudflare, OpenDNS(Cisco). Quad9 is Swiss-based, so technicaly not EU-based.
  - 5y ago
gypsyharlot 5y ago
As long as they remain alternatives, it is okay. But given that this is the EU, it won't be optional for very long.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I don't think there is much prospect of the EU banning me from using my own recursive resolver. And I find it hard to see how they might try to enforce it.
glenstein 5y ago
Pleasantly surprised to see this degree of nuance in top level comments. I do find it very alarming that they want to bake in "lawful filtering" and especially alarming that they want to bring in "premium and wholesale services." In the best case scenario, if EU had a record of reasonable enforcement or ahead-of-the-curve thinking this might be okay, I don't think there's anything suggesting that the EU is thinking ahead or capable of imagining unintended downstream consequences. I think more DNS is better, which is good, but its balanced with some concern.
easytiger 5y ago
> Provided we can always switch to an alternative DNS servers from inside the EU if we need too, it's a net positive. After the past decade why would you think they will allow that?
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Why would I think they would not? No matter how many bad things the EU does (and I'm not blind to them), after traveling all around the world, working in the US, Asia and Africa, it's still the place where I feel the most free. I trust them much more to not go complete bonkers than Russia, the USA or China. In fact, the GPRD, the right for repair and the various attacks at tracking are quite to my liking. I'm not ruling out the possibility they mess it up, but I stay optimist.
bambataa 5y ago
> - we get more control over our little part of the internet in case of digital attack I’d love to hear what people think about this. To me it’s notable that Russia and China have taken steps to separate their internet access from the wider, global network. While the West continues to centralise its network access in the hands of a few companies. Presumably this makes Russia and China more protected from attacks on the global network. Am I correct in thinking in this way? Could Russia and China continue with internal internets even if the global one went down, or are they actually as at risk as anyone else? I’m guessing that China’s censorship systems and firewalls are fairly centralised and so vulnerable in their own way.
- toyg 5y ago
  > Presumably this makes Russia and China more protected from attacks on the global network. Of course. And North Korea is probably more protected against terrorist attacks than most of the "free world". That doesn't mean it's a good trade-off in general. In practical terms, it depends on what you mean "continue with their internal internets". Most of the points of failure for "internet use as understood by the public", are actually just implementation mistakes by private companies - i.e. nobody says you have to host on (and hence go down with) AWS, or rely on (and hence go down with) Facebook/Google Login. DNS is distributed (it's in the name!); if rootservers went down there would be hiccups for sure, but they could be fixed. Same for the rest of the fundamental network stack; after all, the internet was built to withstand nuclear attack. Whether it would be a good experience (i.e. slow, private services not working, etc), that's something else. If you're based in China and you rely on FB Login, no amount of governmental infrastructure will help you when FB becomes unreachable.
  - bambataa 5y ago
    I’m thinking about fairly close to doomsday scenarios. If/when we reach a point of extreme tension with tit for tat cyber attacks, would Western countries be totally incapacitated for days or weeks while Russia or China were less impacted? Things like food supply, public services etc. Perhaps such things would escalate so quickly that the internet would be the least of our worries.

Shadonototra 5y ago

> Even if the censorship implications are a bit obvious, it's good that: LOL, sure, we better at the mercy of the american censorship and 'tracking' system

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

There is one problem. If the change in question is related to just having an alternate DNS stucture, that's perfectly fine. Because it doesn't mean users are forced to use it: at any moment, I can force my machine to use any DNS server I choose and it will respect that. However, if they actually implement URL filtering, it might mean something completely different: that IP addresses of SciHub/Libgen will be blocked by the ISPs in the whole of EU no matter DNS server I use. Not all countries would individually agree to that.

azernik 5y ago
I don't know where you're getting that IP-level filtering is the only way to "actually implementing URL filtering" - if they're talking about URL filtering as a feature of a new DNS infrastructure, then the most likely assumption is that they're talking about DNS-level filtering.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  My assumption is based on the fact that DNS-based filtering ("of URLs leading to illegal content") simply doesn't work and is trivial to circumvent both by the client and the server, so the countries that block Libgen&co. do so at the ISP level using IP filtering.
  - azernik 5y ago
    It is trivial to circumvent. And countries and ISPs still do it all the time, because most consumers are not capable of even the trivial step of changing DNS servers. e.g. in the UK blocking is usually just implemented by DNS filter.
vidarh 5y ago
Unless they go full on Great Firewall and block VPNs all they'd achieve is to make VPNs go even more mainstream (and while many adults may still not be used to VPNs, they can ask their kids - most of my sons friends all have VPNs set up for everything from evading region blocks for content to ban evasion from game servers)
denton-scratch 5y ago
The way I read it, the proposal is that ISPs and other providers of recursive resolvers MAY implement "value-added" filtering services. I didn't see anything about some central filtering agency that had the power to force some filter-package into every recursive resolver in the EU.

kasey_junk 5y ago

Pardon my ignorance but in what way are EU citizens dependent on US DNS infrastructure prior to the introduction to this? And how does this infrastructure remove that dependence?

goodpoint 5y ago
In every way. The US controls the TLDs and many of the core resolvers.
- emteycz 5y ago
  The US doesn't control the national TLDs nor the .eu TLD in any way. The core resolvers can be replaced at a moment's notice in case of problems.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  This doesn’t address the tld issue and does it matter if a lot of people use US authoritative resolvers? Each domain can choose and the protocol isn’t biased towards US controlled infrastructure. I can see the value in dns as public utility (though one I’d be skeptical about using or paying for) but this doesn’t seem to do what the OP suggests on the US independence front because DNS is already independent. I’d be a lot more understanding of a public email provider than DNS to promote a break with US infrastructure.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Email would be fun. Beyond the rhetoric, a lot of EU governments are actually quite tyrannical when it comes to intercepting or seizing communications, compared to the US.
Medowar 5y ago
All big public DNS Resolvers are US-based. Google, Cloudflare, OpenDNS(Cisco). Quad9 is Swiss-based, so technicaly not EU-based.
- 5y ago

gypsyharlot 5y ago

As long as they remain alternatives, it is okay. But given that this is the EU, it won't be optional for very long.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I don't think there is much prospect of the EU banning me from using my own recursive resolver. And I find it hard to see how they might try to enforce it.

glenstein 5y ago

Pleasantly surprised to see this degree of nuance in top level comments. I do find it very alarming that they want to bake in "lawful filtering" and especially alarming that they want to bring in "premium and wholesale services." In the best case scenario, if EU had a record of reasonable enforcement or ahead-of-the-curve thinking this might be okay, I don't think there's anything suggesting that the EU is thinking ahead or capable of imagining unintended downstream consequences. I think more DNS is better, which is good, but its balanced with some concern.

easytiger 5y ago

> Provided we can always switch to an alternative DNS servers from inside the EU if we need too, it's a net positive. After the past decade why would you think they will allow that?

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Why would I think they would not? No matter how many bad things the EU does (and I'm not blind to them), after traveling all around the world, working in the US, Asia and Africa, it's still the place where I feel the most free. I trust them much more to not go complete bonkers than Russia, the USA or China. In fact, the GPRD, the right for repair and the various attacks at tracking are quite to my liking. I'm not ruling out the possibility they mess it up, but I stay optimist.

bambataa 5y ago

> - we get more control over our little part of the internet in case of digital attack I’d love to hear what people think about this. To me it’s notable that Russia and China have taken steps to separate their internet access from the wider, global network. While the West continues to centralise its network access in the hands of a few companies. Presumably this makes Russia and China more protected from attacks on the global network. Am I correct in thinking in this way? Could Russia and China continue with internal internets even if the global one went down, or are they actually as at risk as anyone else? I’m guessing that China’s censorship systems and firewalls are fairly centralised and so vulnerable in their own way.

toyg 5y ago
> Presumably this makes Russia and China more protected from attacks on the global network. Of course. And North Korea is probably more protected against terrorist attacks than most of the "free world". That doesn't mean it's a good trade-off in general. In practical terms, it depends on what you mean "continue with their internal internets". Most of the points of failure for "internet use as understood by the public", are actually just implementation mistakes by private companies - i.e. nobody says you have to host on (and hence go down with) AWS, or rely on (and hence go down with) Facebook/Google Login. DNS is distributed (it's in the name!); if rootservers went down there would be hiccups for sure, but they could be fixed. Same for the rest of the fundamental network stack; after all, the internet was built to withstand nuclear attack. Whether it would be a good experience (i.e. slow, private services not working, etc), that's something else. If you're based in China and you rely on FB Login, no amount of governmental infrastructure will help you when FB becomes unreachable.
- bambataa 5y ago
  I’m thinking about fairly close to doomsday scenarios. If/when we reach a point of extreme tension with tit for tat cyber attacks, would Western countries be totally incapacitated for days or weeks while Russia or China were less impacted? Things like food supply, public services etc. Perhaps such things would escalate so quickly that the internet would be the least of our worries.