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Italy demands Google poison DNS under strict Piracy Shield law
- Kenji 2y agoDOH is your friend. My regime poisons DNS and enabling DOH makes things accessible again.
- geoffpado 2y agoSerious question: how is DoH supposed to help when the resolver itself is being asked to return bad results? DoH makes sense if something is MITM-ing your DNS requests, but it sounds in this case that Google is being asked to just straight-up return bad results?
- mantas 2y agoDOH over proxy to pretend you’re elsewhere?
- Nux 2y agoDoH some other resolver, there's an internet outside Google, you know.
- mlhpdx 2y agoExactly. In a world of many resolvers, poisoning a few doesn’t matter. In all likelihood the folks consuming these streams aren’t using mainstream DNS anyway.
- vhcr 2y agoDoH over Tor
- xxmarkuski 2y agoDNSSEC is the actual solution, providing authenticity and integrity for DNS records. The DNS client can verify that the received DNS response is what the zone admin intended. Additional records (NSEC / NSEC3) are used to provide a proof of non-existence, preventing suppression from a mitm attacker. But if your government is mitming you, you don't want them to see you use DNSSEC. DoH is useful in that case, because a mitm sees only https traffic, which is less suspicious than DoT.
- crote 2y agoDNSSEC isn't going to prevent suppression, it just makes it detectable. Cloudflare is still going to send you a doctored record - which will fail verification. But that doesn't magically give you an undoctored record, unfortunately.
- Kenji 2y agoDNS is usually poisoned at the ISP level. ISPs provide DNS for the customers. DoH helps in two ways: You choose a different DNS resolver and it's over HTTPS so you don't have any goons meddling with it.
- thayne 2y agoI think the actual reason this works is because if you use DoH, you are probably also setting your resolver to something other than the default, which might not be poising the records. So the real answer to governments requiring dns resolvers to censor results is to ... not use those resolvers. which is actually relatively easy to do. But most internet users don't even know what a dns resolver is, much less how to configure their browser to use a public resolver that isn't big enough to attract the attention of your government.
- miki123211 2y agoIt would not. You'd need a resolver that was provided by a foreign organization, preferably a non-profit, with no business interests in your country whatsoever, so that your government had nothing to threaten them with if they didn't comply with the order. Such a resolver would also need to be the default shipped with at least one major browser, such that blocking it would essentially mean "turning off the internet" for some users. Then the pressure would move to forcing browsers to use a different DNS resolver, and the game would continue.
- drpossum 2y ago[flagged]
- ok_dad 2y agoIf we wouldn’t do that for Russia, which I suggested years ago and was massively dragged for it on HN, then why would we do it for Italy? I don’t agree with poisoning DNS, but there are way worse things happening on the internet that we don’t disconnect whole nations for.
- drpossum 2y agoThen do it for Russia too. I also don't care if I get "dragged" for suggesting it. Capitulating to poor leadership is enabling poor leadership and the world is in a bad state because of it. Literally the only reason it doesn't happen is because there's too much money to be made for people who are not you and me. Frankly if it did happen, someone would bridge it and I'm sure that rogue bridge ain't gonna be poisoning anything. They'd be a hero and a broker.
- immibis 2y agoThe fact that Russia is still connected to the Internet is a thorn in the side of a lot of anti-piracy efforts because pirating western content is legal there, as far as I understand it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- djoldman 2y ago> This decision follows a similar case against Internet backbone firm Cloudflare. In January, the Court of Milan found that Cloudflare's CDN, DNS server, and WARP VPN were facilitating piracy. The court threatened Cloudflare with fines of up to 10,000 euros per day if it did not begin blocking the sites. I'm always curious about jurisdiction on this stuff. If Cloudflare had no physical machines, employees, and property within Italy's borders, under what law could Italy levy a fine?
- miohtama 2y agoThe EU companies make payments to Cloudflare, and these could be confiscated. Also any staff in Italy is in danger.
- AdrianB1 2y agoThe question clearly stated the assumption that there is no staff in Italy. Also the payments cannot be confiscated unless they are made to Italian banks, which makes no sense if they don't have a branch there, so if the payments are made to US, there is no way to confiscate by the Italian authorities.
- nukem222 2y agoPresumably italian courts could seize payments made by italian clients of cloudflare, yes? Even if the account is located well outside of italy, the owners can be compelled by legal means. (To some degree of effectiveness, to be sure. But I have a hard time imagining there are no clients registered in italy at all.)
- AdrianB1 2y agoThe payment is done, money is at Cloudflare in a US bank, Cloudflare takes it and move it somewhere else. How do they seize it? The money is gone and it's not coming back.
- 2y ago
- bakugo 2y ago> The goal is aimed at preventing illegal football streams It's impressive how much internet censorship in Europe is currently being caused by this one group of extremely greedy people. It's one of the rare cases where the sheer size and international influence of companies like Google and Cloudflare can actually do some good for the world by fighting back against such laws.
- delroth 2y ago> It's impressive how much internet censorship in Europe is currently being caused by this one group of extremely greedy people. How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating. The problem is that we still haven't figured out a way to properly enforce laws on the internet. Even for completely egregious violations there's no way to do anything once you track down the website to a bulletproof host in Russia or Ukraine or similar countries that don't cooperate. After 20 years of getting nowhere the courts have to find new and creative ways to enforce laws. I think everyone agrees that ideally this shouldn't be DNS blocks or IP blocks but rather these services getting removed from the internet and/or having to implement regional blocks to comply with laws. But there's just no way at all to make this happen right now.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating. It's both. The re-broadcasters may be violating the laws and laws themselves could be unjust, nonsensical, yet existing and enforced because of a group of greedy benefactors actively keeping them that way.
- bakugo 2y ago> How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating. Because piracy is a service problem. Pirate streaming sites attract users because they provide a better, more convenient service than the paid options. We've recently seen this happen in real time with TV/movie streaming services: If you simply tell users "Pay us this single, simple and affordable fee every month and we will provide you with unrestricted access to the content you want, whenever you want", the users will come. But then the investors come knocking. It's not enough that you made N money last quarter, you have to make N+1 next quater. The line has to go up. So the subscription prices go up, the number of subscriptions required to access everything goes up, you start getting ads even though your subscription was originally ad-free, and suddenly the service doesn't seem so appealing anymore. I've heard endless stories of people having to pay for multiple subscriptions just to watch all of their favorite team's games, and still missing out on some due to whatever new money-making scheme sports companies came up with this month. It's not hard to see why so many people resort to just going online and finding a pirate stream.
- perching_aix 2y agoAm I correct in recognizing this as a new low, or is there a prior example for such a demand?
- miohtama 2y agoA Spanish judge ordered blocking of Telegram for the same reason. https://medium.com/enrique-dans/why-blocking-telegram-in-spain-is-both-disproportionate-and-futile-bb3e120ccbca https://medium.com/enrique-dans/why-blocking-telegram-in-spa... It was reversed quickly on complaints, though.
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah in fact it never even happened. I set up some MTProto proxies for some of the communities I engage in but it was never actually needed. It was exactly 1 year ago, I know because I ordered some domains for the proxies and I just got the final reminder.
- int_19h 2y agoRight there in the article: "This decision follows a similar case against Internet backbone firm Cloudflare. In January, the Court of Milan found that Cloudflare's CDN, DNS server, and WARP VPN were facilitating piracy. The court threatened Cloudflare with fines of up to 10,000 euros per day if it did not begin blocking the sites."
- perching_aix 2y agoI was specifically referring to requesting DNS poisoning.
- grapesodaaaaa 2y agoThat’s hilarious to me suggesting that DNS can facilitate privacy. What about the people who own the copper that’s transporting the piracy? That actually seems like it’s more of a direct link than DNS.
- 2y ago
- stalfosknight 2y agoWhy must the Europeans be like this? Why do they insist on fucking with a free and open internet instead of addressing the apparently unmet demand that is fueling a black market?
- amarcheschi 2y agoPlease, do not confuse Europeans with the entities taking such actions. I know of nobody supporting such draconian measures. However, the government, the football league and the guys taking decisions at agcom (which in the past has been a serious and respected agency for the battle he took with tech companies) are, quite apparently, banding together to make the football league will become reality above anything else
- stalfosknight 2y agoWhile I generally agree that one should not conflate private individuals with the actions of their government, I do think it is fair to hold people who live in democracies responsible in a general or aggregate sense for the actions of their elected governments. In other words, I think it is fair to say that Italy pulls shit like this because enough Italian voters want it to happen or otherwise let it happen.
- amarcheschi 2y agoHeh, I partially agree with general politics, however actions like this are so distant from the average Joe that the chances are they do not even know the pros and cons of similar actions. One might argue that they can get informed, but once you get into technicalities like this, one should spend its entire free time getting informed on similar issues. I see a lack of general discourse about this - in the past it happened to have some Google drive urls blocked if I'm not wrong - because it is not perceived as an issue unless something big happens that (such as drive not working) You also have to add the fact that this issue goes relatively "unnoticed" compared to other issues that are perceived as much more important
- scns 2y ago
- ur-whale 2y agoIf there is ONE thing that needs to be decentralized RTFN, it is DNS. It's taking time, but the thugs in charge in various countries are slowly coming to realize that the easiest place to apply censorship is DNS because of its antiquated design and pervasiveness. One: you should be able to freely choose or name-to-IP-translation provider. Two: modern DNS should run on top of a trustless blockchain infrastructure. Namecoin was a very nice initial attempt, it's really sad it never took off. [EDIT]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin
- contravariant 2y agoTo some extent it is decentralized is it not? Other than a small list of who serves which TLD you should be able to find the canonical nameserver for any domain. It should be more normal for people to have a DNS running locally perhaps.
- sgjohnson 2y ago> To some extent it is decentralized is it not? No. Everything relies on the root servers, as recursive servers rely on them.
- cryptonector 2y agoBut you can run your own root servers.
- sgjohnson 2y agoAnd what good does that do?
- cryptonector 2y agoPrevents some MITM attacks. You can also run your own TLDs where the registries are public enough.
- 2y ago
- xvector 2y agoWhy is Europe like this? I feel like this is what happens when you have a region that can't innovate and only knows how to regulate. Innovators cease to be represented at the government level and the general public equates regulation with safety. The result is an increasing amount of absurd policymaking related to technology.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago>Why is Europe like this? Italy isn't Europe. Europe isn't Italy, either.
- bitpush 2y agoI didn't see any rage like this when EU was hammering Zuckerberg.
- cryptonector 2y agoI assume you're in <country> where this doesn't happen [yet].
- illiac786 2y agoIs there any offering you think should be blocked? Or do you think everything should be allowed? Child porn, disinformation attempting to destabilise a democracy, …?
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoAre you seriously saying he‘s a child predator because he thinks the EU poisoning DNS is bad? And are you actually equating child abuse with “disinformation attempting to destabilize a democracy”? What democracy? What disinformation? What relevance does either of these things have to do with some guy not paying money to watch football?
- illiac786 2y agoI really don’t understand how my comment can be interpreted like this in good faith. I asked if parent doesn’t think that there might be urls that should be blocked, for example sites serving child porn.
- antirez 2y agoIs all that folks "Why is Europe like that" from US? In that case, remember that TikTok is going to be banned because it is destroying US social networks business. On the contrary, this is an official order after the proof of copyright infringement, and targets the specific devices that are attached by people here in Italy on their TVs to stoke content (pezzotto). It's not single people that go watch some streaming, it's a criminal organization that resells copyrighted content like footbool, F1, ... and make the customers pay (less than Sky of course). This is stealing.
- LeroyRaz 2y agoTikTok is a legitimate national security concern.
- WalterGillman 2y agoHow? It might expedite intel gathering and psychological warfare to an extent but let's not pretend China doesn't have agents inside of all of the "friendly" platforms already.
- ekianjo 2y agoBecause China can control what gets recommended to TikTok viewers and actively brainwash them. Even if it does not work on all people that's enough to be a security concern.
- realusername 2y agoIn the EU, I'd rank it a lower national security threat than Twitter or Facebook, by far. And seeing what's going on in the US now, I'd maybe have the same analysis for the US.
- mikrotikker 2y agoBut it is a threat and all of those threats should be dealt with .