[ih] Fwd: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

[Richard Bennett]

I think it's good that Internet engineers have political opinions about 
the work that Congress is seeking to do with their rogue sites bills and 
that they're willing to share them. There's no question that our 
democracy works best with broad participation and good ideas from all 
quarters.  There are questions about the most efficient approaches for 
dealing with IPR problems, as well as the most just, fair, 
cost-effective and reasonable ones.

In your role as a security expert, Congress is especially interested in 
your opinion about the implications that domain blacklisting has for the 
hoped-for deployment of DNSSEC and advice on any measures they can take 
to support DNSSEC. That kind of advice is actually distinct from your 
general views on IPR, law enforcement, due process, jurisprudence, and 
the democratic process, however.

But I can't blame people for opining about the broad range of issues 
when they've been asked a very narrow question. That makes for fun 
debates, the invention of new/old principles, and alternate approaches 
that might be better. So whatever floats.

RB

On 12/19/2011 3:23 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>
> On 12/19/2011 12:35 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>> The main question that the lawmakers considering SOPA and PROTECT-IP 
>> need an
>> answer to pertains to the effect of mandating domain filtering on the 
>> deployment
>> of DNSSEC.
>
> While that's clearly a major concern, I would have thought basic 
> questions of cost/benefit would be primary.
>
> What actual efficacy is likely, what is the actual effort required, 
> and what are the other likely problems, besides DNSSec, both technical 
> and social?
>
> And, then, what are the justifications for those claims?  For example, 
> what related experiences are there that cause one to believe those 
> benefits and problems?
>
> These would strike me as being the "main" questions.  Concerns about 
> DNSSec derive from that exercise.
>
>
>> The EFF's letter is being waved around in committee as "proof" that
>> SOPA will somehow undermine DNSSEC or impede its eventual deployment, 
>> as in
>> "these 83 security experts say that this bill threatens the security 
>> of the
>> Internet."
>
> You mean that a paper signed by more than 80 experts who have direct 
> experience with the relevant technologies and services, over many 
> years, should be ignored?
>
>
>> The implications of adopting a law that requires U. S. ISPs to alter 
>> their
>> response to certain DNS lookups depends to a great extent on the 
>> expected user
>> response to a lookup failure, which is a very interesting discussion 
>> but not
>> really technical.
>
> Actually, we have some experience with such modifications to DNS 
> behavior.  The results haven't been pretty.
>
>
>> The intent of SOPA is to have it follow the RPZ implementation, and 
>> Congress
>
> Oh?  That's it's "intent"?
>
>
> d/

-- 
Richard Bennett