I feel like anyone who already had a know-how to change their DNS will just change to one of the other hundreds of free servers and the people who couldn’t be bothered to switch to google DNS will already have been “blocked”. Or they are using a VPN already…
Or run your own recursive DNS which can be done in a docker container. Most people I know sailing the seven seas are quite adept at technology. Well most people I know are in IT in the first place so that likely doesn’t mean much.
So they’ll just change their DNS server again? What will this achieve?
Nothing for people who know what DNS is. They’re targeting the people who don’t.
They already got the ISP DNS resolvers.
This particular step, that this article is about, is targeting people who knew enough to switch from their ISP’s DNS resolver to one of these ISP-agnostic DNS providers. So they’re targeting the people who do, and probably not going to be particularly effective at it.
In order to be using any of these DNS providers you would have already needed to switch away from your ISP’s default DNS. This must be targeting the people who knew how to change their DNS servers but somehow forgot.
Tbh it seems to me like the only thing they’re targeting with this are media company lawyers that could try to argue that they’re “enabling piracy” by resolving domains of known piracy resources.
Starting with a pool of all users who use alternative DNS for any reason, users of pirate sites – especially sites broadcasting the matches in question – were isolated from the rest. Users of both VPNs and third-party DNS were further excluded from the group since DNS blocking is ineffective against VPNs.
Proust found that the number of users likely to be affected by DNS blocking at Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco, amounts to 0.084% of the total population of French Internet users. Citing a recent survey, which found that only 2% of those who face blocks simply give up and don’t find other means of circumvention, he reached an interesting conclusion.
“2% of 0.084% is 0.00168% of Internet users! In absolute terms, that would represent a small group of around 800 people across France!”
I wonder how much the court case cost, and if those costs are in anyway likely to be recouped even if all 800 of those convert to a subscription.
How is that even legal?
It is legal just only because they can restrict the access to any of the services they want, in fact they don’t oblige you to use their DNS…
How would it be illegal? It’s their service, they can set whatever rules they want on it. If you don’t like it, pick another DNS provider.
It isn’t like I’m not willing to pay. My NAS setup wasn’t exactly cheap. But the user experience is just incredible. I had Netflix for ten years, and several others for some time. The experience is just better. Watching whatever I want synchronized with my wife across devices of any type is superb. Who else offers that?
Netflix did, but now online streaming is fragmented and it’s worse again.
I can download a torrent faster than I can even figure out which service the content is on… assuming it’s even available on one of them.
seems to be only in france rn?
How about just firewall France and discover if legislators find cause to pass new laws.
Around 800 Frenchies affected. Imagine the money both companies wasted on lawyers on this and how many of those 800 will be forced to pay now instead of finding another dns server…
Oh no the poor football leagues are losing out on pennies from people who cant afford extortionate subscription services, quick take legal action!
Piracy is a service problem.
Yes but also it is increasingly becoming a price problem
That’s still service.
I wanted to watch World Cup, so I got Peacock for a month for $5. I considered piraxy, but the cost was less than the hassle to figure out how to do it. It was in Spanish, but that was fine by me.
I didn’t keep that subscription though because the value wasn’t there. But Peacock got $5 from me that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
I’m currently in the process of ripping my DVDs and am planning to get a Blu-ray player to rip even more, because I’m fed up with paying more and getting less from various streaming services. I hadn’t bought a DVD or Blu-Ray for years until Netflix started dropping shows and raising prices.
I make a good salary, but I’m not going to throw it away on low value services. I spend a ton at Steam and have spent a lot at Netflix and Disney+ in the past, but that’s changing now that prices are going up, ads are increasing, and content is shrinking.
Talk about an impotent response. Pretty simple way around that.
This is such a stupid non solution to their problem.
wow lets poison DNS, surely no one will start linking these piracy sites via ip addresses or create alternative domain names. wcgw.
This is a dumb game of whackamole that they’ll never win.
If you’re affected just switch your dns to Quad9 or something.
Or run your own DNS with Unbound. Just takes a raspberry pi and/or other cheap low power PC.
Let’s Play Wack-A-Mole! Select Game:
- Sue Hosters -> Found New Hosts
- Sue Domains -> Found New Domains
- Sue DNS -> Found New DNS
- ???
- Sue the entire Internet -> Get laughed at
- Sue website admins -> Users find/ create a new site
Even the most casual of internet users will see the guide on how to change their DNS server bruh.
Next they’ll do DNS injection even though DoT and DNS over HTTPS is a thing.
use your powers for good and poison dns to stop russian disinformation
How about not poisoning anything? Not using powers is also an option.
standing by and letting russia continue to spread disinformation isn’t a good thing.
They’re going to spread disinformation regardless, and they can block any DNS provider they want regardless. So I guess it could help non-Russians, but it won’t do anything for Russians.
I agree in principle but if we’re going to do it we should target all disinformation equally, and that would mean that far more american content would get blocked than russian content.
Want to know what I used to pirate, but don’t anymore? Video games. Steam makes tons of money off of me and everybody else and has reasonable DRM with an easy to use store.
Piracy is a delivery problem. Make content easier to get for reasonable prices and you’ll make money. Don’t do that? OK. Piracy it is.
My story but with anime. Japan has some really annoying laws requiring their shows to be blurred and dimmed during fast-paced scenes and it absolutely butchers the height of good animations.
The Blu-ray releases don’t have this issue, but guess what releases aren’t available for purchase/streaming for English audiences. 🫠 I want to give them money so bad, but 🤷♀️
what? why would that be a law? that sounds so pointless
It’s an anti-seizure measure. Which makes sense for TV where kids might come across it by accident, but it doesn’t make sense for streaming services where we could easily opt in/out of those versions.
is the opacity of the characters lowered as well? I feel like I can see the background through the characters
I agree, but most games also have a higher ratio of value to cost. If I buy a game for 50 bucks, I’ll play it for many hours, let’s say 50. So that will be 1 per hour, pretty good. If I buy a new movie, that isn’t available for subscription streaming, that ratio is easily double. If I have a subscription and need another now, that also lowers it’s value. It also comes with lower comfort and ease of consumption, as you mentioned.
Another great example is YouTube premium. I’ll gladly pay 5 or 7 bucks for adfree content, not 14 though. I don’t need YouTube music. So I block ads where I can and donate to creators, if I can afford it. They could have had my money, but they are, simply, greedy.
I also hate it, when deals are altered without my consent. It makes me feel like a sucker, and therefore makes it less likely for me to keep investing.
I agree with your analysis, and only differ in that I do pay for YouTube Premium because I get a TON of use out of YouTube music - you really can’t beat their library of obscure and live music!
Yup, if I used Youtube a lot, I’d pay. I don’t though. I follow a dozen or so channels, and I stream maybe an hour a day from Youtube. So I use an ad blocker and donate to various channels. Youtube is worth e maybe $5/month to me, and I’d rather just nor use it than pay more than that.
I still keep the pirated have DRMless copies of games I bought on Steam though - just for ownership.
I used to pirate movies I owned just because of the annoying FBI warnings and ads at the start of dvds.
You could just rip them instead.
Torrent was even faster
Worse, the harder they try to stop it, the shittier the experience gets for their paying customers, but not for the pirates really. At that point, why would anyone want to pay for a crappy experience being treated like a thief when you can save your money and actually be a “thief” (at least in their eyes) while being treated like a paying customer?
This guy eats muff.
Muffins? How do you know?
+1 for steam
I used to pirate my games on linux, but it’s harder than on Windows. Steam’s gaming on linux experience is perfect, just download the game and hit Play.
