[ketzu]

After reading the comments I feel I will go against a strong current here: I think DNS blocks are the right approach and the judges do understand DNS sufficiently.

When it comes to laws and their enforcement, I often wonder what HN users think would be a good approach. Most often my impression is that the favored approach seems to be of the form "the internet does not need any laws" paired with a condescending tone that everyone else doesn't understand the internet.

Explanation:

DNS blocks are the easiest hurdle to put up to deterrent most people. Sure DNS blocks can be easily circumnavigated, but so can locks. (It being easily avoided by more informed users might actually be a plus, preventing overzealous censorship being too effective.)

Actual enforcement of domestic law on providers based in other countrs (of the deemed illegal content) is not realistically possible/not a good tradeoff of using resources and most importantly: Not their business. But that does not mean that a country has to accept everything that is legal somewhere (or at least not persecuted in that jurisdiction).

Similar reasons prohibit enforcement on foreign DNS zones. Therefore, local DNS resolvers, even if just relaying to those foreign ones, would be the target of enforcement.

[nix23]

Forcing a Non-Profit to block information just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem.

Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube?

Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future?

Would you like that?

Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it? ...oh i know why, because it's not enough to block it, Sony knows it and the hordes of lawyers at telecom etc knows it, so you go after the easy prey.

That's the problem!

[ketzu]

> just for "alleged" copyright infringement is the problem.

Yes, that is a problem, but not the one I thought people complain about. Maybe the comments doing so stuck with me the most and I overestimate how many there were, but even rereading most comments with what the problem is according to you in mind, many do not seem to address this problem at all.

> Does a DNS-Server from a Non-profit needs something like content-ID from youtube? > > Or does a Non-profit DNS-provider needs hordes of lawyers just to check every single complaint in the future? > > Would you like that?

No. Quad9 was also provided with a deadline way too short to implement anything.

But after researching that bit a bit more, I changed my mind a bit about the process: I initially wrote that quad9 is in the wrong, I don't believe that anymore.

On one hand it would be more efficient to directly contact the providers that can do something about the infringement (youtube, DNS providers, whatever your prefered target would be), on the other hand it makes it easier to abuse. I still don't know of any good solution that's not just telling one side to go and shove it.

> Germany already has a law to block websites at ISP level, why bother a DNS provider with it?

My understanding was that this is also a DNS block and is frought with the same criticism (I may have accidentally projected that topic on the commenters here though, as the complaints seem to be the same). I'd gladly change that understanding :)

[nix23]

ISP blocking is mostly done per IP (or in some crazy Country's per protocol and IP), because no one would do that on the DNS level ;)

[nybble41]

> DNS blocks are the easiest hurdle to put up to deterrent most people. Sure DNS blocks can be easily circumnavigated, …

You've answered your own question. DNS blocks are not just "easily circumnavigated", they're completely ineffective. Use a different resolver, run your own resolver, add the domain to a hosts file… DNS is the simplest and easiest method of finding a site's IP address, but hardly the only method. Even very non-technical users can locate and follow simple step-by-step guides to get around a DNS block. This order is akin to having someone's name purged from the phone book when there are many other ways to find the same information. Given that the DNS block will be ineffective in preventing any of the (alleged and mostly imaginary) harm from the (alleged) copyright infringement which the target of the order isn't even involved in, what purpose is served by issuing the injunction?

At the very least Quad9 deserves compensation for any costs incurred in implementing this injunction, given that they are being unwillingly dragged into the middle of a dispute between two other unrelated parties. Ideally this compensation would come directly out of the judge's salary for issuing such a pointless injunction, but I suppose it could be paid by the plaintiff instead for requesting the injunction in the first place.