We got a DNS-based censorship law in Denmark ages ago. It was strictly for blocking child pornography. Today the list also includes: Unlicensed gambling sites, piracy, as well as a handful of sites that “doesn’t contain CSAM or other obviously illegal content” (old source, but nothing has really changed except probably the amount of websites on the list)
Censorship will never be limited to what it was first set in motion for. It is just too powerful and it is too tempting to not expand it to cover other “nuisances” a government or its lobbyists might have. If the barrier of entry is just adding a new string to a list, they’re gonna add that string to the list.
And if you want to circumvent it you just point your DNS to Quad9, Cloudflare, Google, or any of the DNS services that doesn’t implement the filter (including at least one Danish DNS service), so in essence it is pretty useless for the target groups it’s meant for.
Indeed. It starts with implementing the means, arguing with CSAM, terrorism, foreign espionage, or whatever cow is on the main street, and once it is running, it will be abused, both by broadly extending the reach (‘It was initially meant to fight terrorism, but is now used to cover copyright and parking violations.’), and illegal abuse by users (‘Police officer tracks his ex through Flock cameras’).
We got a DNS-based censorship law in Denmark ages ago. It was strictly for blocking child pornography. Today the list also includes: Unlicensed gambling sites, piracy, as well as a handful of sites that “doesn’t contain CSAM or other obviously illegal content” (old source, but nothing has really changed except probably the amount of websites on the list)
Censorship will never be limited to what it was first set in motion for. It is just too powerful and it is too tempting to not expand it to cover other “nuisances” a government or its lobbyists might have. If the barrier of entry is just adding a new string to a list, they’re gonna add that string to the list.
And if you want to circumvent it you just point your DNS to Quad9, Cloudflare, Google, or any of the DNS services that doesn’t implement the filter (including at least one Danish DNS service), so in essence it is pretty useless for the target groups it’s meant for.
Indeed. It starts with implementing the means, arguing with CSAM, terrorism, foreign espionage, or whatever cow is on the main street, and once it is running, it will be abused, both by broadly extending the reach (‘It was initially meant to fight terrorism, but is now used to cover copyright and parking violations.’), and illegal abuse by users (‘Police officer tracks his ex through Flock cameras’).