Belgian ISP Ordered to Block The Pirate Bay; Telecomix and TPB Offer Workarounds

bs0d3 writes "Today a court in Belgium overruled an earlier judgment and ordered an ISP to block The Pirate Bay. The type of block to be used by the ISP is a simple DNS filter, which is similar to ones used before in Denmark. In Denmark the DNS block was extremely easy to circumvent, and the attention to The Pirate Bay actually increased Danish site traffic after the block. Today a hacktivist group called Telecomix, which is more recently known for helping to establish communications during the Internet blackout in Egypt, is offering their help. Their custom made 'censorship proof' DNS service is designed for situations just like this. ISP customers facing a block can simply use Telecomix's DNS server instead of the ISP-provided one to access blocked sites such as The Pirate Bay." The Pirate Bay also has suggestions for getting around the DNS block.

Comments

There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[elrous0]

It only comes down to a question of how determined your ISP/government is to block you. If the ISP's really wanted to, they could keep an active running blacklist of all of all IP's associated with Telecomix and other proxy sites (the way Websense and other blocking software companies do). It would never be perfect, but it would be pretty damned effective for all but the most determined/informed geeks. And, even worse, if the government really wanted to, they could just keep a tally of everyone even trying to access those IP's and kick down your door one night to drag you off to a prison cell somewhere.

Fortunately, this sort of behavior is pretty uncommon in most developed countries, but don't kid yourself. If they *really* wanted to shut you up, they could. All they have to do is throw up enough obstacles and threats. And, as a last resort, they can even just pull the plug altogether (like they did in San Francisco during the BART protests, and in Egypt during the protests there). Most ISP's cave pretty quickly when soldiers show up with rifles and tanks.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[MrKevvy]

It would never be perfect, but it would be pretty damned effective for all but the most determined/informed geeks."

VPNs aren't that geeky anymore.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[Hatta]

There's also no such thing as circumvention proof. It's always been a cat and mouse game, and it always will be.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[jandoedel]

That country is Pakistan, and you read it on slashdot a month ago.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[Co0Ps]

I agree. Censorship is a society/social problem so let's discuss it as such and have it derail into technical workarounds which just steals focus for the real problem. It's kinda like the crypto discussion where nerds claim to be invincible because they are using 1024 bit AES encryption with a 512 bit password. If the government wants your "secret" information the will hit you with a rubber hose until you talk. In this case - yes you can always use a custom DNS list, VPN or a SSH proxy... but that's not the issue here..

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[SleazyRidr]

But you don't need it to be "circumvention proof". You just need to make it enough of a hassle that no-one but the truly dedicated bothers with it.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[Anthony Mouse]

It is certainly true that censorship is a political question rather than a technological one, but we can't forget that the technology impacts the policy discussion. Those who promote censorship will argue that keeping people from The Pirate Bay is worth the cost of breaking the DNS and impeding legitimate speech, such as the discussions of public policy and advocacy of policy positions that are presented on The Pirate Bay's blog. If the true state of things is that everyone interested in copyright infringement will be able to download a censorship work-around just as easily as they downloaded a BitTorrent client (or the work-around will come in as an automatic update to the client), but people with a casual or academic interest in the issue who are unwilling to download a legally questionable censorship work-around will be prohibited from hearing what The Pirate Bay has to say, the case for censorship completely falls apart. As they say, if you outlaw information then only outlaws will have information.

Ignoring the impact of technology ignores the futility of the policy. It makes it look like a good policy on paper when the reality is completely different.

That said, if your point is that the technology does not make the policy irrelevant, I completely agree. The fact that technology will allow anyone to circumvent the censorship does not eliminate the harms of censorship -- it breaks DNSSEC, prevents law-abiding citizens unwilling to execute a work-around from accessing a variety of non-infringing material, and it legitimizes the idea of censorship. For those reasons it must be fought as a policy matter regardless of the technology.

But technology creates a powerful policy argument that the expected benefits will not accrue while the costs accumulate, and it strengthens the argument that censorship should not be adopted as a policy.

Re:There is no such thing as "censorship proof"

[Anthony Mouse]

Well, it just becomes an arms race. Once the tool gets popular enough that you notice it you block the tool. Then they make a new tool, then you block that. As a bonus side effect, you train the next generation of hackers.

It is an arms race that the censor will lose, because the hackers are perfectly capable of communicating in ways that require politically suicidal measures to prevent. Never mind simple work-arounds like P2P software that downloads digitally signed updates for a list of censored name:address mappings from arbitrary peers. You take The Pirate Bay out of the DNS, what do you do when people post the IP address for The Pirate Bay in the comments for every site that shows up on the first five pages of search results when you type "The Pirate Bay" into Google? Or do with the IP address what people did with the HD-DVD key on Digg? What if people just use a proxy, VPN or TOR -- will you block every SSL connection in the world because it could be one of those things? It's a losing battle, and it will be better for all of us if we can make the politicians realize that and admit defeat before they cause any more damage.

I would pay good money

[idontgno]

to see the tantrum the judge throws if he actually thought his order was going to be meaningful and effective.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

Re:I would pay good money

[countertrolling]

How do you route around a cut cable, or a jammed signal?

Re:I would pay good money

[Pentium100]

They do not run the tracker, actually, there is no tracker at all, tracking is decentralized and has been for a while now. What they run is a search engine for torrents, you can comment them etc. that can be replicated more easily than a tracker. Or you can even search for torrents using google.

Re:I would pay good money

[sgbett]

Oh I don't know maybe like this or this, or maybe even this

Re:I would pay good money

[GameboyRMH]

The net is easy to censor. Just be a government or powerful megacorporation, call up an ISP and tell them to do what you want or you'll make life miserable - that's assuming the ISP itself isn't willingly doing the censoring.

Now, darknets maintained by uber-geeks running on top of the net, are hard (or impossible) to censor.

Re:I would pay good money

[SuricouRaven]

Because there are thousands more anonymous pricks all around the world willing to set up a new site. Remember Sharereactor? When a major pirate site falls, a hundred rise from the ashes.

Re:I would pay good money

[Local ID10T]

So how do you route around the police smashing down doors[...]?

Riots in the streets.

Re:I would pay good money

[discord5]

So how do you route around the police smashing down doors[...]?

Riots in the streets.

Until we outlaw streets, thus solving the problem once and for all.

Set up your own DNS

[Z00L00K]

You can always set up your own DNS server that talks to the root servers.

I'm running that setup and it works very well. Why depend on a lobotomized service from the ISP when you can get the real deal?

At least as long as the ISP isn't forcing you to use their DNS. And by then there may be problems for them with DNSSEC.

Re:Set up your own DNS

[Z00L00K]

It depends - you have a few different cases:

• If your ISP is the one hacking the DNS they are providing to you - no problem, just access another or set up your own.
• If it's the ISP of the server you are trying to access it means that the server in question is no longer accessible. - Nothing you can do.
• The DNS provider for the service you are accessing is going down - you can still access the server if you have the IP address or if that server has a secondary DNS provider for another TLD.
• If your ISP is blocking the IP address of the server you access - use a proxy.

Re:Set up your own DNS

[GameboyRMH]

The second to last case is what happens when the DHS/ICE takes a site down IIRC.

Technology

[Archangel Michael]

You cannot stop or prevent sociological problems with technology. At best all you can do is obfuscate it, and often that act alone increases the activity one wishes was squashed (Called Streisand Effect).

Re:how dare they!

[ponchietto]

I'm deeply convinced that the right to share information is a basic human right, and will be recognized as such in some distant future.

7 links in the summary...

[koolfy]

...and yet not a single one to the website where this story comes from in the first place :

[french] http://nurpa.be/actualites/2011/10/BAF-belgacom-telenet-blocage-dns
and the google translation to english

You'd think that what the local organization [defending Net Neutrality and file sharing and fighting cencorship and local MAFIAAs] has to say might interest people.

TL;DR : The Belgian Antipiracy Foundation wanted the two main ISPs to block TPB, but were not respecting the proportionality principle, using a legal procedure reserved to urgent matters, when TPB has been running for 8years.
Of course they were told to GTFO, but in appeal they won and those two ISPs now have to block 11 TPB domain names, half of them are not even running nor leading to The Pirate Bay in any way.

NURPA (Net Users' Rights Protection Association, active in Belgium and Europe to fight against ACTA for example) says it's stupid, useless, and in conflict with the European Court of Justice's decision about what, when and how filtering may be legitimate. (answer : never when it is about Intellectual Property)

And there is a link to how to set up alternatives DNS servers on windows and ubuntu in their article, long before "TPB and telecomix came and saved us with the solution to circumvent the filtering".

So yeah, The Pirate Bay rocks, Telecomix does too, but this time the credit has to go to the local net activists association who got it right in the first place.

Re:Simple DNS blocks dont really work

[SuricouRaven]

I work at a school, and I notice there is an endless stream of new web-proxy services around for the purpose of getting access to games. All ad-supported. Obnoxious things, putting everything in frames with ads around, but they do get you what you want. No use on media lockers, but they'll get you to torrent sites easily enough.

What does the EU say?

[Hentes]

One member blocking Internet traffic from another kinda goes against the spirit of a single market.

Re:What does the EU say?

[discord5]

What does the EU say?

We should have a response from the EU in several years, but it won't be quite clear and opinions will be divided. Some memberstates will say "Yes", some "No", and some "Maybe". In the end Germany and France get to do a lot of posturing and the UK tries not to look too butthurt while calling the president a wet rag. The UK ends up being opposed to everything that doesn't serve its interests, but tries to get the best benefits of being part of the European Union.

They'll come forward with a grand statement that will cost member states quite a bit of money, but will contradict themselves 5 minutes later. In the end, despite best efforts and intentions, the EU is nothing but a shared piggy bank with more and more people grabbing for the hammer. Sometimes I like to think that the only good thing in the EU is Neelie Kroes.

Warning : above post is of a humorous nature, actual opinions on EU may differ slightly from above content, exaggerations may have slipped into above post, batteries not included, Greece saving economic counter-measures not included either, do not consume after financial bankruptcy of more than 1 memberstate. (Gotta be careful nowadays when rumors can topple financial markets, you know)

Re:how dare they!

[denis-The-menace]

The problem is that Copyrights are meant to be temporary.
DMCA/ACTA/DRM is being used to circumvent the temporary aspect.

Life + 70/90 years + future extensions make public domain a thing of the past.

Re:how dare they!

[mwvdlee]

You mean the right to share your own information or the right to force others to share their information?

Let me be the first...

[pongo000]

...to welcome Telecomix to the alt-root scene. OpenNIC has been doing this for about a decade now. Let me let you guys in on a little secret: The less the "bad guys" know about you, the better. Meaning you shouldn't advertise yourselves as a solution to censorship, because you'll just get blocked at the IP level. Offer your services, and the censored masses will find you.

The bad guys read /. too, you know. Just the summaries, like all good /.ers.