DNS Heavyweights Raise Concern Over DNS Filtering

penciling_in writes "A group of DNS heavyweights have released a paper detailing serious concerns over the proposed DNS filtering requirements included as part of the bill recently introduced in the US Senate named Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP Act). The group which includes Paul Vixie, Dan Kaminsky, Steve Crocker, David Dagon and Danny McPherson, have detailed several serious technical and security concerns in the event that the mandated DNS filtering is enacted into law. Dan Kaminsky says: 'There are efforts afoot to manipulate the DNS on a remarkably large scale. The American PROTECT IP act contains several reasonable and well targeted remedies to copyright infringement. One of these remedies, however, is to leverage the millions of recursive DNS servers that act as accelerators for Internet traffic, and convert them into censors for domain names in an effort to block content.'"

Comments

What's a DNS server?

[billlava]

I think you greatly overestimate the technological literacy of the average American. Most people aren't going to have a clue how to change their DNS servers, but even for those who do understand how to get around such restrictions, this is still disturbing. This is just a way for government to get its foot in the door. Soon, they'll be mandating to ISPs which DNS servers their clients are allowed to use, and what IP ranges are 'legal' to access on the internet. Maybe I should just take off the tinfoil hat and relax, but I can't see how government getting involved in legislating the internet in ANY way is a good thing.

I'll just use the ip address!

[Anonymous Coward]

Error 403: Forbidden
Please be aware that copyright infringement is illegal. A copyright enforcement specialist will be contacting you shortly to schedule your mandatory attendance to one of our copyright education seminars.

Thank goodness it's been blocked

[dstarfire]

Well, y'all can stop worrying now. It appears the Protect IP bill won't even be making it to the senate floor, thanks to Senator Ron Wyden (Ore). Check out the story over on Ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/sen-ron-wyden-to-place-a-hold-on-the-protect-ip-act.ars