Italy’s Piracy Shield system, launched in 2024, aimed to combat unauthorized sports streams but quickly turned into a cautionary tale. The system’s overreach led to the blocking of unrelated domains, including Google Drive’s core subdomain and CDNs serving YouTube, causing widespread disruptions. VPN providers exited the Italian market due to compliance demands and legal uncertainties, highlighting the unintended consequences of infrastructure-level content enforcement.
This trend is not unique to Italy, as governments worldwide increasingly employ domain name and IP blocking to enforce content policies. The Internet Infrastructure Coalition’s report, DNS at Risk, details numerous cases from countries like Russia, France, Malaysia, India, and the United States. While the objectives vary, the method remains consistent: interfering with Internet systems designed to translate domain names into IP addresses, not police content.
When governments compel DNS operators to block specific domain names, they disrupt entire domains, impacting all services linked to them. This broad approach, akin to IP blocking, risks collateral damage by targeting infrastructure rather than content itself. Shared infrastructure compounds the issue, as IP addresses, DNS resolvers, and CDN nodes are reused across multiple services, making targeted blocking impractical and fragmenting the global Internet.
Enforcement mandates that turn neutral infrastructure providers into content filters not only hinder network efficiency but also pose business and security risks. Instances like the mistaken domain seizure in the United States, affecting over 84,000 lawful subdomains, underscore the dangers of using technical systems for policy enforcement beyond their intended scope.
Preserving infrastructure neutrality is crucial to maintaining a stable and interoperable Internet. The risk of overblocking abroad causing customer confusion, business disruption, and reputational harm emphasizes the need for targeted enforcement strategies, as demonstrated by Vietnam’s successful takedown of a pirate streaming platform through legal and diplomatic means without disrupting DNS.
The politicization and weaponization of Internet infrastructure threaten the core principles of a shared, neutral, and interoperable Internet. Governments must refrain from overreaching into the Internet stack to preserve the system’s resilience, efficiency, and global connectivity.
As the Internet continues to evolve, finding a balance between policy enforcement and infrastructure stability is paramount. The lessons learned from past incidents underscore the importance of collaborative efforts to address online challenges while safeguarding the fundamental principles of a free and open Internet.
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