tech-tag

Danish courts shuts down the Internet without really shutting it down

October 29th, 2006

Danish courts ruled last Wednesday, that the Internet provider Tele2 are to shut off their clients access to the controversial Russian music site allofmp3.com. That I find really disturbing, that the danish Internet access is starting to look like the situation in China.

In a matter of hours a guide on how to get pass the block was published. This guide claims that the block is a simple dns-block, meaning that access is only prevented if the users use Tele2’s own dns server. With this knowledge the average user should be able to get passed the block in five minutes.

What really bothers me, is that they use such an extreme means for such a complicated case. The whole allofmp3.com discussion is a complicated matter which lately has gotten political. These extreme means should only be used in extreme cases. Another point is that these extreme means lose their value when used in cases such as these, more people will know how to avoid getting blocked.

Last but not least - as the case with China shows - it is extremely hard to control the internet. It will be very hard for the danish Internet providers to block people using proxy servers, tor and so on. In my mind it is just a waste of time.

Entry Filed under: tech