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Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

mullvad.net

231–240 of 255 posts

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#231
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you didn't click my profile before writing this knee-jerk, but I'm a professional musician. And I've worked in software engineering, across a zillion different licenses, for many years. I'm not just shooting from the hip here.

I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. It does serve people and power entire industries. You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. This is a forum of writing, and, much like songwriting, the right words and nuance mat…

> I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries.

To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct?

> You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time.

Well, I suppose it depends what sorts of engagement we can understand as "serving". By "serving", I do not mean merely enriching. Of course we all recognize that there are massive industries which are enriched by this system; where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment.

At present, I think it's perfectly reasonable to observe that _musicians_ are not _served_ by this configuration. To the contrary, it has spawned a complicated system of publication, with many musicians facing the subpar customer service experience of services like distrokid and cdbaby facilitating distribution to services like spotify and apple music, while the RIAA and MPAA employ legal threats and harassment to the more musician-friendly DRM-free and direct-to-consumer counterparts.

I think it's also fair to say that, since the beginning of music, no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans. And ultimately, that's what copyright is - it lets me send the cops in to fuck with fans who... try to share my music with their friends? It's awful from first principles, even if the implementation weren't as rotten as it is.

You said, "Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living" in response to this statement. So I think you have no leg to stand on in terms of demanding disambiguity; your statement is flatly and demonstrably false. Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#232
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds more like we should end copyright worldwide.

Indeed it needs to happen, and even here on HN, it can be difficult for some to admit and acknowledge. It'd be great for this to be the first major relinquishment of nation-state power to happen without violence, without backroom deals, without wedge politics and flag waving. Just... let it go. It's beyond obvious that copyright is not going to exist in 1000 years. Every creature on earth - especially the internet -…

> Copyright is serving exactly nobody today.

As a budding wannabe fiction author, I certainly hope you are wrong.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if all software is in the public domain, then the profit motive for developing software will be completely wiped out, and much less will be produced as a result. Software development be reduced to a hobby or developers will have to seek out patronage like artists did in the 1600s. That’s not a world that most of us want to return to.

Why do you think so much open source software is written, if you need a profit motive for software to be created? Also, let's be real - human written (and therefore copyrightable) code is dying already. When the machines can write anything on demand, why do you need a profit motive?

> Why do you think so much open source software is written, if you need a profit motive for software to be created?

That's like asking why gardeners like to grow food and flowers in their backyards, or why hobbyists like to build furniture in their garages. Some people need a creative outlet. It doesn't mean that a lot of people won't grow food, flowers, or furniture for free, and that there's no demand for food, flowers, or furniture to be bought.

> When the machines can write anything on demand, why do you need a profit motive?

Machines still need humans to power them. They're like any other tools that need direction and guidance, by humans that possess the innate creativity.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#234
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. It does serve people and power entire industries. You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, choose your words more carefully next time. This is a forum of writing, and, much like songwriting, the right words and nuance mat…

> I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct? > You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, cho…

> To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct?

That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one.

> where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment.

Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties? You may think the amount of support is insufficient, but that's different from claiming it's zero.

> no musician ever has wanted a system whose function is to call the cops of their fans

Have you ever heard of Metallica, Dr. Dre, or Slipknot? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc.) While they didn't call the cops on their fans, they fought hard against businesses who facilitated mass copyright infringement and made it known they were vehemently against piracy. They took a lot of heat for it from entitled children, but the vast majority of fellow artists quietly supported them.

> Every musician I know (including, I'll bet, musicians you listen to) - and I'll bet, every one that you know too - has seething daily contempt for lawyers who make these asinine claims.

Of course they do, but they sure as shit aren't giving up their advances and royalty checks that feed themselves and their families.

I would humbly suggest you spend some time among professionals in Hollywood (music, movies, and TV). You'll learn a lot. There are entire neighborhoods--not just posh ones in the hills--of people who earn their daily bread in the industry. I know; I grew up among them. Middle class, salt-of-the-earth folks.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#235
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a trained attorney who specialized in intellectual property law, and I happen to know a little about both the performing arts and software industries. To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct? > You wrote "copyright is serving exactly nobody today." If that's not what you meant, cho…

> To be frank, it sounds like you are part of the problem, and that your income may partly be derived from rent-seeking via the intellectual property regime. Is that correct? That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one. > where we may disagree is whether any actual services in rendered to the folks doing the writing and recording and touring in exchange for that enrichment. Besides studio…

> That is not correct. My current role is a technical one, not a legal one.

Well then I apologize for my presumption.

> Besides studio time, connections to expert studio musicians, producers, engineers, advances and royalties?

The first four of these have nothing to do with IP schemes and are widely available to those of us who grind not only our music but our social connections. I publish all of my music as CC0 or CC-BY-SA (and of course all DRM-free, as is nearly all bluegrass now), and I think my studio records and collaborations show quite clearly that I have not suffered from lack of access to top talent. If anything, the notoriety of my IP activism and development of p2p tools seems to have made me _more_ interesting to most of my favorite bluegrassers; I'm not sure I'd have been able to make either of my studio records without the good will that has come from this.

Royalties are obviously a complex topic with a strange history, but I see no reason to lose confidence that we can engineer a system by which funds flow form fans to musicians in a way that is at least as just (and is more direct) than royalties.

Advances are obviously an issue, I grant that. And it's not just the check getting cut, but the negotiating power from the label side to do the tour launch, get on the studio and mastering calendars, push to playlisters and radio stations, etc. - a lot of these activities are (in my opinion, cringely) crosswired with the systems of contracts and advances.

I have almost no familiarity with the motion picture industry, and only a passing connection to soundtrack musicians.

But I have repeatedly been shocked to find that even when one of my friends writes a big hit, they receive what seems to be a joke in terms of financial compensation.

Yes, of course Metallica made that fuss. But they didn't outwardly say, "we want our fans arrested" - they dressed up their complaint as a qualm toward an industry too tolerant to the presence of p2p file sharing (what today we might even call freedom of general purpose computing).

In other words, they kept the quiet part quiet. And in any case, if that's the closest thing we can picture to a band wanting to call the cops on their fans, I feel reasonably secure in my assessment.

Much of your comment seems designed to question why I want to take money out of the pockets of these entire neighborhoods of salt-of-the-earth folks. I don't. My contention - the obvious observation I believe - is that the framework of casting their work as intellectual property has impoverished rather than enriching them, and that a better way is coming.

If you stand on the east bank of the Cumberland and look west, I hope you notice that nearly all of the glitzy logos atop the high-rises are financial firms - Third Fifth, Wells Fargo - I can't immediately remember the rest. Obviously the batman building notwithstanding. :-)

The intensity of financial firms in and around downtown Nashville is a testament to how many billions have been diverted from their fan-=>artist path and have instead made their way into the pockets not only of studio execs, but their underwriters and insurers.

Since the internet seems wont to route around IP laws anyway, I feel strongly that we live at a moment of opportunity to right this wrong.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#236

Hi - I'm with Quad9 (CTO). I'm going to try to put together a single post replying to some of these topics. First: We welcome the Mullvad users who will be shifted onto our systems, and we appreciate that Mullvad contacted us instead of doing this unilaterally. Since we have no signup process, they could have just moved users across but we very much appreciate their cooperation and communication, both with us and wit…

> Quad9 is based in Switzerland. Despite what may be common knowledge from movies, there is a very formal and rigorous process for governments (Swiss or non-Swiss) to demand data. Due to Lugano Convention [0] / Budapest Convention [1] / Hague Convention etc, I don't see how Switzerland is any more insulated than, say, Norway is (both these countries are part of EFTA & signatories to various UN/EU/EFTA treaties). Per…

Our goal is not "insulation" as much as it is "transparency." Governments that do not adhere to legal frameworks like the ones you reference above are also governments that have inconsistent or easily-changed legal structures - we are not hiding in some obscure and possibly unstable nation that ignores international standards. Our jurisdictional choice of Switzerland is the opposite of that. Switzerland has a strong history of making legal enforcement events transparent, with processes that follow expected process. We cannot avoid following the law, nor is that our goal.

Swiss data privacy law is also much more strict on us, which "puts our money where out mouth is" as the saying goes. Violating privacy laws in Switzerland may result in criminal penalties, not simply civil penalties - jail time, rather than just fines.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#237
post #191

Hi - I'm with Quad9 (CTO). I'm going to try to put together a single post replying to some of these topics. First: We welcome the Mullvad users who will be shifted onto our systems, and we appreciate that Mullvad contacted us instead of doing this unilaterally. Since we have no signup process, they could have just moved users across but we very much appreciate their cooperation and communication, both with us and wit…

You are probably the guy to ask. I have always found dns over TLS to be the fastest, but with the quic versions making an entrance, maybe things have changed. Which is the one that gives me the fastest replies?

We actually quite like DOQ and DOH3, both of which use QUIC.

All modern Apple systems use QUIC. For instance if given 9.9.9.9 via DHCP they will automatically upgrade to encryption via DDR, then then upgrade to DOH3 with no intervention by the end user. We find that encryption load is lower with QUIC-based transports, but we need to really get a formal research paper together on that "in our spare time."

Faster? Probably, but is it measurably "better" remains a question for others to answer. Due to parallelism in most query sets, minor wins with DNS latency matter less than you might think.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#238

Hi - I'm with Quad9 (CTO). I'm going to try to put together a single post replying to some of these topics. First: We welcome the Mullvad users who will be shifted onto our systems, and we appreciate that Mullvad contacted us instead of doing this unilaterally. Since we have no signup process, they could have just moved users across but we very much appreciate their cooperation and communication, both with us and wit…

I saw your response about not blocking ads currently. What about blocking adult content, for a child's computer? Mullvad had such an option[1] under family.dns.mullvad.net. Very useful! [1] https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

This is an area that is fraught with challenges. Serving a truly global audience means standards are difficult to measure as to what is "adult content" - it varies widely (Wikipedia in some areas is "adult content", as an example.)

In the near term, there is no filter set that we offer that mimics that functionality.

However, we recognize some variation of "best effort" adult content segmentation is a useful filter to have. We're considering it in the near term, as we have some specific educational institutional pressure to try to meet as well, since students are often easy targets for phishing, classroom computers are rife with malware, and there is also the problem of inappropriate DNS-based profiling of students and schools - problems that Quad9 can help solve.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#239
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads from providers like Google AdMob and AppLovin are blocked. Apps could bundle their own DNS or DoH resolver or use hardcoded static IP addresses but in my experience most do not. Youtube ads do not get blocked by DNS adblock because Youtube ads are served from the same domains as the content and thus DNS blocking would be counterproductive. I don't think it has anything to do with respecting DNS. I don't have the…

Are you explaining my comment or rebuting it? I really can't tell what the intent is. Maybe the internet has trained me poorly in thinking most replys are generally rebuttals. But it really does seems like you're just explaining my comment.

Mostly a clarification of what I find DNS ad blocking works for on Android, which seems to be somewhat different from your experience (probably we use different apps).

A weak rebuttal of the reason why DNS adblock doesn't work for Youtube and the Youtube app.

Re: Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

#240

Hi - I'm with Quad9 (CTO). I'm going to try to put together a single post replying to some of these topics. First: We welcome the Mullvad users who will be shifted onto our systems, and we appreciate that Mullvad contacted us instead of doing this unilaterally. Since we have no signup process, they could have just moved users across but we very much appreciate their cooperation and communication, both with us and wit…

Thanks for this! I was looking at your transparency report ( https://quad9.net/about/transparency-report/ ) and I notice 2026 is not included in the 'list of years in which we have not received a request for data', despite the list being updated quarterly according to the text below it. When I saw the page earlier, I assumed that either the list isn't actually updated quarterly, or I'd discovered an exciting example…

No, canaries in our opinion are not a particularly good idea for a variety of reasons. We have not received any requests/demands for information in 2026 - we'll try to update the page to reflect that this is no longer a quarterly update.
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