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China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites

Posted by timothy on from the state-is-still-not-your-friend dept.

frogger writes "China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently, however, several reports came in from China indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu."

39 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. So, what have they found? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

    This seems to be SOP whenever the Chinese authorities find content they like accessable by a search engine, just redirect the entire search engine to Baidu until the site owners comply.

    1. Re:So, what have they found? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just wondering, does Baidu have government connections?

      All Chinese companies have government connections. Well, they do if they want to have the slightest chance of being successful. That's what operating in a fascist-capitalist state means.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    2. Re:So, what have they found? by compro01 · · Score: 3, Informative

      A little of each. Baidu is a publicly traded corp on NASDAQ and it also operates in Japan, though this is definitely a case of government connections.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    3. Re:So, what have they found? by c_forq · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Let me rephrase: Is the government connection overt or covert? I have spent time in communist companies, with ventures owned 51% by the government, and I am wondering if this is one of those, a bit shady, or just a local company that the government would like to encourage growth of (similar to how in France, while on business trips, you assume you are being bugged and information will go to your local competition).

      --
      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
    4. Re:So, what have they found? by Toe,+The · · Score: 2, Funny

      If they were more clever, they would still allow torrents to look like they are working... but they would always just result in a download of a two-hour Mao-Is-Cool propaganda movie.

    5. Re:So, what have they found? by iNaya · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hahahahahahaha

      China is communist in nothing but name. You really need to go there and check it out. China is a place for the rich, and the business men. The peasants have barely any rights at all, although this is changing, albiet, slowly.

      You can see, from one of China's own newspapers, that social welfare only meets 5% of demand. And even that is probably pushing it.

      --
      The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
    6. Re:So, what have they found? by SnEptUne · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If China isn't capitalistic, no place on earth is. Money is everything in China, you can bribe and do almost anything things with money.

      For example, with money, you can dig up all the earth around a household you don't like, force people to work in hazard environments, dump toxic waste to your neighbour, and have people cut off their arms and legs, etc... just because you have money!

      Pure capitalism to its finest.

    7. Re:So, what have they found? by pha3r0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I disagree AC. I have just recently established my own small business. $25 and a one page form filed with the Secretary of State and I am doing business. Now should I want to take it further and go LLC or incorporate or what have you there will be many thousands spent on lawyers, taxes, bribes etc. But, I have a small business and the only government connect I have is to my P.O.( think Probation not Post)

    8. Re:So, what have they found? by CodeBuster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sometimes it is overt, as you have said with 51% direct ownership by the government, while other times it is more covert, in the form of companies or businesses which are owned, wholly or partly, by the Chinese army or by a Chinese citizen who is politically well connected but otherwise doesn't contribute much to the venture, the proverbial son of the boss. This seems to be getting better with time as Chinese businessmen and entrepreneurs with greater business acumen displace less competent political favorites despite being handicapped by government corruption.

    9. Re:So, what have they found? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You haven't really answered the question. Technically every successful business in the US has "government connections" too. You can't even start a small business without paying a bunch of fees and buying a bunch of permits.

      You're being pedantic. I took the GP to mean: does this major Chinese corporation have government contacts that demonstrate blatant favoratism? The answer (as with most Chinese businesses relative to foreign competition) is "yes".

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    10. Re:So, what have they found? by Apple+Acolyte · · Score: 4, Informative

      Now should I want to take it further and go LLC or incorporate or what have you there will be many thousands spent on lawyers, taxes, bribes etc.

      You really think an LLC or corporation requires thousands in fees, taxes and bribes? Have you ever heard of legalzoom.com or bizfilings.com? They'll get either one of those business entities established for you for under $500. No lawyers need be involved. Now, if you're in a state that punishes small businesses like California you pay a huge $800 per year fee for your corporation or LLC regardless of whether you make a single cent or not, but in most states there are no such mandatory fees.

      --
      Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
    11. Re:So, what have they found? by Hungus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have gone there and have friends there. you and your co-poster are mistaking corruption for capitalism.

      --
      Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
    12. Re:So, what have they found? by iNaya · · Score: 5, Informative

      How long did you go for? 2 weeks? A month? You can't see a country in just that time.

      You will have to support your claims for it being communist... Because I've never seen anything to support that. Corruption in China, though not good, is much better than a lot of other countries, including India, and great pains are being made to reduce it.

      I never said that corruption was a capitalist thing - it's not a communist thing either. In fact, I don't know of any political ideology that supports corruption.

      The capitalist sentiment in China is very strong, especially in places like Shanghai. In Beijing, although the Mao Zedong 'religion' is thriving, things are not much different. The rich drive around in their BMW's while the poor try to carve out their lives in the slums, which were conveniently fenced off for the Olympics.

      I haven't met many people in China who were dumb enough to believe that it is anything other than Capitalist, not in the cities anyway. It is usually just uninformed foreigners who would deign to believe anything other than the blatantly obvious truth - which China goes through no lengths to hide.

      A lot of people in China still believe it is Communist, but that is mainly because they don't know what Communism is. They haven't read Karl Marx, or any other important Communist literature, and I wouldn't believe you have either.

      Communism requires Socialism. Almost none of that is present in China. Free education? Ha! For a poor person, they can never expect to get into a good school, unless they are absolutely BRILLIANT at their studies, while the rich mofos just pay a bit of cash, and so the best schools are filled with stupid, ignorant, rich kids. University is no better, except, the truly rich parents usually send their kids to study overseas, where results vary.

      No - China is a place for the rich, even more so than the US of A. True Communism has no place for the rich, but China does.

      One major tell-tale sign of the inherent capitalism is the fact that most Chinese students studying overseas are studying business. If you have access to a nearby University, a quick survey will show you what the majority of them study. At my University (Victoria University), there were hundreds of Chinese studying Bachelors of Commerce, while there were barely any studying anything else, a few, but not many. Why? Because their parents know, that to succeed in China, one has to do business.

      --
      The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
    13. Re:So, what have they found? by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Interesting
      France? Don't you mean the United States? Or is it that the US prefers surveillance of electronic communications rather than hardware bugs?

      It's much easier that way. Certainly the NSA has been known to monitor communications between Airbus and its customers in order to give Boeing a competitive advantage; a $6bn contract with the Saudis was lost when American spies found out about some backhanders Airbus had been paying to officials there. They've also been known to forward technical details of European inventions to American firms in order to get the patent first. There's quite a history of Americans using state spying agencies for industrial espionage, and so it's natural that they assume that everybody else is doing the same to them.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    14. Re:So, what have they found? by ronocdh · · Score: 3, Funny

      in France, while on business trips, you assume you are being bugged and information will go to your local competition

      Not flaming, but can I have a source for such practices, or are you speaking purely anecdotally? I find it very interesting. I've spent a considerable amount of time in Germany (as an American) and never experienced this.

    15. Re:So, what have they found? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I knew US-Americans have an irrational hate for the French, but this really takes the cake...

      Wow, ignorant of Americans much? I could almost mistake your comment as some kind of irrational, or at least uninformed, dislike of Americans. But I'm pretty sure you're just talking out of your hat, so I don't need to take it the wrong way.

      I would recommend that you do a little research on the history of military/industrial espionage between the United States and France. It's actually very interesting, and after spending some time informing yourself, you might find the GP's comment less xenophobic. France and the U.S. go 'way back, and neither country has ever been above a little friendly spying.

      Oddly, most Americans don't really hate people from other countries. We joke about them (just as they make jokes about us) but some people (like you, I guess) mistake that for "irrational hate." In any event, most of our hatred is directed at ourselves. We don't have enough to spare for the rest of you, sorry. You'll have to go elsewhere.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    16. Re:So, what have they found? by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They are communist - maybe not true USSR communism

      Russia isn't a true Communist state any more than the United States. They're totalitarians, pure and simple. Of course, the United States isn't a democracy either. That's mostly because when implemented on a truly large scale, neither Communism nor Democracy actually work. Both ideals assume that the human animal is something entirely different than what it really is, and both fail because of it.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. Hijacked? by toxygen01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't word hijack imply something else? More like hacked, took over, infiltrated? But use word like hijack for redirect is pretty ridiculous.

    1. Re:Hijacked? by bersl2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      DRTFA, but I'm guessing that they are doing this at the DNS level. So yeah, they're not getting the use of their domain name within China back unless the PRC says so. If that is the case, I would call that a hijack.

    2. Re:Hijacked? by lysergic.acid · · Score: 5, Informative

      in a word, no. they're committing DNS hijacking on file sharing sites. instead of domain names resolving to the correct IP address, the DNS resolution is being hijacked to send users to a different host to whom the requested domain does not belong. that's why the articles call it "hijacking."

    3. Re:Hijacked? by erikina · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ..the DNS resolution is being hijacked to .."

      They're hijacking the DNS, to redirect from the sites. "China hijacks site" deliberately leads people to believe that they've taken it over..

  3. Re:Censorship? by Fourier404 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, just the other day I tried to go to http://asdlfjkas/ and got redirected to google. It's time for a revolution!

  4. Re:Censorship? by erikina · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since when has the U.S. directed thepiratebay.org (or suprnova, or mininova, or demonoid, etc.) to google.com?

    They send you to jail instead?

  5. Re:Censorship? by corsec67 · · Score: 4, Informative

    How about when a Judge in KY orders the domain names of companies to be transferred to the State of Kentucky. I don't mean just redirection the DNS lookup, but changing the ownership?

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml

    Or when a judge in CA blocked wikileaks?

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20080218/115934282.shtml

    --
    If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
  6. Re:Censorship? by c_forq · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well not if you don't live in the U.S. Even if you do live there, I don't remember any recent file sharing cases ending in jail time. Fees that turn your life into indentured servitude maybe, but not jail.

    --
    Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
  7. Has never worked for me.. by SpineZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm pretty sure that I've never been able to access piratebay from China. Even now, I don't even get redirected to Baidu. Nothing comes up in the browser at all. The "to"s below are timeouts *s that slashdot said I had too many junk characters ;)

    tracert -d thepiratebay.org

    Tracing route to thepiratebay.org [83.140.65.11]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

        1 2 ms 1 ms 3 ms 192.168.1.1
        2 to to to Request timed out.
        3 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms 221.224.243.169
        4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 222.92.175.74
        5 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 202.97.27.110
        6 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms 202.97.39.165
        7 9 ms 9 ms 14 ms 202.97.44.58
        8 to to to Request timed out.
        9 to to to Request timed out.
      10 to to to Request timed out.
      11 to ^C

  8. Re:Censorship? by MacDork · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't remember any recent file sharing cases ending in jail time.

    Wow... really? Let me refresh your memory.

  9. similar was happening in 2007 by itsthebin · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was in China for a while in 2007 and while I could search TPB I could not download the .torrent as it would just time out - similar to normal golden shield blocking

    this was simply solved by putting the D/L url into my overseas proxy and from there the torrent client worked normally.

    --
    ...I obey the laws of physics....
  10. Re:This is all Barack Obama's doin'! by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but anyway...

    Surely even the most dim-witted super-conservative would realise that even under Obama, USA is still the most conservative nation outside of the middle east and Austria. Therefore, calling Obama socialist (as a pejorative) is calling the rest of the world socialists (or worse). Given the vast number of western countries that are "socialist" and have been for some time, (and are still going strong sans economic crisis) the next logical conclusion is "Well, maybe "socialism" works?" (not that what Obama is advocating is actual socialism by any accepted definition of the word).

    Sorry for the offtopic.

    No, the real question is this: what does one mean by "works"? Europe's brand of socialism wouldn't work for the U.S. for a variety of reasons, and our style of capitalism would probably be a disaster over there. There is one thing that a "working" socialism generally requires: an effective and trustworthy bureaucracy (Germany is a good example of this, I think.) The U.S. has an ever-expanding, ever more powerful bureacracy that has its own agenda, which coincides less and less with the needs of the people.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  11. Re:Funny.... by Duncan+Blackthorne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What would be really funny would be if some guys in China tried to do a DoS attack to TPB... and it would DoS the government's (in essence) servers.

    Yeah, that would be really funny, how the Chinese government would come in the middle of the night, take them, their family, and likely anyone else that knew or cared about them, and drop them in a hole somewhere, never to be heard from again. Yeah, that's fucking hilarious.

  12. Re:Censorship? by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since when has the U.S. directed thepiratebay.org (or suprnova, or mininova, or demonoid, etc.) to google.com?

    Last I checked, they hijack the DNS and redirect to a Dept of Justice page or FBI warning.

    remember isonews? elitetorrents? etc..

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  13. Re:Censorship? by calmofthestorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some ISPs are hijacking DNS, granted not to torrenting sites. Closest thing I can think

    In America, the line between business and government is very fuzzy, especially with Big Content, Big Corn, and Haliburton.

    --
    93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
  14. Bad Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    In Beijing right now
    The pirate bay hasn't worked from here for at least a year. Mininova and ISO hunt are still accessable. This would be roughly the tenth bogus article about China in the past few months. Why does slashdot bother posting rubish without checking their facts?

    Flame bait
    I am happy to see that the sheer number of bogus articles posted weekly about China has declined post olympics, Shock Horror!

  15. Re:Censorship? by corsec67 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Except OpenDNS does the exact same thing, to their own "whoops" page.

    --
    If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
  16. Re:Funny.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Okay, do you have any evidence, beyond hearsay, that this actually happens?

    I hear about this kind of shit all the time (mostly in comments on Slashdot), but here I am in China, and I've never heard of anything like this happening.

    Frankly, I think it's mostly hyperbolic bullshit. And it's increasing. Is it time for another red scare?

  17. Science? by MasaMuneCyrus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Perhaps no Chinese study science in Canada (or wherever Victoria University is), but at Purdue (Indiana, USA), you'd have to be blind to miss the Chinese studying in all fields of science. There's nearly as many Chinese students as there are black students, and lots of Chinese professors, too.

  18. Re:Censorship? by totally+bogus+dude · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Apparently you can opt out of that if you have an account. Not sure on the details as I've never used it.

  19. Re:Funny.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you lived in Nazi Germany, you'd never hear of disappearances either. It's not like the secret police operate in public view, with due process and arrest records, etc. They might be coming for you now...

  20. Re:Funny.... by neuromanc3r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you lived in Nazi Germany, you'd never hear of disappearances either.

    Yes, you would, you would just pretend not to notice. You cannot make millions of people, mostly from urban areas, disappear without anyone noticing.