Court orders for blocking of streaming services

Thu May 5 10:47:12 UTC 2022

Joe - 

All excellent questions.  The Internet is a relatively new phenomenon when it comes to the US court system and thus there has always been an ongoing risk of “interesting” court orders that are shaped by primarily by the plaintiffs understanding of the Internet (rather than being shaped and/or anchored in the reality of those who operate the various services that actually make the Internet function.) 

I would suspect that several of the larger ISPs involved and the some of the providers of DNS services will respond to such an order, but it is not assured.  (ARIN regularly reviews federal orders issued that might preclude operation of the Internet number registry service accordingly to the wishes of the community, and the issuance of these orders were noted but do not appear not applicable to our services.)   

It’s also possible that some of the US telecommunications/Internet trade associations might respond, as they have regulatory and legal folks dedicated to such activities (i.e. WISPA, FISPA, NCTA, CA, CTIA, etc.)  – If you are a member of one of those associations, then it’s worth inquiring with them. 

Best wishes,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

> On 5 May 2022, at 8:07 AM, Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:
> 
> Greetings -
> 
> Recently, a court issued a troubling set of rulings in a default decision
> against "Israel.TV" and some other sites.
> 
> https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.572373/gov.uscourts.nysd.572373.49.0.pdf
> 
> https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.572374/gov.uscourts.nysd.572374.49.0.pdf
> 
> https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.572375/gov.uscourts.nysd.572375.53.0.pdf
> 
> While the issue of domains being confiscated and being handed over to a
> prevailing plaintiff for an international domain with no obvious nexus
> to the United States by a United States court via orders to companies
> that happen to be in the United States is a bit of a concerning issue,
> that's not operationally relevant.
> 
> What's more concerning is that the ruling includes an expansive clause
> B, "Against Internet Service Providers (ISPs):"
> 
> 	IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all ISPs (including without
> 	limitation those set forth in Exhibit B hereto) and any
> 	other ISPs providing services in the United States shall
> 	block access to the Website at any domain address known
> 	today (including but not limited to those set forth in
> 	Exhibit A hereto) or to be used in the future by the
> 	Defendants (.Newly-Detected Websites.) by any technological
> 	means available on the ISPs. systems. The domain addresses
> 	and any NewlyDetected Websites shall be channeled in such
> 	a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the
> 	Website, and will be diverted by the ISPs. DNS servers
> 	to a landing page operated and controlled by Plaintiffs
> 	(the .Landing Page.) which can be reached as follows:
> 
> This expansive clause basically demands that ISP's implement a
> DNS override in recursers, which may be dubiously effective given
> things such as DNSSEC and DNS-over-HTTPS complications.  This is
> not an insignificant amount of work to implement, and since they
> have not limited the list to big players, that means us small guys
> would need to do this too.
> 
> Perhaps more worryingly is the clause "by any technological means
> available," which seems like it could be opening the door to 
> mandatory DPI filtering of port 53 traffic, an expensive and dicey
> proposition, or filtering at the CPE for those who run dnsmasq on
> busybox based CPE, etc., etc.
> 
> This seems to be transferring the expense of complying to third
> parties who had nothing to do with the pirate sites.
> 
> Complying with random court orders where there isn't even a formal
> notice that there's been a court order is problematic.  I would
> guess that the 96 ISP's listed in the order are going to receive a
> formal notice, but by what mechanism does the court think that a
> small service provider would even be aware of such an order?
> 
> What happens with respect to the "Newly Detected Websites"?  What
> mechanism exists here?
> 
> Who is going to pay for the costs?
> 
> And how is this practical when this scales to hundreds or thousands
> of such rulings?
> 
> It seems to me like the court overstepped here and issued a ruling
> that contained a lot of wishful thinking that doesn't reflect the
> ability of miscreants on the Internet to just rapidly register a new
> domain name with a new fake credit card.  Certainly it is trivial
> to host the actual websites well out of legal reach of US courts, 
> and with domain registrars without US presence.  This leaves those
> of us in the network operations community in the position of
> shouldering costs to comply with a court order, but without a clear
> mechanism to continue to be in compliance.  This could become a full
> time job, if the defendants want to play the game right.  "israel.tv"?
> "1srael.tv" (with a "1" or "L" for the first letter, etc).
> 
> Is anybody here considering recovering compliance costs from the
> plaintiffs?
> 
> ... JG
> -- 
> Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
> "The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way
> through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that
> democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"-Asimov