[ACCount37]

I'd rather copyright be unenforceable then.

"Hide piracy web sites from mainstream search engines" is the extent of what I'm willing to tolerate. Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.

[gruez]

>Tools that allow for blocking of arbitrary websites entirely should not exist at all.

Does this include websites for drugs, CSAM, human trafficking, or other criminal activity?

[ACCount37]

Yes.

If those are real world criminal activities with real world impacts, you should go after the perpetrators instead of playing the shell game with websites.

You can't make violent criminals disappear by sweeping them under the rug.

[gruez]

Isn't that kind of like saying "it's fine to have hit-for-hire ads in newspaper classifieds[1], because if hit-for-hire is really a problem they can just go after the hitmen/clients?". I think most people wouldn't tolerate criminal activity being advertised in the open, even though they know forcing such activity to go underground wouldn't prevent the criminal activity from happening.

[1] ignoring how you'd anonymously place/respond to the ads

[mcv]

The issue here is: should the newspaper with hitman classifieds be banned from kiosks, or should you go after the actual owners and advertisers and put them in prison?

Hiding the crime from public view doesn't make the crime go away.

[AAAAaccountAAAA]

That's not a good example imo, since newspaper ads are in any case a curated platform.

[gruez]

>since newspaper ads are in any case a curated platform.

They are? You just pay $100 (or whatever) and it gets posted. The only curation that might happen is the fact that a human probably has to manually insert it into the draft, because the newspaper hasn't developed proper automation for this sort of stuff. Moreover this is easily side-stepped by replacing "newspaper classifieds" with "ads stapled onto power poles" or "ads placed online" (in which case it probably is automated and there's no human review).

[bigbadfeline]

> Isn't that kind of like saying "it's fine to have hit-for-hire ads in newspaper classifieds"

No, it's not "kind of" in legal sense. Genaral information and specific threats are treated differently under the law. Genaral info us free speech. Specific threats are criminal intent and conspiracy - all punishable.

[jijijijij]

DNS resolution is absolutely not the same as advertisement (and murder not the same as copyright infringement.....). You only deal with DNS after forming the intention to go somewhere. DNS is meant to be impartial infrastructure. Since DNS blocking can be done completely opaquely (to most people anyway), it's more like gaslighting, really. I don't think most people want some entity to covertly define their reality.

If someone did copyright infringement (according to your country) on HN (which almost certainly happened), how do you feel about your browser suddenly telling you "There is no such thing as HN!", while the site is doing just fine?

[gruez]

>DNS resolution is absolutely not the same as advertisement (and murder not the same as copyright infringement.....). You only deal with DNS after forming the intention to go somewhere. DNS is meant to be impartial infrastructure. Since DNS blocking can be done completely opaquely (to most people anyway), it's more like gaslighting, really. I don't think most people want some entity to covertly define their reality.

That just seems like nitpicking over the blocking mechanism. Your objections might apply for DNS level blocking, but not for SNI or ip blocking. Moreover DNS level blocking is far easier to bypass than the latter methods, so your objections against DNS blocking (because it's "gaslighting" or whatever) actually would force the government/ISPs to employ more effective blocking technologies.

[jijijijij]

You are moving the goalpost. I was referencing the "murder ad" comparison. There is nothing about advertisement in DNS. Nobody is browsing DNS records. IP or SNI blocking are similarly intransparent.

You can block wherever illegal content is linked, or indexed, if you have to. Not on the infrastructure level, as that's distorting reality and is very annoying to fight.

But really, just pay a few more investigators and take down the offending service, if you got legal cause, instead of this sneaky, lazy shit, which is easily abused and sets a bad precedent.