<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
[Now just where are those vulgar proponents of US exceptionalism
over critical internet resources (the don't worry its in good hands
crowd and you will break the internet) as this is pushed through
while ordinary non-violent folk are pepper sprayed while marginal
sanctions are pushed against brutal police officers?]<br>
<h2 class="posttitle"><br>
</h2>
<h2 class="posttitle"> Filtering and Blocking Closer To The Core Of
The Internet? </h2>
<small>Published on 20 November 2011 @ 1:00 pm</small>
<p class="postmetadata"> <span st_processed="yes"
class="st_facebook_buttons" st_title="Filtering and Blocking
Closer To The Core Of The Internet?"
st_url="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/"
displaytext="share"><span class="stButton"
style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;display:inline-block;cursor:pointer;"><span
style="background-image:
url("http://w.sharethis.com/images/facebook_counter.png");"
class="stMainServices st-facebook-counter"> </span></span></span><span
st_processed="yes" class="st_twitter_buttons"
st_title="Filtering and Blocking Closer To The Core Of The
Internet?"
st_url="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/"
displaytext="share"><span class="stButton"
style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;display:inline-block;cursor:pointer;"><span
style="background-image:
url("http://w.sharethis.com/images/twitter_counter.png");"
class="stMainServices st-twitter-counter"> </span></span></span><span
st_processed="yes" class="st_email_buttons" st_title="Filtering
and Blocking Closer To The Core Of The Internet?"
st_url="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/"
displaytext="Email"><span class="stButton"
style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;display:inline-block;cursor:pointer;"><span
class="stButton_gradient"><span class="chicklets email">Email</span></span></span></span><span
st_processed="yes" class="st_sharethis_buttons"
st_title="Filtering and Blocking Closer To The Core Of The
Internet?"
st_url="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/"
displaytext="Share"><span class="stButton"
style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;display:inline-block;cursor:pointer;"><span
class="stButton_gradient"><span class="chicklets sharethis">Share</span></span></span></span>
<span class="printthis"><a
href="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/print/"
title="Print This Post" rel="nofollow"><img
class="WP-PrintIcon"
src="cid:part1.04000703.05050003@gmail.com" alt="Print This
Post" title="Print This Post" style="border: 0px;"></a> <a
href="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/11/20/filtering-and-blocking-closer-to-the-core-of-the-internet/print/"
title="Print This Post" rel="nofollow">Print This Post</a>
</span> </p>
<p>By <a href="http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/author/monika/"
title="Posts by Monika Ermert" rel="author">Monika Ermert</a>
for Intellectual Property Watch</p>
<p>With protests against draft US legislation like the Stop Online
Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act ongoing and the European
Parliament voting on 17 November for a resolution to request that
the United States should be “refraining from unilateral measures
to revoke IP addresses or domain names,” politicians are talking a
lot about technology for the internet domain name system. But at
the same time, engineers are getting more political and are
intensively discussing technology providing the tools for blocking
– by governments and private parties. <span id="more-18277"></span></p>
<p>For the community that cares for the functioning of the domain
name system (DNS), it came as a shock when Paul Vixie, founder of
the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), said that the BIND
software would allow the filtering out of sites with a bad
“reputation” – like listed malware sites – and also the
“rewriting” of DNS answers – manipulating what people get to see
when asking for domain names. </p>
<p>Vixie is a guru of the DNS and one of the authors of the letter
by well-known experts against DNS blocking in the Protect IP Act.
But he is perhaps best-known for being the father of BIND, which
has for a decade been the open source tool that makes the DNS
work. </p>
<p>More Filter-Friendly DNS Software</p>
<p>Jim Reid, one of the chairs of the DNS working group at the
Réseaux IP Europeéns, said during a recent debate about principles
that he was “rather saddened” by ISC’s decision to allow the
rewriting. “We’re giving the bad guys tools,” Reid warned. </p>
<p>The rewriting – which sends back a “lie” upon a request to the
DNS from someone looking for a website – “also sends a rather
nasty message saying it’s okay to do this kind of thing.“ What is
worse from the engineers’ standpoint with the rewriting is that it
breaks new measures to secure the DNS, because the “lies” are
detected and dropped without users knowing what happened. </p>
<p>The “lying” is currently happening for domains seized by the US
government agency ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement),
some of them legal in their country of origin, like the Spanish
RojaDirecta.com, (a case discussed intensively by the experts).
When typing RojaDirecta.com, users do not get to that site, but to
a warning/blocking site by the ICE. </p>
<p>It is this kind of case that has stirred up debate in the
European Parliament, pushed by the European Digital Right
initiative (EDRi). “By this you render a site and the data
inaccessible without having any court order in the site owner’s
country,” said Joe McNamee, who fought for the declaration now
officially included in the Parliament’s resolution on the upcoming
European Union-US Summit of 28 November 2011. </p>
<p>The text of the Parliament <a
href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P7-TA-2011-0510&language=EN&ring=P7-RC-2011-0577">resolution
is here</a>. </p>
<p>Under the topic “Freedom and Security,” the declaration stresses
the need “to protect the integrity of the global internet and
freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to
revoke IP addresses or domain names.” </p>
<p>SOPA, McNamee warned, would be so broad that “it could be
interpreted in a way that would mean that no online resource in
the global internet would be outside US jurisdiction.”</p>
<p>Of those who provide users with domain names – with the so-called
DNS registrars closer to the user and the user’s jurisdictions –
it is the registry companies who manage the central database for
zones like .com (for example) who are an easy target when it comes
to take-downs. They keep the record of who every .com domain name
is delegated to and inform those looking for a site where to go.
So they can from a top spot in the DNS hierarchy point to a
“wrong” location.</p>
<p>What makes things difficult is that many large registries, like
VeriSign (registry for .com and .net) which changed the
rojadirecta.com record, are located in the United States and while
offering services globally in name, they in fact are bound by US
law. </p>
<p>Registries – Target for Take-Downs</p>
<p>VeriSign recently tried to get a new registry policy acknowledged
by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), the DNS technical oversight body, which would have
allowed the dot com and .dot net registry (VeriSign) “to comply
with any applicable court orders, laws, government rules or
requirements, requests of law enforcement or other governmental or
quasi-governmental agency, or any dispute resolution process.”
After a first wave of protests, the company backed off and
withdrew the test for the time being.</p>
<p>Matt Pounsett from Afilias, the registry for .info and some other
TLDs, explained the dilemma. While the registries certainly like
people to see the correct DNS-answers that they send, “there are
cases where even we participate in things like that, particularly
domain take-down.“ Many take-downs were made when it was found out
“that a particular domain is being used in a way that violates
acceptable use.” </p>
<p>Registry operators and a software providers like ISC underline
that the fight against malware mainly drives their interventions.
BIND’s filtering function will help the manager of a local domain
to protect his network. Customers are pushing, for example, for
options like rewriting, said Joao Damas, a developer at ISC. </p>
<p>The rewriting not only allows ICE to lead people to their website
instead of Rojadirecta’s, it also allows commercial companies to
attract traffic to their search engine with recommendations and
paid ads. Some big telecommunications providers, for example, lure
users to their search site every time they mistype a domain name
or simply look for something that does not exist. </p>
<p>“If we do not do offer functionalities like the rewriting in our
BIND software, we will drive them away from BIND,” said Damas.
BIND’s new “reputation policy zone” function allows people to have
names checked against lists of alleged bad actors, known spammers
or malware-distributers, and in case of a match do not display the
respective sites. </p>
<p>More Private Filtering</p>
<p>But what about the governance of increased private manipulation
and also filtering that is enabled by better tools, asked Peter
Koch, a DNS expert at Denic, the registry for the .de. country
code TLD of Germany. “When we talk about a near real-time facility
that would enable certain groups to influence resolvers to block
or rewrite resolution data,” Koch warned, collateral damage and
even liability issues could arise. The more sceptical engineers
also warn that such interventions could make the deployment of
secure DNS on the last mile to the user very difficult. As they,
including Vixie, have worked for a decade to implement this kind
of security, they oppose it from an architectural standpoint. </p>
<p>Civil liberty advocates like McNamee or Wendy Seltzer, co-founder
of the project Chilling Effects, point to the difficulties for
victims of the varieties of filtering possibilities to push back.
Why can a DMCA (US <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act">Digital
Millennium Copyright Act</a>) request from a private party lead
to Google even filtering a part of the rojadirecta website
included in the Spanish version and housed under .es, the country
code TLD of Spain – as actually happened? </p>
<p>“Today the biggest problem is there’s too many things happening
not based on legislation,” said Patrik Fältström, chair of the
Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the ICANN. Fältström
belongs to the engineers hoping that fixing the political code
might be the first necessary step to solve the problems. Only then
would the next step be addressed, Fältström said, in addressing
conflicting national legislations. A mega-size example is coming
with regard to this problem: the introduction of new TLDs as
approved by ICANN. </p>
<p>Could ICANN approve a domain name that is illegal in one
jurisdiction? asked Fältström. Several jurisdictions have
announced they would otherwise block complete TLDs, with new top
level domains like .gay being only one example not being welcome
everywhere in the world. Or should controversial new address zones
be blocked at the outset by ICANN? </p>
<p>If the registries are close to the core, the root zone that lists
existing TLDs (like .com, .net, .ch) and future ones could be seen
as one core spot of the global internet.</p>
<p>With the new contract for the managing of this root function, the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract, the US
administration seems to have put itself in a difficult spot. The
contract has been performed by the ICANN so far, and the US
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
oversees the work. The difficult spot for NTIA is that they will
for every new TLD check if ICANN’s procedure for approving a new
TLD has been supportive of the “global public interest”. What will
the US do about potential knocks at their door from those who do
not like to have a .gay or a .sex? It will be a difficult
filtering function, close to the core.</p>
</body>
</html>