Lawrence Lessig once wrote something to the effect of, on the Internet, we're bound less by the paper laws contrived by policymakers and more by the intrinsic policy decisions made by code. The point I take from that is, one way or another, people are making decisions for you. Unless you can both build infrastructure and secure adoption for it, someone else is making decisions that curtail your liberty.

In this case, one of the same people who says DNS filtering will break the Internet just one year ago advocated a whole new piece of infrastructure to allow people to filter the DNS.

When Vixie did it, it was to suppress malware sites. I agree that this is a more admirable use of fiat third-party filtering than anti-piracy (note though that unlike the rest of HN, I think anti-piracy is a fine goal). But fundamentally, what's happening in both cases is mostly the same; other people making decisions about what you can and can't see on the Internet. And my point is, maybe that's OK.

Note also that nobody can impeach the DNS administrators and standards group sherpas.