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"Piracy Filter" Blocks TorrentFreak for 4 Million Sky Customers
An anonymous reader writes "Website blocking has become a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. Opponents of both voluntary and court-ordered blockades have warned about the potential collateral damage these blocking systems may cause, and they have now been proven right. As it turns out blocked sites can easily exploit the system and add new IP-addresses to Sky's blocklist. As a result TorrentFreak has been rendered inaccessible to the ISP's four million customers."
This is why censorship of the internet is a fucking stupid idea.
TorrentFreak isn't a site that allows you to conduct piracy. It's a news site that posts content relevant to file sharing.
This would be like shutting down newspapers because they speak about other crimes.
"To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!"
So very true! The masses in the UK will suddenly acquire the necessary means to get around the filters. The word proxy will become a household word, just like it has become in school that filter the internet.
If the blocks are applied to any IP address pointed to by a blocked site, maybe as a demonstration a blocked site should add the IP addresses of all of the major UK political parties, BBC iPlayer, Youtube, Netflix, lovefilm etc. If mainstream media sites get (automatically) blocked then perhaps the backlash might force TPTB into either removing the requirement to block or require the ISPs to use a blocking mechanism with less potential for collateral damage.
I'm a Sky user in the UK, and I am here to post the text of the article:
"Website blocking has become a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. Opponents of both voluntary and court-ordered blockades have warned about the potential collateral damage these blocking systems may cause, and they have now been proven right. As it turns out blocked sites can easily exploit the system and add new IP-addresses to Sky’s blocklist. As a result TorrentFreak has been rendered inaccessible to the ISP’s four million customers.
stop-blockedFollowing a High Court ruling last month, six UK ISPs are required to block subscriber access to the popular TV-torrent site EZTV.it.
The actions EZTV faces are not the first taken against a torrent site in the UK. The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and several other “pirate” sites have been blocked by previous court orders and remain inaccessible by conventional means.
However, over the past couple of days Sky subscribers noticed that the blocklist had been quietly expanded with a new site that’s certainly not covered by any court order – TorrentFreak.com.
Our site first became inaccessible on Wednesday night, only to be unblocked 14 hours later. However, about an hour ago it was again added to the blocklist.
The recent blocking spree is causing confusion among Sky subscribers who have no idea why TorrentFreak is longer accessible. However, we can confirm that the problem lies with Sky’s filtering software that is supposed to enforce the court-ordered torrent site blockades.
The owner of EZTV informed TorrentFreak that he used Geo DNS to point UK visitors to TorrentFreak’s IP-address. Soon after there were reports that our website had become inaccessible to Sky users."
EZTV should have their DNS servers point to SKY's IP addresses and sit back and watch as hilarity ensues.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
How many Sky customers are reading the article?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
FYI this site is not a tracker or place to download torrent files; it's a new sites that posts articles, and only articles relating to filesharing.
am i supposed to be surprised that it actually works? cause a piracy filter blocking a site focused on torrents isn't a huge supervise
Someone please mod that AC up!
Free Martian Whores!
TorrentFreak was featured on mainstream news outlets such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times the BBC, the Guardian and the LA Times.
Which makes it seem like they are not a sensible thing to block. I've not visited the site for a great many years, but if you only object to the sites that you use being blocked then it's very easy for censors to creep in.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They are evil too, even more so.. that should get about 3.9 million of their 4mil customers pissed off.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A month or two back not long after they blocked TPB I was getting the same 'this website is blocked by court order' page for Golden Old Games (GOG.com) when I went there to purchase a game. It only happened for a day but I bet that was similar fallout from the blocking scheme.
I wonder how many other people saw that? I wonder how many people who saw that then thought GOG was a pirate site charging money for old games without the correct licenses? I wonder how long before somebody sues for loss of trade over and damage to reputation over these fault filters.
I listen to NBC and get all the leftie info then tune in FOX and get the right's viewpoint. It makes the news interesting when you see it from both sides.
unless the word "proxy" is....filtered.
for now you can "opt-out"
but not if your at a coffee shop, cafe, library or public network.
the UK is now in the leauge of China, and Iran as far as internet access goes.
It makes the news interesting when you see it from both sides.
Notice how easily they convinced you that there were only two sides...
"His name was James Damore."
And now you know the real reason for this bullshit. Censorship was never to protect the children. Children don't give money to politicians, corporations do. It's always been about perceived copyright violation by "Big Media." All hail our bought and paid-for ruling class. Follow the money.
Now that I said that, I fell better.
the UK is now in the leauge of China, and Iran as far as internet access goes.
You might want to try that again.
I'm in China right now, and I've no trouble accessing either TorrentFreak or TPB.
(And no, I'm not using a proxy or VPN, just a bog-standard residential connection.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Some ISPs are blocking by IP, not domain.
Yeah but....
I've now come upon two separate Windows 7 systems where the \windows\system32\drivers\etc (the etc) bit was suddenly now a hidden directory.
WTF??????
Is this MS getting into bed with the Gov and hiding the very place where you can 'fix' your system to bypass the filters....?
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
This time I was able to detect an APK "MY LEET HOSTS FILE YADDA YADDA" post after reading just the very first line.
Damn, I'm getting good.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It makes the news interesting when you see it from both sides.
Notice how easily they convinced you that there were only two sides...
I'm not sure which represents the greater tragedy--that, or the fact anyone could mistake NBC for being "leftist".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
An American ex-pat I work with seems to have trouble with some of the most basic of computer problems, your stereotypical person of age who didn't grow up with computers.
Yet he has a VPN to a server back in the states so he can watch Hulu content without the stupid geobarriers. The word proxy and VPN almost already is a household word.
It is truly a sad day now that it seems that the UK censors the Internet more severely than even China.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Per my subject: That allows this to work via hosts usage to bypass DNSBL's done by host-domain names... and will, of course, allow these filesharing sites to work vs. this also.
* Always more than 1 way to "skin a cat"...
( & you can BET that's what these filesharing sites will do, or have to do, to circumvent this ).
APK
P.S.=> I didn't see that in the article summary here though (what you mention in using IP address based blocks) & I didn't read the source article either though - However/Again though:
That IP addressed blocking you speak of?
VERY simple to bypass for these file-sharing sites by them switching hosting providers - then you get their IP address & equate it to the host-domain name in your hosts file & voila - done (I do NOT agree with PIRACY though, by any means)...
... apk
*facepalm*
He doesn't mean that the China censors torrents. He means that China censors at all. Try visiting facebook or twitter, or other websites where citizens can pick up dangerous opinions.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Well, its certainly leftist from the American perspective where the right is "religious conservative" and the left is "whatever is popular today"
"His name was James Damore."
http://piratebrowser.com/
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/10/1519211/the-pirate-bay-launches-browser-to-evade-isp-blockades
* Like I said earlier here to you -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4075157&cid=44530715 "Always more than 1 way to skin a cat" (besides doing what I noted in switching their hosting providers, which hosts would work for since it's host-domain name based, but hosts won't work vs. firewall outbound/inbound ISP level rules based on IP addresses).
APK
P.S.=> Big "Cat & Mouse" game is all this is... you take what people want from them in this arena (computing)? They figure out a way to do an "end run" around it...
... apk
SKY is operated (largely) by NEWS Corp aka Murdoch and Fox news
So CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A BLOCK ON the SUN Newspapers Website and FOX news -
That would at least be some positive achievement out of this shambles
I live in the UK and I see a totally inept, totally technophobic government try to work the 21st century with 19th century tools and mentality.
We have 2 little rich boys trying to run a country that is in a shambles because they don't understand anything - basically.
Oh and to keep the balance - the other lot aren't much better
Too many lawyers and PR executives and not enough techies - or anyone who has actually had to work for a living - in our government.
Editing the hosts file on Windows also tends to result in antivirus software triggering. Understandable: Very few users these days have reason to edit the hosts file, but it's a very common target for malware (Redirect banking sites to pick up passwords, or redirect ad banner servers to those operated by the malware authors) so any editing of the file will be flagged as suspicious. A few times I've had Windows itsself revert the file to default automatically, but that was under Vista - I don't know if 7 does that or not.
I merely pointed out some facts. You're free to interpret them as you wish.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
An excellent comment, even if you slightly miss the point. Different countries will filter different things...which, actually, is the main hope.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I merely pointed out some facts. You're free to interpret them as you wish.
You didn't point out anything; the poster said "in the same league as" then you deliberately reinterpreted that statement as narrowly as possible by claiming the connecting idea was "blocking TorrentFreak" rather than "Internet censorship."
I'm going to assume you're not a native English speaker, since the alternative is that you don't have 2 brain-cells to rub together.
the UK is now in the leauge of China, and Iran as far as internet access goes.
Actually, China is monitoring and filtering UK's internet access. (Huawei) Welcome to you Chinese overlords.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
... who thinks they should have added Sky's website once they figured it out? "ISP accidentally blocks itself" might get more mainstream news attention on how poor of an idea this is.
Don't, whatever you do, opt out. Your name will be added to the UK Pervert Database and the next time some poor soul is raped and murdered in your area the police will be rounding up anyone who opted out of the "pornography" and "weapons and violence" categories.
If you opt out of the "suicide and self-harm" filter you can expect a visit from an NHS mental healthcare professional. Seriously, I asked my MP about the filtering and told her not to use the example of saving a single life because it was flawed, so she used the example of saving a single life. Apparently someone said they were going to kill themselves on Twitter and the police backtraced their IP address so they could rescue them, but that wasn't good enough and she thought that the government should be monitoring Google searches.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Use your antivirus rules: "Overriding" defaults by creating an "exception" rule 4 hosts to leave it alone (was a problem initially in Windows Defender in Windows 8 initially in fact)...2nd: Regarding hosts files being attacked (by malware makers):
My app overwrites the hosts in its default location to protect vs. malware contaminating the hosts file.
Even if/when redirected too via -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters DatabasePath, since that's what I do to AVOID malware contamination the hosts file in 1 part (overwrite from a pristine copy is 2nd measure). Essentially creates almost a *NIX style 'shadow password' list file decoy in the default location - So, if anything changes it? It only reads up from where I REDIRECTED the hosts to be referenced (not the default either, it's off slower HDD & onto a "True SSD" here for faster seek/access that's based on DDR-2 RAM)). That keeps it clean, via refreshing it periodically.
UAC helps too, but that's bypassable - BUT to supplement UAC protection (especially if you leave my program running resident in the tooltray doing automatic 12 hr. updates)? I made my program, while running, WRITE PROTECT the hosts file every 1/2 second - too fast to "unlock" it for malware to overwrite it & to update it periodically/automatically as well... It works to protect hosts alongside UAC: Especially when coupled with the fact my app updates & refreshes hosts (overwriting malicious entries by malware).
In this case though, hosts probably won't work - ISP's got wise to that & can do DNS ip block (this article) or firewall inbound/outbound rules. Neither of which hosts combat here anymore than they do BGP tricks.
APK
P.S.=> 7 doesn't do it afaik! However, I *may* have created that exception rule I spoke of in my subject-line LONG ago & forgotten about it (Windows 8 initially had issues with it though)... apk
Yes, it's a real bloody tragedy that your kids can't access Facebook in China, like they can in Canada.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The Internet has become a war zone (Because government agencies have tried to seize control over it, and corporation want control over a lot more than their share).
Government and corporate sites can and should be taken down using similar methods. If an ISP gets in the way, then find ways to motivate them.
I did not miss the point.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It's not like that in Win 7.
Just to play devils advocate:
It also prevents you from using the HOSTS file as an adblocker (pointing adservers to loopback) on Metro apps. It's being sold as a "security feature".
Well there are two major political mafias. That makes two sides. Most media outlets support either one or the other. There are some fringe groups who can't pull enough votes to matter to the media.
If tTorrentFreak switched hosting providers = new IP address (for a domain name they own @ least, or should).
However, I imagine if caught in "wrongdoings" online, THAT host-domain name (or their right to it) could be "revoked" too.
Who knows.
I do know & ADMIT that hosts won't stop IP based threats or blocks based on IP address @ the ISP level, admittedly. Hosts won't stop it if they implemented firewall rules outbound/inbound @ the IP address level as well vs IP address based DNSBL (hosts = ineffective vs. BGP threats too).
* Hosts files excel on a number of levels, but they don't solve everything... but can compliment &/or supplement things that can on the same OR other, levels.
APK
P.S.=> Apparently as I noted in my other post @ the same threshold reply level as yours? The TorrentFreak people put out something entirely different to combat this (TOR onion router based FF build) -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4075157&cid=44531127 ... apk
There are a variety of solutions to these problems.using alternative DNS is one but this does not work in the case that IP addresses are blocked. Proxies may also work but in the end these are reliant on no blocks existing on the proxies network .Even then how long before proxies are blocked ?TOR seems like a good idea but in reality its a bit slow and thus you couldn't just route all your traffic through it.
What is the long term solution to this?
Does anyone have any long term predictions or ideas about how we might work around this in a way that performs well and is more future proof?
FYI. EZTV is also blocked with BT infinity. And my VM at Bytemark cannot access either
my fear is that what happens when Microsoft or apple start putting pressure on the government to block things like cyanogen or the Linux kernel?
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp