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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."
Tor is the answer to everything.
Use Tor to access the trackers. Problem solved.
Our fine Italian friends can still access TPB at labaia.org. Here's to hoping for as little irritation as possible.
I am in Italy and I can surf to Pirate Bay right now. My ISP is Tiscali.
And, since the usual RIAA fanbois usually pop up once you mention Tor, casting FUD to scare people away from it, here's the EFF's legal FAQ, and here's the Tor FAQ.
Also note carefully what the parent said, namely, "Use Tor to access the trackers". Tor is, by default, set up to disable bittorrent transfers, since it heavily loads the Tor network. Here's one article which well explains Why you shouldn't run bittorrent over Tor.
And if you look at the default exit node policies (see section 4.16 of the Tor FAQ), the standard bittorrent ports are explicitly rejected. So you really don't want to run bittorrent over Tor.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
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.
Glad to see 2 well formulated posts on the subject. Props.
I will not dive deep into the technical issues as it would take a whole lot of "what ifs" and "What nots" to predict what technology could and would be implemented at some stage to counter illegal filesharing.
But the parent post adds a very interesting point:
The Internet is a carrier of freedom, but here as everywhere else in society it doesnt come without responsibility. TPB does not advocate this responsibility, in my view, at a very high level. Further down the road, this _could_ lead to stronger control of user activities and/or net neutrality. I dont think most small-time pirates gives this much thought, and it _could_ prove a high price to pay. Since stuff like P2P and spam takes alot of bandwith without any of the service and content providers making money, it is not far fetched to think that ISPs in the future will consider giving up identities behind IPs that are "too active" on illegal filesharing or similar activities. Or even be forced to do so by governments.
Even though the regular slashdot-user can throw up a few proxies and dive into the comfort zone of being anonymous in no time, this is not the case with most filesharers. And the minute the neighbour's kids start getting lawsuits in their mail, parents will stop bragging about the net skills of their prodigys and how they "just download whatever they want" (like my parents did), and start learning them about property rights instead. Trust me.
I am in the position that I have run 2 companies for the about 10 years. Rarely enough, the first one doing high end web programming, and the second a small Indie recordlabel. Needless to say, I have been puleld between my love for the net, and my love for music. For years I have been in heavy conflicts with most of the music biz, advocating offensive use of the net as a new distribution channel rather than lawsuits and war with consumers.
However ive started to come to the conclusion that this is a sociological issue rather than a technical one. There are elements in the arguments coming from filesharers that rises issues not possible to solve through technology.
1. The "War on the greedy music biz" is failing. Or that is, it might be won, but at a high price. Running a small label I slowly started realizing that Im the one loosing the battle, not the major labels. The reason is simple. You wont find my music on TPB. And even when i put it there myself, people would still look around for Britney Schmears or whatever other brand the majors are launching at any given time through advertisements, media control and whatever. And even in the rare case they DO seek up my music, and even want to support my label by buying the record, they most likely wont be able to as most indies cannot distribute their records to all corners of the world until long after the air is out of the balloon.
In this way, people using illegal filesharing strenghtens the market position of the MAJOR labels, not the vivid but oh so weak Indie scene. Market power sucks, eh?
2. There seems to be alot of kids out there who really thinks music is free, and that the attempts to put down the likes of TPB is taking something away from them that they always had. This is disturbing. Ive had kids mailing me to have me send them rips of CDs as they had trouble finding them on the net. They dont thank me when I do, as they see it as a given right, and bad service from us when its not available for download. Needless to say, this is not the kids that will drive forward a music scene in the future. I dont know what this means in practical terms, but its a new kind of customer that will be pretty close to impossible to serve. This is not ideal for a number of reasons that most can work out for themselves.
3. The filesharers has a free choice to avoid stealing and hustling music they dont own any tights to. There is free music out there for several lifetimes of listening. Still people wants the stuff that they have to pay for. Why? Partly due
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!