[Cryptography] Apple's iCloud+ "VPN"

[Christian Huitema]

On 6/24/2021 12:32 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2021-06-23 09:59:18 +0200 (+0200), Bill Woodcock wrote:
> [...]
>> Sony Music made the first move in that fight last Friday.
>>
>> https://torrentfreak.com/sony-wins-pirate-site-blocking-order-against-dns-resolver-quad9-210621/
> [...]
>
> Do these media companies not realize that basically anyone can run a
> recursive DNS resolver in their home network, querying authoritative
> nameservers rather than forwarding lookups to third-party services?
> I've done that for years to get around the failure of my ISP to
> properly support DNSSEC, for example.
>
> Or is this just another sign that general-purpose computers are
> destined to be outlawed?

Whether you think this is right or not, these companies have 
demonstrated that they want to protect their copyright revenues. They 
have also demonstrated that they can convince lawmakers and judges. 
Various governments are requiring ISPs to block DNS resolutions of some 
names, and ISPs have little alternative but to comply. Users may try to 
evade such bans by going through third party DNS resolvers like Quad9, 
but at least in Germany judges appear to say that if DNS resolution of 
some names is blocked by local ISPs, it should also be blocked by third 
party DNS resolvers.

Can users evade that by running their own DNS resolvers? Maybe, but they 
have better be smart about it because ISPs could also block port 53, the 
same way they blocked home SMTP servers on port 25.

-- Christian Huitema