Argentina Censors Over a Million Blogs

In his first accepted submission, bs0d3 writes "A judge in Argentina ordered ISPs to block two websites — leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com. According to Google, many ISPs have simply blocked the IP 216.239.32.2 instead of using a targeted DNS filter. Over a million blogs are hosted by Blogger at this IP. Freedom of speech advocate Jillian York wrote, 'IP blocking is a blunt method of filtering content that can erase from view large swaths of innocuous sites by virtue of the fact that they are hosted on the same IP address as the site that was intended to be censored. One such example of overblocking by IP address can be found in India, where the IP blocking of a Hindu Unity website (blocked by an order from Mumbai police) resulted in the blocking of several other, unrelated sites."

Comments

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from argentina. I've lived here all my life and I'm in Buenos Aires as I write this.

If the state is guilty of something regarding internet and new technology here, is barely knowing of its existance. This is not the result of "censorship" as this dumb summary claims.

This is a fuckup, nothing more.

Of course, emos and other trash from Taringa will blow it out of proportion claiming it's wide-spread censorship, and try to politicize the hell out of it.

Re:Wrong headline

[The Dawn Of Time]

But I heard the government is smart and should be trusted to run everything for me. Clearly no government would ever be involved in something like this.

Re:Wrong headline

[countertrolling]

Um.. censorship is ALWAYS malicious... And the authorities are always willing to sink an entire ship to get one guy.

IPV6

[the_rajah]

This makes a good case for IPV6 so every site/device will have their own IP instead of sharing one IP for a million blogs.

Re:IPV6

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This makes a good case for IPV6 so every site/device will have their own IP instead of sharing one IP for a million blogs.

I'm afraid you came away from this story having learned the wrong lesson.
The fix isn't IPV6, the fix is to abolish censorship.

The only cure for bad speech is good speech, not no speech.

Re:IPV6

[Alsee]

Dude, this was not censorship. The blocked websites had private emails

It's amazing how so many people always imagine "I agree with X therefore X is not censorship".

Imagine someone said "Bob's arm wasn't amputated, it was removed because it was cancerous". Ok.... cancer could be a very good motivation for removing an arm. However I assume you'd agree that the "Bob's arm wasn't amputated" part was wrong and ridiculous.

The motivation for removing the arm does not change whether or not it's an act of amputation. The motivation for blocking the website doesn't change whether or not it is an act of censorship.

If you want to make the case that it was justified and right under these circumstances, that's a very credible and reasonable position. However saying "it's not censorship" is not only wrong, it's dangerous. Basically everyone in history who has engaged in any sort censorship believed they had a good reason for it, considered it right and good, and virtually all of them have uttered the line "it's not censorship". The attitude "It's not censorship because it should be done, because it's a bad thing being blocked, because I'm the good guy with a good reason". Essentially "It's not censorship when I want to do it".

If you think it's right and justified in this case, then go ahead and defend it as right and justified. Don't do the "I agree with it therefore it's not censorship" garbage.

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Title inaccurate

[AthanasiusKircher]

A judge in Argentina ordered ISPs to block two websites -- leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com. According to Google, many ISPs have simply blocked the IP 216.239.32.2 instead of using a targeted DNS filter.

"Argentina" didn't do anything. The government didn't pass a law. A judge ordered two URLs to be blocked.

Idiot ISPs blocked an IP address that led to a million blogs.

The title should read: Inept Argentinian ISPs Block a Million Blogs Rather Than Blocking Two URLs to Satisfy Court Ruling

Re:Wrong headline

[Spazmania]

They were censored because the ISPs are fucking retarded.

You wouldn't say that had you ever worked as a network engineer at a large ISP.

First, you'd have to route IP packets for the impacted address to an internal filtering machine. What filtering machine? Well, that's a rub too... you'd have to build one and while it's possible with open source, it isn't easy or particularly cheap.

Then once you've "transparently proxied" the HTTP requests you want to block, you have to somehow send those packets merrily on their way... except the route for that IP address leads back to you. So, you have to tunnel it out to an system beyond your routing domain. Which means you'll need to NAT the source for anything that isn't outright proxied. That's more money.

And then you have to very strongly log the proxied and/or NATed packets because any abuse is going to lead back to your filter machine instead of back to the customer and when the policia come knocking, by God they're going to want to know who did it and they're not going to accept the answer that the Judge-ordered filtering obscured the activity near the site ordered filtered.

The ISPs aren't retarded here. The judge ordering an ISP to filter on a criteria ISPs aren't equipped to filter on is the retarded one.

Re:i used to try to tell this to IRC ops

[whoever57]

banning entire blocks of addresses is ridiculously overzealous, injust, and indicates laziness and ignorance on the part of the administrator.

Or a crafty way to let make the whole country aware of the censorship.