Google Opposes EU Plan to Block DNS Resolvers to Combat Piracy

Google has expressed opposition to European Union proposals that would block popular DNS resolvers, including Google's own 8.8.8.8, as a measure to combat online piracy. In a submission to the EU Commission, the tech giant stated that such actions would have limited effectiveness and could result in unintended consequences.

The EU Commission is considering blocking DNS resolvers and IP addresses as a tool against piracy. However, Google argues in its submission that these measures are largely ineffective. The company points out that users can easily bypass DNS restrictions by switching to alternative services. The actual effectiveness of blocking IP addresses is also questioned.

Google highlighted that multiple legitimate services can share the same IP address. Blocking such an address could lead to legitimate, non-infringing services becoming inaccessible. The company referenced a case from December 2019 in Portugal where a local ISP blocked a Google-hosted IP address, causing disruptions to various Google services and cutting off traffic for legitimate Google Cloud customers sharing the IP range.

Furthermore, Google noted that simply blocking website access may not be fully effective, as new methods for bypassing such blocks often emerge. The UK's experience in blocking The Pirate Bay, for instance, saw proxy lists created to maintain access. For content distributed via torrents and peer-to-peer networks, the distributed nature of the network makes blocking individual points difficult.