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I understand why they likely don't, but I wish they'd run this service on wikipedia.org. As is, this is just another DoT/DoH service for censors to block. If i

I understand why they likely don't, but I wish they'd run this service on wikipedia.org. As is, this is just another DoT/DoH service for censors to block. If it was run on the main Wikipedia domain/IPs, then it would force censors into choosing collateral damage (blocking all of Wikipedia) or allowing this service to be accessible.

jmprspret 3y ago
Isn't the wikimedia domain used for some external assets included in wikipedia articles? Or am I misremembering?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Commons is hosted on commons.wikimedia.org, but the actual encyclopedias have an internal method to access media on the Commons server, and don't use external <img> links like you would normally see.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
acdha 3y ago
They describe this as a small scale beta so I’d imagine a key part of deciding whether to go forward would be that question. It’d be harder for a government to block all TCP 443 to Wikipedia but they’d also be maximizing the likelihood of legal repercussions.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Are there legal repercussions for hosting DNS? I guess there are entries for “naughty” sites (as defined per jurisdiction), but seems pretty innocuous.
  - acdha 3y ago
    I’m sure that’d be the defense they’d make but remember that laws and courts aren’t board games. If someone passes a law forbidding anyone from providing access to something or assisting with that access, you can’t rule out getting dragged into court because your DNS service helped someone get content their ISP’s servers blocked. Google or Cloudflare have the same risk but also orders of magnitude more lawyers than Wikipedia.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> I understand why they likely don't, but I wish they'd run this service on wikipedia.org. I understand this sentiment, but it may be technically complex, for a few reasons. "wikipedia.org" has over 800 hostnames under it, corresponding to encyclopedias in various languages. Which language host should they run it under? Or create a new DNS record for it altogether? What benefit would that bring? Is it more important to run on the domain "wikipedia.org" or the IP addresses underlying the hosts in that domain? Will censors block only the DNS resolution of the servers, or their IP addresses, or both? Now the IP addresses corresponding to the language-based wikis may be special indeed. I suspect that they are "anycast" addresses and that a single A or AAAA record corresponds to multiple geographically-distributed hosts around these United States. It is very likely that the specialized front ends for these wiki servers are not tooled up to host DNS services such as this, especially experimental ones that they're constantly messing with. And yeah, that's the main thing: this is an experimental beta service that's barely public. I don't think they want something so unreliable to be riding coattails of production services. I know I don't want that. Censorship is an unfortunate spectre here, but think about it, if the censors really wanted to blackhole the DoT/DoH servers then they might just throw out the baby with the bathwater, and not really care about the collateral damage, just to punish Wikipedia for trying to do this.

jmprspret 3y ago

Isn't the wikimedia domain used for some external assets included in wikipedia articles? Or am I misremembering?

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Commons is hosted on commons.wikimedia.org, but the actual encyclopedias have an internal method to access media on the Commons server, and don't use external <img> links like you would normally see.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

acdha 3y ago

They describe this as a small scale beta so I’d imagine a key part of deciding whether to go forward would be that question. It’d be harder for a government to block all TCP 443 to Wikipedia but they’d also be maximizing the likelihood of legal repercussions.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Are there legal repercussions for hosting DNS? I guess there are entries for “naughty” sites (as defined per jurisdiction), but seems pretty innocuous.
- acdha 3y ago
  I’m sure that’d be the defense they’d make but remember that laws and courts aren’t board games. If someone passes a law forbidding anyone from providing access to something or assisting with that access, you can’t rule out getting dragged into court because your DNS service helped someone get content their ISP’s servers blocked. Google or Cloudflare have the same risk but also orders of magnitude more lawyers than Wikipedia.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

> I understand why they likely don't, but I wish they'd run this service on wikipedia.org. I understand this sentiment, but it may be technically complex, for a few reasons. "wikipedia.org" has over 800 hostnames under it, corresponding to encyclopedias in various languages. Which language host should they run it under? Or create a new DNS record for it altogether? What benefit would that bring? Is it more important to run on the domain "wikipedia.org" or the IP addresses underlying the hosts in that domain? Will censors block only the DNS resolution of the servers, or their IP addresses, or both? Now the IP addresses corresponding to the language-based wikis may be special indeed. I suspect that they are "anycast" addresses and that a single A or AAAA record corresponds to multiple geographically-distributed hosts around these United States. It is very likely that the specialized front ends for these wiki servers are not tooled up to host DNS services such as this, especially experimental ones that they're constantly messing with. And yeah, that's the main thing: this is an experimental beta service that's barely public. I don't think they want something so unreliable to be riding coattails of production services. I know I don't want that. Censorship is an unfortunate spectre here, but think about it, if the censors really wanted to blackhole the DoT/DoH servers then they might just throw out the baby with the bathwater, and not really care about the collateral damage, just to punish Wikipedia for trying to do this.