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Censorship-by-Infrastructure: How DNS Blocking Threatens the Open Internet—and How You Can Help Document It

What happens when governments don’t just regulate content, but forcibly repurpose the very guts of the Internet’s infrastructure to enforce their policies? The chilling answer, increasingly evident worldwide, is widespread, devastating collateral damage.

Around the world, neutral systems like Domain Name System (DNS) resolvers and IP routing, the bedrock of our digital lives, are being weaponized as enforcement tools. Though often presented as necessary for copyright, national security, or online safety, these occasionally well-intentioned government interventions nevertheless yield effects that are far from benign. They are consistently imprecise, opaque, and ultimately ineffective—introducing network instability, disrupting lawful services, and fragmenting the global Internet.

The DNS at Risk report, released by the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), tracks how infrastructure-level controls—especially DNS blocking—are increasingly being misused. Drawing on real-world case studies from countries including Italy, Malaysia, Russia, and the United States, the report showcases how policies aimed at one problem invariably ignite a cascade of unintended and far more destructive consequences.

The DNS Was Never Meant to Police Content

DNS resolvers don’t host or moderate content. Their singular purpose is to answer one fundamental question: Where is this domain? Forcing them to decide what should or shouldn’t be reachable turns a neutral technical system into a policy enforcement mechanism—and a fragile one at that.

Blocking at the resolver level is easy to implement but hard to contain. This practice routinely leads to gross overblocking, critically undermines user security, and erodes the foundational trust in the Internet’s core protocols. Once this infrastructure is bent to serve one policy goal, it’s often repurposed for others.

Help Us Build the Record

We’ve created dnsatrisk.org not just as a home for the report, but as an open platform to document future cases. We’re building a living record of how infrastructure is being distorted for policy enforcement—and we need your help to keep this critical record complete and current.

If you’ve seen DNS-level blocking, IP interference, or infrastructure-based censorship—whether in your work, your research, or your daily life—we encourage you to share it.

Visit dnsatrisk.org to read the report and submit a case.

The Internet’s resilience depends on all of us protecting its core. Let’s keep the infrastructure neutral, interoperable, and open—before the defaults we take for granted quietly disappear.

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By Christian Dawson, Executive Director, i2Coalition

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Comments

Infrastructure Assertions Anthony Rutkowski  –  Jun 4, 2025 12:38 PM

Actually, DNS - which is nothing more than a directory service - resolver - has “policed content” since its inception.  When it began replacing the host-name table in 1986, domains were tightly controlled by the DARPA/NSF via its contractors.  That activity was expanded with the InterNIC contract and then spun out to monetize the DNS name market in the 1990s as it became a goldmine.  I was personally a part of much of that activity in various capacities.  In the process, the DNS service began experiencing increasing cybersecurity and cybercrime challenges that necessitated government interventions worldwide.  The bottom line is that a global network service doesn’t get a free pass from all the world’s legal obligations and constraints.  Those come with the turf.

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