An excellent point!<p>Yes, any given domain name (or as non-technical people would think about it, "website" -- any website) could be "blocked" (re-routed to a non-functioning IP, claimed to not exist, other DNS error or malfunction, ?, ???) at any level of DNS (ISP, Local, Regional, Country, ?, ???)<p>A question your statement so excellently potentially suggests, is:<p><i>What's the true extent of the block?</i><p>Is it merely a DNS failure -- or are inbound/outbound packets to an IP address actively suppressed and/or modified to prevent TCP/IP connections? (i.e., The Great Firewall Of China, etc.)<p>You have <i>"Bad Faith Actors"</i> (let's not call them "governments", "countries", "nation states" or even "deep states" -- those terms are <i>so</i> 2024-ish, and as I write this, it's almost 2026! :-) )<p>Observation: Let's suppose a "Bad Faith Actor" (local or nationwide, foreign or domestic) attempts to block a website. They can accomplish this in one of 3 ways:<p>1) DNS Block<p>2) TCP/IP Block, i.e., block TCP/IP4/6 address(es), address ranges, etc.<p>3) Combination of 1 and 2.<p>#3 is what would be used if a "Bad Faith Actor" absolutely had to block the "offending" website, no ifs ands or buts!<p>But... unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us "wee folk"! :-) ), each of these types of blocks comes with <i>problems</i>, <i>problems for them</i>, which I shall heretofore enumerate!<p><i>From the perspective of a "Bad Faith Actor":</i><p>1) DNS Block -- a mere DNS block of a single domain name is great for <i>granularity</i> that is, it targets that domain name and that domain name alone, and something like this works great when a given company's products and services are directly tied to their website as their brand name (i.e., google.com being blocked in China), but it doesn't work well for fly-by-night websites -- that's because a new domain name pointing to the old IP address can simply be registered...<p>2) TCP/IP Address / Address Range Block -- The problem with this approach is that while it is more thorough than a simple DNS block, <i>it may also</i> (illegally and unlawfully, I might add!) <i>block legitimate other users, websites and services and businesses</i> which share the same IP or IP address range!<p>Think about it like this... A long time ago, all of the mail traffic for AOL (America Online), about 600,000 users or so, was coming from a single IP address. Block that IP address, and yes, you've stopped spam from the single user who is annoying you, but you've also (equal-and-oppositely!) blocked 599,999 legitimate users!<p>So "Bad Faith Actors" -- are "damned if they use the first method, and really damned if they use the second or third methods"... the first method is easily circumventable for non-brand name dependent websites and web services, while the second and third methods <i>risk causing harm to legitimate users, sometimes huge amounts of them</i>... which <i>should be illegal and unlawful by any country's legal standards</i>...<p>In other words, <i>Countries should read their own sets of laws</i>(!) before contemplating Internet blocks on their Citizens... :-) And not just one country either, <i>all of them</i>!!! :-)<p>Anyway, an excellent point!<p>Very thought stimulating -- as you can see by my ramblings! :-)