Russia may decide they're OK with blocking AWS. Comcast probably isn't going to do that. Is it really essential that we solve the Russia problem before we solve the Comcast problem?
Even on the Russia side of things there are advantages.
If you use your ISP's DNS, they can block a specific site or service with very high granularity and zero cost. If you don't, they can still block things, but they have to resort to cruder methods that risk annoying customers/citizens and degrading their overall network health.
Over time these extra annoyances might become a kind of death by 1000 cuts, allowing ISPs and countries that don't censor to outperform them in ways that even ordinary, privacy/freedom ambivalent people care about.
This is all quite proper. It's healthy for censorship (even when it's possible) to have costs. Where possible, we should try to build technological infrastructure so that networks that censor won't be able to compete on an even ground with the networks that don't.
Even on the Russia side of things there are advantages.
If you use your ISP's DNS, they can block a specific site or service with very high granularity and zero cost. If you don't, they can still block things, but they have to resort to cruder methods that risk annoying customers/citizens and degrading their overall network health.
Over time these extra annoyances might become a kind of death by 1000 cuts, allowing ISPs and countries that don't censor to outperform them in ways that even ordinary, privacy/freedom ambivalent people care about.
This is all quite proper. It's healthy for censorship (even when it's possible) to have costs. Where possible, we should try to build technological infrastructure so that networks that censor won't be able to compete on an even ground with the networks that don't.