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"

[jandoedel]

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

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.

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.

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: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: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: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.

What does the EU say?

[Hentes]

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

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.