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Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

If anything, I am more surprised that Google did comply with the order. The entire value of 8.8.8.8 lies in it being operated as a neutral and independent resolver. If they start returning bogus results for this, what's preventing them from returning bogus results for queries which are inconvenient to their other business units like Youtube? They clearly already have the infrastructure in place to falsify results on a country level...

And it'll of course open the floodgates to all kinds of government abuse. This time it's a French court order concerning copyright infringement, next time it might be a kangaroo court ordering Facebook to be blocked because of "political propaganda harming national security".

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"The entire value of 8.8.8.8 lies in it being operated as a neutral and independent resolver."

Or being perceived as such. But there was a specific reason that Google started an open resolver in 2009; It has nothing to do with the interests of web users. It relates to Google's interest in capturing search engine traffic; all the dirty stuff Pichai did before he became CEO, e.g., Google toolbar and paying to have Google be the default search engine on every computer. Google believed OpenDNS was "hijacking Google queries".

https://web.archive.org/web/20070525041655if_/http://blog.op...

https://domainnamewire.com/2009/12/03/google-public-dns-coul...

https://www.wired.com/2009/12/geez-google-wants-to-take-over...

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8806004B2/en

> I am more surprised that Google did comply with the order

Why would it be surprising that a company complies with a court order or legislation of a country they operate in? Does Google routinely ignore court orders in the US?

> what's preventing them from returning bogus results for queries which are inconvenient to their other business units like Youtube?

Technically nothing. The threat of fines in case this is seen as an abuse is the real blocker.

> Why would it be surprising that a company complies with a court order or legislation of a country they operate in? Does Google routinely ignore court orders in the US?

Because it's a ruling by a lower court which sets a very dangerous precedent. I would expect a company like Google to appeal this until the French equivalent of the Supreme Court - or even a European court if possible.

Even if they still had to do this, I would expect them to suspend service like OpenDNS is doing rather than just comply. DNS is just too important to mess around with!

> Technically nothing. The threat of fines in case this is seen as an abuse is the real blocker.

Who's going to fine them? As far as I'm aware, DNS is pretty much unregulated. There's no law saying you have to pass DNS as-is, is there?

> a ruling by a lower court which sets a very dangerous precedent

There's no precedent of any kind being set here. Court orders have to be obeyed unless overturned, this isn't an unprecedented 2024 thing. France has a civil law legal system, not the precedent based common law legal system (like the US for example). This court set no legal precedent, it issued a ruling on this particular case.

> I would expect a company like Google to appeal this

If they have solid legal grounds to appeal. Are you aware of one?

> rather than just comply

Assume ceasing the service entirely is costing them more than complying.

> Who's going to fine them? As far as I'm aware, DNS is pretty much unregulated.

A court, for not respecting a court order.

The legal system and law in general are almost never common sense and there's a reason it takes so much work and experience to navigate them properly. If you've done none of that work, assume you're wrong.

If you're a techie and you start hearing people insist with personal opinions on how those RAM traces should be made longer and straighter you'd wonder why they keep talking.

Lawyers are pretty good at finding reasons to appeal against judgements. It is reasonable to suggest that Google should appeal despite the parent not being aware of reasons for appealing.

You are mostly right on the civil vs common law systems, but also have in mind that a sufficient body of decisions when interpreting a law do create increasingly stronger recommendations for future decisions even in civil systems.

> Lawyers are pretty good at finding reasons to appeal against judgements.

Good ones sure are. But OP saying "Google should appeal" implies OP is aware of one solid such reason, a reason why the French court was wrong, and Google was wrong to comply. Instead they just mentioned precedents, lower courts, or that you're free to ignore a legal court order because there's no "DNS regulation".

I get that Google has a vested interest to find any way to make it work because it supports their business. But OP's statement sounded to me more like "I don't understand the law but don't like the result so it should be changed", with no solid reasoning of any kind at the time of the statement.

> Because it's a ruling by a lower court which sets a very dangerous precedent. I would expect a company like Google to appeal this until the French equivalent of the Supreme Court - or even a European court if possible.

You can't appeal a court decision just because you don't like it. There needs to be some kind of basis for the appeal. What did you have in mind?

Note that the CJEU has already ruled that IP and DNS blocks for this purpose are compatible with EU laws.

If they don't comply, French government could order ISPs to block / null-route 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in France on a BGP level and sue the French branch.

Thereby breaking countless Chrome browsers, Android phones tablets and TVs, and various apps and IoT devices in the country. That would be fun to see.

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