Beating Censorship By Routing Around DNS

jfruhlinger writes "Last month, the US gov't shut down a number of sites it claimed were infringing copyright. They did it by ordering VeriSign to change the sites' authoritative domain name servers. This revealed that DNS is subject to government interference — and now a number of projects have emerged to bypass DNS entirely."

Stupd move

[hedwards]

People tolerated the US controlling ICANN because we were viewed as impartial, or at least less partial than an international organization. But this raises considerable doubt as to whether or not the US should still be allowed that level of control. Which is unfortunate because historically we've had a much better record on freedom of speech than most other countries, to throw that away now so that we can preserve a dieing industry is troubling to say the least.

Due process anybody?

[spectro]

The issue here is due process, registrars should ignore any government "request" to remove or redirect a DNS entry unless it is ordered by a court of law.

The same applies to the former DNS provider for wikileaks, visa, mastercard and anybody else who stopped doing business with them just because they got a call from some government dude accusing them of illegal activity.

What's really up next...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is govt mandated DNS servers. You go thru theirs, so that can track every hostname you resolve and presumably visit, or if you try to circumvent then that'll become a crime.

Get back in your Free Speech Zone

[spun]

Which is unfortunate because historically we've had a much better record on freedom of speech than most other countries,

Historically, meaning what? thirty years ago? Now we have special places where you can go to protest and no one will have to hear you. We have laws against saying bad things about food, [wikipedia.org] for crying out loud. Free speech is for the rich. If you own a media empire, you have some semblance of free speech. Otherwise, you only have freedom of speech until you say something that someone with money and/or power doesn't like.

Freenet

[goldarg]

Instead of re-inventing the wheel Why not try out a existing darknet in the form of Freenet http://freenetproject.org/ [freenetproject.org] or i2p http://www.i2p2.de/ [i2p2.de]

Re:how is it censorship?

[gnuASM]

the article says and even links to the fact that the US Government busted people selling counterfeit or pirated goods.

Wrong. The article says that the "ICE said" that these sites were "engaged in the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and copyrighted works". These are allegations, not "facts". Preponderance of evidence proving a crime has been committed is accomplished only through proper due process. There were no references to a court order, no references to a court trial, nor any reference to admittance of a crime. It is apparent to me that the DNS redirects were accomplished under duress of an executive agency without judicial oversight:

The seizures were accomplished by getting the VeriSign registry, owner of the .com and .net top-level domains, to change the authoritative domain-name servers for the seized domains to servers controlled by DHS.

I would call this unconstitutional, regardless of any supposed law that may be reference to the contrary. If these actions were done under a court order with judicial oversight accomplished through a supportive affidavit of the specific crime and specific circumstances, it would be different.

At this point in time, it is simply one government agency (or rather a group of related agencies), all this is is the effective removal of someone's publication of information. Until the judiciary orders its removal, it is nothing less than censorship.

We won't even go into the allusion in the article that the government is apparently deceptively redirecting site traffic to its own servers.

Re:Get back in your Free Speech Zone

[spun]

"We have laws against saying bad things about food, [wikipedia.org] for crying out loud."

No -- no we don't. We have laws against deliberately and knowingly spreading false negative information about food products. But I don't expect that to get past your Slashdot mental filter.

Hahaha, oh, that is rich. Try saying that rGBH is bad. Heck, try marketing milk that is rGBH free. By claiming that your milk does not have bovine growth hormone, you are saying that bovine growth hormone is bad. And you will be sued.

Did you know that the standards of proof are different when you are being sued for badmouthing
food than when you are sued for badmouthing a person? When you badmouth a person, that person has to prove your guilt. When you badmouth food, you must prove your innocence.

I will repeat that. When you are sued for saying bad things about food, you are presumed guilty and must prove your innocence.