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July 7, 2005
DNS poisoning to block P2P?
Constitutional Code reports that the German music rights organization wants ISPs to set their DNS servers to block resolution of eDonkey link servers:The German rights organisation for composers, lyricist and publishers, GEMA, has asked 42 access providers to poison their DNS servers in order to block sites that provide links to eDonkey files. In short, DNS poisoning obstructs the process of converting a URL to a numeric IP address. The GEMA apparently expects the access providers to configure their DNS servers so that "inquiries by end-users are not passed to the correct server, but to an invalid or another pre-defined side." The GEMA also demands that the providers sign a testimony,with which they commit themselves to ensure full blockage under a contractual penalty of 100.000 euro if any of their customers can still reach the targeted site after July 25th.
This is a truly bad idea. As CoCo points out it's trivial to bypass your local ISP's DNS server and get name resolution from somewhere else. Clients can be easily programmed to do this, and if the ISPs actually accede to this demand, you can be sure that the client authors will waste no time in doing so. All that will be left is the collateral damage to all the sites which run other, legitimate services.
Posted by ekr at July 7, 2005 9:41 PM | Filed under: