<
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/23/france-keeps-breaking-the-internet-to-stop-piracy-even-though-its-not-working/>
"Back in 2011 and 2012, one of the central technical objections that helped
kill
SOPA and
PIPA was about DNS blocking. Engineers, internet architects,
and cybersecurity experts all lined up to explain, in painstaking detail, why
blocking at the DNS layer was a terrible idea. It would break the fundamental
architecture of how the internet works. It would have massive collateral
damage. It would undermine security protocols designed to protect users from
exactly the kind of DNS manipulation that the bill proposed. And it wouldn’t
even stop piracy, because anyone who actually wanted to get around DNS blocking
could do so easily.
Congress, to its rare credit, actually listened to the technical experts (and
widespread protests) and shelved the legislation. But the entertainment
industry never gave up on the idea. They just went jurisdiction-shopping. And
France, which has never met a maximalist copyright enforcement scheme it didn’t
love, has been more than happy to oblige.
As recently reported by
TorrentFreak, a Paris Court of Appeal validated DNS
blocking orders requiring Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to
pirate sites through their own DNS resolvers. This goes beyond traditional ISP
resolvers, which France has been ordering blocked for years — this targets
third-party resolvers — the ones that millions of people specifically choose to
use because they offer better privacy, better security, and better reliability
than their ISP’s default DNS.
But, of course, in France (and to the usual crew of Hollywood lobbyists),
“better privacy, security, and reliability” can only mean one thing: used for
piracy.
The court rejected all five appeals, and in doing so, articulated a legal
principle so sweeping that it has no natural stopping point."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
