Comment by iamnothere
18 hours ago
Where does this line of reasoning end though? Shouldn’t the browser makers be blocking the sites too? What about curl? What about the OS and local DNS resolvers (unbound etc)? Maybe Ethernet and wifi cards should contain blocking logic? At some point you have to draw a line!
The way it worked is that the French government forced all major ISP to block some sites.
But using a third party DNS circumvents the block, so they went after them too.
Web browsers however (unless they include a VPN or 3rd party DNS) don't allow you to access sites blocked by your ISP. Same goes with ethernet and wifi cards.
I'm not saying I agree with it but that's the logic.
Right, but many browsers include a VPN. Tor Browser bypasses any such blocks. Many browsers also let you set your own DNS servers, so you could pick one that allows circumvention. Same at the OS level, and some OSes come with built in VPN clients. I guess I just don’t see how this stops here, unless legislatures step in to limit the scope. It’s an insane theory of liability that makes all steps in the chain liable for anything bad that end users might do.
unfortunately, I feel all these things are going to happen within a few decades.
Potentially all of the above as long as they are not tested in court.
Yes, I believe all of those would be legal for French courts to order. Practicality of enforcement is a different question.
The line is drawn wherever a particular judge decides it's drawn, and each judge has a different ability to understand the broader implications of the line being drawn on any individual case.
Then it might be worthwhile for legislators to put some fences around this ASAP before copyright extremism completely disassembles modern computing.
My representative in the legislature is 90+ years old and never seems to understand what I’m saying.
I think there's at least one clear line between DNS providers and your examples. In your examples the enjoined parted is providing being a tool - a thing someone else uses - not a service where the enjoined party themselves does the thing.
It's one thing to say that you can't CNC machine guns for customers of your CNC-on-demand service, it's another to say you can't sell CNC machines because someone might use them to make guns.
Here the DNS service is being told they can't direct traffic to pirate sites, not that they can't give out tools (e.g. browsers or local DNS resolvers) that could be used by someone else to direct traffic to pirate sites (or could be used innocently). Your examples are all the latter - tools.
> It's one thing to say that you can't CNC machine guns for customers of your CNC-on-demand service, it's another to say you can't sell CNC machines because someone might use them to make guns.
And yet some places (California for instance) are attempting to do just this by requiring some kind of vaporware AI mediator to review files before the machine operates. Intermediary liability is out of control.
While I'm no fan of that law, it isn't a case of intermediary liability. It's a case of legislators (in a baffling move) deciding that selling 3d printers (and I guess CNC mills?) without vaporware attached should be directly illegal, much like most of the world has decided selling guns should be directly illegal, regardless of how they are used.
It's not illegal to sell these because it would be illegal for the end user to make a gun with them (it might or might not be - but is irrelevant) - it's just illegal to sell them because the legislator said it is.
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