In a surprising turn of events, The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has been ordered to halt its request of DNS redirection by all Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The order for the cease-and-desist came from the Fahmi Fadzil, the Minister of Communications himself, who also posted his order on the platform formerly known as Twitter, X.
The post itself is in Bahasa Malaysia but we’ve provided the English translation:
Online crime issues including access to gambling websites, prostitution, pornography and the like are of great concern and require a comprehensive solution. The government will not compromise on this, to ensure online safety for Malaysians, especially children and families. However, taking into account the views conveyed through a series of engagements @MCMC_RASMI as well as from the general public, I have requested that MCMC rather not proceed with the implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) management routing method. At the same time, MCMC will continue a series of engagements with all stakeholders to obtain views, suggestions and recommendations to ensure that the objective of a safer internet can be achieved together.
Isu jenayah dalam talian termasuk akses ke laman-laman web perjudian, persundalan, pornografi dan seumpamanya amat membimbangkan dan memerlukan usaha penyelesaian yang menyeluruh.
Kerajaan tidak akan berkompromi dalam hal ini, demi menjamin keselamatan dalam talian buat rakyat…
— Fahmi Fadzil 🇲🇾 (@fahmi_fadzil) September 8, 2024
Back at the end of the working week, it was discovered that the MCMC had issued a notice to all ISPs, ordering them to begin implementing a public DNS redirection for businesses, enterprises, and governments by the end of this month. Despite that, sporadic reports and complaints from general consumers began to surface, saying that their queries and site searching while on public DNS servers, such as Google’s and Cloudflare’s, returned a 404 to them. And the only way for them to regain access to the internet was to disable said public IPs.
Prior to this recent development, MCMC had said that, while public DNS servers would be affected by the redirection to its servers, the same would not be applied on to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), as that would be “unreasonable”.
(Source: Fahmi Fadzil via X)
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