The Pirate Bay Blocked In Italy

imhassan tips us to news that The Pirate Bay has been blocked in Italy. Other attempts to block the popular P2P site have been somewhat less than successful. From TorrentFreak: "Pirate Bay's IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as they are blocked by ISPs all over the country. Whether these blocks will be very effective, however, is doubtful, since The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures. An insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker, which was sent out yesterday. Italy is taking a stand against BitTorrent sites, so it seems. Two weeks ago, the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, was shut down by the same prosecutor who is responsible for the Pirate Bay block."

Comments

Yeah, that will be effective.

[bigtallmofo]

Unless and until every system connected to the Internet needs a unique key of some sort before it's allowed to exchange packets, blocking anything will be completely ineffective.

The current net neutrality debate is the first line of defense toward preventing such a system.

Re:Common Carrier?

[thermian]

Of what relevance is US law to Italy?

this...

[owlnation]

...is what happens when you elect a media owner as your country's president.

Ciao free speech!

Instead of fighting obvious crimes...

[dada21]

I've used TPB for legal torrents as well as the "illegal" ones. I taste movies before buying them, and TPB is a great way to try before I buy. I actually spend MORE money on DVDs purchased legally because of this method.

So the Italian prosecutor would call me a criminal. Fine. He's using public funding against what would be a "crime" between private parties. He's using the taxpayer's dollars to do the work the "harmed" party should be doing.

In reality, Italy has far larger problems than issues between two private parties. There is RAMPANT corruption that is costing REAL dollars to the taxpayer. The Italian government should be seeking out bad seeds amongst themselves as a priority. There is also massive amounts of theft and loss within their own body; maybe they should focus on those problems?

Re:Yeah, that will be effective

[monsul]

It doesn't need to work. It's a gesture, you see.

Knowledgeable people in Italy will just use Tor or whatever to bypass the block. Less knowledgeable people will just move to the next big thing (mininova, kazaa, etc...)

The "Goverment" will look like it has made as much as possible to protect the interests of the artist lobby groups that are pushing this

...and everybody is happy :)

Re:Common Carrier?

[PopeRatzo]

US IP laws have been being force fed to other countries via political maneurvering(sic).

I think it's a little disingenuous to say that these are cases of the US exporting their IP laws.

It's not so much the US government that is "forcing their laws" on other countries, as it is international corporations forcing these fascistic, protectionist laws down the throats of sovereign countries, just as they have done here in the US.

Would you say that the behavior of Sony Music or EMI are the fault of the US?

Those of you who still see the world as a game of Risk don't seem to realize that these multinational corporations see borders, and liberty, as damage and route around them.

So you've got these incredibly wealthy and powerful multinational corporations vs. a group of nerds who can't even agree on Net Neutrality laws. Who the fuck do you think is going to win that one?

Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I love these wishful thinking posts.

Here's a newsflash for you: the authorities and big business have way, way more control over the Internet than you appear to realise. Companies like Google have the resources to index the entire web. Every major international pipe is controlled by one of a pretty small group of major telecomms companies. Despite the grand redundancy claims, there are plenty of single points of failure that will disconnect, or at least seriously inhibit, flow of data to or from entire countries.

You can make defiant noises about how impractical it would be for the authorities to police everything and how important net neutrality is, but TPB is the enemy here, because by its very existence and public position on openly breaking the law in most countries, it provides all the evidence that politicians and their major contributors need to justify not fighting for net neutrality and pushing for ever more surveillance and control.

A few years ago, there was all this talk about the Internet being some new, special place. Sorry, but it's neither above international agreements nor above individual countries enforcing their own laws and cutting off anyone who doesn't play nicely with their efforts to do so.

The world will be a better place for most people if the freedom that generally exists on the Internet is preserved, but if that freedom is abused by a vocal minority, the rest of us will all get shafted by the consequences.

Re:Wishful thinking

[EdIII]

Here's a newsflash for you: the authorities and big business have way, way more control over the Internet than you appear to realise

Every major international pipe is controlled by one of a pretty small group of major telecomms companies

You are oversimplifying things a great deal. You are not incorrect in stating that governments and businesses have a large control over the pipes themselves. However, there is a HUGE difference between controlling the pipe and controlling what goes through the pipe.

You could say that the pipes and their routers would be like large highways with millions of people walking. At the intersections you could be checking the identity of every person and searching the contents of their bags. If this were true, then yes you would be right, a large amount of control could be exerted by governments and the corporations which control the highways and intersections.

However, the Internet is not like that. You just cannot simply turn off a route and eliminate all flow to another network (which can affect a whole country) as often it would be like shooting a fly with a cannon. You would eliminate 1% undesirable traffic while also eliminating 99% of all the desirable traffic.

So what do you have left as options to eliminate only the 1% of the traffic which is undesirable? Packet Inspection. There are several challenges to overcome if you are going to effectively block anything:

1) Encryption. It's hard to tell with 100% accuracy what is going on with a session when you cannot read the packets. Encrypted packets, IPSec, VPN, etc. all raise the level of difficulty significantly which necessitates the next step.

2) Behavioral Analysis. When you can't decrypt, sometimes you can tell what is going on by looking at other factors and clues.

Now I know what you may want to say, that you can just block all traffic going to TPB's servers. What do you do about mirrors? What about VPN connections to servers that will host torrents and reside on wholly different networks outside of your control? How do stop the fact that somebody on the Internet can create a secure session with somebody else that does not have the same restrictions on their own network?

With all due respect, the "Grand Redundancy" claims are valid. As long as a SINGLE country allows connections of any kind to a restricted network, while also not being restricted from the rest of the countries, people WILL be able to establish connections to the undesirables. This cannot be stopped.

Please note that I am not writing this in support of The Pirate Bay or IP Piracy in general, but only to point out that your statement is just not factually correct. It IS wholly impractical for authorities to police the net as they will never be able to take the steps necessary to accomplish their goals as it would hurt more than help.

Now if you disagree with my assessment, please provide a more detailed technical explanation of how such control can be exerted other than superficial observation that corporations own the pipes and governments can exert control over corporations.

"the law" does not equal morality..

[plasmacutter]

They have no right to strip away your capacity to consciously choose to break a law you feel is unjust.

They have a right to prosecute or litigate against you for it, but they don't have a right to impede your free will!

When you start doing this, it's called fascism. Information gets censored because it's "dangerous" and will "incite criminal actions". Butcher knives should be banned too! they are clearly designed with the express purpose of slicing flesh, and humans are made of flesh.

Re:"web of trust"

[The End Of Days]

That seems like an awful lot of work for free entertainment. Why not just work some shit job and buy it?