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Records Labels Prepare Massive 'Pirate Site' Domain Blocking Blitz
An anonymous reader writes "In their ongoing battle against websites said to infringe music copyrights, record labels have initiated a fresh wave of actions aimed at forcing UK ISPs to carry out domain blocking. This third wave is set to be the biggest so far, affecting as many as 25 domains and including some of the world's largest torrent sites and file-hosting search engines. Furthermore, the BPI – the entity coordinating the action – will ask courts to block U.S.-based music streaming operation, Grooveshark."
Domain blocking has been so successful already. No one will figure out how to use alternative DNS servers, or simply type in the IP address manually.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
While I hope the labels and all their executive die horrible deaths, copyright is rather international. So it's not just "American" companies with a stake in the game.
My wallet is going on a record label blocking blitz
Life sure is funny sometimes.
crazy dynamite monkey
Cory lives in the UK, he became a naturalized British citizen in 2011 iirc.
This is yet another ridiculous situation, stupid enough that it makes me wonder why such situations exist.
If a website is illegal (for any definition of illegal, including terrorism, pornography, and IP violations), then it should be judged illegal by a court in country with reference to the specific law that the site violates. That country can then mandate that ISPs in that country block that specific website, the government can ask the government of the registrar or hosting company to take action, the government can identify people who access the site and charge them with a crime.
Illegal is illegal, but this thing about "anyone can take action if they think something is illegal" is ludicrous. Letting business advocacy groups, unelected government bureaucrats, and random government departments to suddenly state "we're the governing authority, this is illegal, we're pulling your plug" is complete bullshit. Government departments can certainly make such pronouncements, but should be required to act only with court approval. For instance, if the State Department wants Defense Distributed to take their plans offline, it should get a court order.
The courts exist to protect our rights. Taking action without judicial process is an end-run around those rights, and shouldn't be allowed.
That's such a good idea that I bet someone else already thought of it.
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There aren't enough of you for a boycott to make any difference.
Besides, they've already presumed that if you're not buying, it is because you're infringing.
The worst problem with the central server approach is not squatting, that is a minor annoyance to some people's vanity. The worst problem with the central server is that it is a central server, and thus is vulnerable to whomever has juristiction over the physical location it resides in. However, a peer-to-peer solution (as they look right now) is much worse. There are two major problems with a P2P approach to DNS, that you don't have with the central server.
1) Privacy: when requesting a lookup, you're telling an arbitrary number of strangers which site you would like to visit next. With the server, you're only telling the server, but this is a trust issue and can be resolved. The P2P approach by it's nature cannot be trusted.
2) Poisoning: all you'd have to do to poison a swarm is join it, and start pushing bogus replies to requests. There is no barrier like with a central DNS server, which you'd have to hack into in order to poison.
An approach like you suggest is a central DNS server in disguise and not really a solution to any problem, since you get the worst of both worlds.
... whatever
its those who buy their shit. Stop buying it and in 5 years they`ll all fold.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The problem with that is that they can "presume" all they want, but they still have less money coming in. Granted, it doesn't address the aforementioned issue of needing a critical mass of participants for the boycott to be successful, but the mere act of assuming a given cause for a reduced revenue stream doesn't magically restore the revenue stream to previous levels.
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I think they will have a hell of a time domain-blocking YouTube. It's trivial to grab all kinds of stuff there.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Alternate DNS servers? I live in Belgium where they block (among others) TPB, so I just run my own.
OK, I am able to configure my own named server. What is needed for others is an idiot proof DNS server that people can run on their local machine (so no remote connections allowed).
And I talk about so easy, your grandma can install it and it runs by just double clicking. Something that is made for just local usage with as little configuration as possible. No need to be able to make any local domains. Just something so you do not need an external DNS server.
Perhaps that already exists and it is just not commonly known.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I stopped pirating music years ago. I use rdio now... $10/month for (almost) all the music I want.
I figured pirating music would have more-or-less disappeared by now.
They can't stop the internet without hurting themselves and a lot of other legitimate business. And continuing to sue customers? Is it really working out for them? Perhaps all the settlements which never reach the news does make it all worthwhile.
What little [music downloading/sharing] there is going on now can't really be worth the effort in my opinion. There are lots and lots of paying customers out there. I seriously doubt the "bad guys" even come close to the numbers of legitimate customers. They should be paying marketers to improve the number of customers instead of lawyers to leech off of people who don't have money to spend.
A toast to the ghost who can boast the most HOSTS.
It's not only about the copyrighted information. It's also about public domain, and GNU like, or MIT like licenses. It's about the free flow of information. Copyright is just convenient for them to attack means of distributing information freely.
The best way I can prop up this argument is to point out VCRs. VCRs were hardly used on the scale that torrents are to commit mass copyright infringement.
Yet VCRs, 8 tracks, casettes where all targeted. Libaries were targeted. And with libraries, the works were being payed for and not distributed "freely" to anyone.