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Pirate Bay Blockade Censors CloudFlare Customers
An anonymous reader writes: The blockade of the Pirate Bay by UK ISPs is causing trouble for CloudFlare customers. Several websites have been inadvertently blocked by Sky because a Pirate Bay proxy is hosted behind the same IP-addresses. In a response, CloudFlare threatened to disconnect the proxy site from its network. Like any form of censorship web blockades can sometime lead to overblocking, targeting perfectly legitimate websites by mistake. This is also happening in the UK where Sky's blocking technology is inadvertently blocking sites that have nothing to do with piracy.
So VPN's are a thing. The only thing I see their "blockade" of TPB doing is preventing customers from using the sites caught in the by-catch.
Much how most DRM exclusively harms paying customers while providing crackers with more knowledge and learning materials.
Would it not be rather ironic if Sky were to use the CloudFare CDN for some of their content, and therefore blocked themselves?
Blocking all of the sites served by a legitimate CDN is going a little far.
If you have The Pirate Bay as a customer to such a service, this is bound to happen. Why even bother if you aren't prepared to deal with it?
Is this just Sky blocking ineptly? Or is this an accidentally-on-purpose overblock to force CDN providers to voluntarily kick off torrent sites and refuse to do business with them in future?
The UK ISPs are paid by their customers connect to the Internet.
The UK ISPs are blocking connections.
There are no "pirates".
There is no "piracy".
There is only UK ISPs not allowing their Internet customers who have paid for to reach all Internet sites to not reach all Internet sites.
Shame on UK ISPs.
There is nobody else to blame.
UK ISP customers. Sue your provider.
E
I wonder what a judge would say if my business lost revenue due to ISPs blocking my website, regardless of reason. Would I have any traction regarding damages and other claims related to lost business?
I mean, if Sky prevented customers from entering a mall building just because there's a marijuana shop inside, I'm pretty sure I would be able to sue and win, and I don't see how blocking a shared server is any different.
Is this the internet version of human shield?
1. Host infringing site under an IP
2. Host a non-infringing site under same IP
3. Act outraged when both are blocked.
I am not saying blocking is right but there might be some "spin" going on.
If you really want to stop the theft of art and music, why not start with the megacorporate audio/video recording combines who profit from the monetisation of culture and the destruction of the public domain?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm on Sky (moved unwillingly from O2 when Sky bought them out). Reading stuff like this makes me want to move away from them. I'd love to vote with my feet/take my business elsewhere/shove it to them/etc. The problem I have is that my broadband basically costs nothing (as long as you remember to ring them each year you can negotiate them down to almost nothing, especially if you also have line rental or TV), I get great speeds, great reliability, and I use the connection constantly; so I almost certainly cost them more money by being a customer than I would if I moved!
I'm a content creator too, with significant copyrighted works. I've even used copyright threats to ensure I've been adequately paid. I also think Copyright is utterly absurd as it is. 5-10 years ought to be the max. The establishment has shown severe disrespect to the public by locking down culture indefinitely behind a paywall. It might be "stealing" in your eyes, or the law's... Ethically, it's sharing, with the same good intentions of every public library. I hope one day copyright catches up to morality. Our culture is owned by all of us.
piracy is promotion
Your stuff? You mean your label's stuff. All you have is debt (as in "recoupment").
I totally agree, but comments like this always get downvoted because on \. everything needs to be free. So don't even bother posting things like this.
Old system:
Innocent until proven guilty
New system:
We have to make a example with this. Even if innocent people have to suffer for it.
The oligarch that reign on us are not very fair.
And that's enough justification to allow shit like this to happen? Protecting your stuff is worth making others miserable or even lose business? A law that would make such a behaviour possible in the real world (like the aforementioned shutting down a mall because a head shop somehow got inside) would instantly be repealed and repaired to ensure that nobody else gets harmed.
But everything's different on the internet. Fuck, there really is no sense and logic in laws concerning sex, drugs and copyright. All of them seem to be governed by panic and knee-jerk reactions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If CloudFlare is so concerned about it's other customers, it would have just disconnected the proxy's services and applied to have the blockade removed, not "threatened" to disconnect the proxy.
Any reputable cloud provider would disconnect any of their customers deemed to be hosting illegal content.
But no, they're going to strand their other customers rather than strike down the one customer that is actually causing the problem in order to score "political points" about ISP responsibility.
Feh. Whether you feel that "piracy" is wrong or not, it's clear that if the legal system is mandating the blockade of one of your customer's services, you should be getting rid of that customer, not whinging about how the blockade is affecting your other users.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is what happens when people that don't know how internet works gets to make decisions based on their flawed understanding.
Like any form of censorship web blockades can sometime lead to overblocking, targeting perfectly legitimate websites by mistake
Like any form of censorship web blockades can sometime lead to overblocking, targeting other perfectly legitimate websites by mistake
Cloudfare has long been the enemy of an open Internet. Anyone who has browsed the web with tor will curse cloudfare for their never-ending and evil captcha challenges.
Price can be used as deterrent to competition. That's one of the reasons some very successful products don't see their prices go through the roof: because their makers know the exact point at which to operate so as not to make it worthwhile for competitors to get into their business area.
Now, do we see a lot of piracy about everything? A: No. Why not? Because e.g. movies are powered by greed and the money involved is on the scale of millions -- enough to separate a slice and throw it at the lobbying dogs^H^H^H^H^H industry. Heck, they're trying to move entire countries to sign BS treaties to force these into using taxpayer money to provide services to movie distributors (Police and derived services, that is).
The only effective weapon against piracy and these greedy bandits is to watch movies from other sources and avoid that extortion game.
We should have a Gutenberg project of sorts for movies...
Then provide a way for me to pay you.
I don't have a credit card. I don't use paypal. Etc.
But I have got a load of cash and usb sticks.
How can I buy whatever art it is you are making???
Exactly - I can't.
So don't blame me. If you don't want my money, I take my business elsewhere.
For this same reason Skype never got my business. I had money, they didn't want it, so they didn't get my business. And looking back now nothing of value was lost really.
You don't do business on my terms, you lose. Up to you.
A couple large CDN's should block everyone in UK for a day or two, to show the government what tyrannical morons they are.
I don't think theft has anything to do with it. The battle against TPB and other websites that facilitate file sharing has always been about tryying to enforce copyright laws. The only theft involved is the illegitimate seizure of servers and network devices in some of the data centre raids.
But as long as people do not respect artists' intellectual property right (nah, I'm not stealing, I' just making a copy) these measures are necessary
These measures are not necessary. They are not even effective. Yet they cause a lot of trouble. What needs to be done is to acknowledge that the concept of imaginary property makes no sense and that it cannot be enforced without severely compromising things far more valuable than the "right" to make a profit from every use of a certain piece of data or the control over how it is distributed.
Cloudfare blocks Tor exit nodes heavily; you have to fill out a captcha almost every other page refresh. It makes it almost impossible to navigate a website.
That seems incompatible with your distaste for "kowtowing to the enemies of freedom" and trying to allow customers access to your books even if a government doesn't want them to have access.
Please help metamoderate.
kiss the public domain goodbye, obviously no one cared enough
Except nobody cares about the content you've created, and you don't really stand to lose much money either way. Don't compare yourself to the big boys; you aren't one of them.
You're gonna be downvoted into oblivion, unfortunately. But I'll stand by you in at least calling for people to stop shitting on content creators.
I,too, am a content creator, and it's disrespectful at best and harmful at worst to pirate content. I don't care what words you choose to use to refer to it (copying, stealing, liberating, whatever), it treats the creator with a disregard to his well-being.
I'm not happy with Disney for extending copyright by a million years. I'm not happy with record labels doing all they can to squeeze out every last cent from the consumer. I'm not happy with any creator that chooses to treat their customer with disrespect. But the sins of the greatest should not be used to justify the immorality of disrespecting the content creators wishes.
It's true, information wants to be free. That is the nature of the mind: to share. But this does not mean it is a noble act to disregard the wishes or well-being of the content creator. If you think a Hollywood movie is crap and don't deserve to be compensated, then why, I ask, do you feel it is necessary to consume it? If it's such crap, then why ingest its content anyway? What absolute necessity do you have to watch something you don't like or feel needs to be paid for?
Men desire many women that don't return the feeling. Does this justify rape? Or disrespecting the woman with creep photos, even? In a civilized society, we refrain from this behavior because it is necessary to restrain ourselves in order to nurture the stability of our society.
Piracy is not rape, do not misunderstand me. And draconian measures to prevent copy are just as immoral. But why sink to the level of a savage rampaging toward whatever he wants? In the nuclear lobbing of disregard to the "evil" content owners, many innocent bystanders are also harmed.
There is, of course, no guarantee that a pirate would pay for the content, anyway. But I ask you, astute reader, if you feel that something is not worth paying for.... then why do you feel it is worth consuming?
I don't see the point of blocking The Pirate Bay. People can still access other torrent search engines like Torrentz, ISO Hunt and Bitsnoop.
What do you think about mexican copyright law? In Mexico you get 100 years of copyright protection, but in exchange everyone is entitled to copy your work for free a single time, for personal and private use, and for nonprofit purposes.
I assume you've taken steps to contact the content creator and try to find other means to pay?
Oh, you hadn't? Didn't think so.
Please, friend, confirm within yourself that your justification is truly righteous. At the very least in life, be honest with yourself, if not with others...
But should they be able to infinitely extend copyright duration? He has a point there.
Kindly do not equate file sharing with boarding ships and seizing booty and other such sundry treasures by force. Though corporate bullies who induce state representatives may not know the difference between sharing and force, the rest of us, including Slashdot ought to know better.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
If people would stop stealing from artists (disclaimer: like myself) than we wouldn't need counter-piracy measures and the internet would be fun for everybody again. But as long as people do not respect artists' intellectual property right (nah, I'm not stealing, I' just making a copy) these measures are necessary. Stop stealing and if you don't want to pay then make your own stuff. But don't steal mine!
I'm fine with paying for content. But the current prices are stupid and all over the place especially with older movies.
For example I can buy all 4 original ninja turtle movies as a set for $9.43. What if I want to stream it? Well, amazon
doesn't offer the first one all all. The third one costs $9.99 for SD which is more than all 4 of the other
ones combined and renting costs 2.99 for SD. Assuming I could actually rent all 4, it would be cost $11.96 which is
more for renting the movies than it costs to purchase the boxed set. But there are a ton of movies that aren't
available as streaming or worse randomly come and go. One of the main reasons that itunes beat out napster was
not because of policing but because itunes offers almost everything available for a reasonable price.
The movie industry needs to learn from the music industry. In some ways netflix and amazon prime are a detrement
to this where people are expecting a bunch of B grade movies for a fixed price. I would much rather see a service
that offers EVERYTHING but charges something reasonable like $1 per hour to stream new releases and 0.50 per
hour to stream old releases.
But I ask you, astute reader, if you feel that something is not worth paying for.... then why do you feel it is worth consuming?
Worth paying for is not the same as worth paying the asking price. I don't pirate films but I wish more content was available for a reasonable
price. It's annoying that many shows that could be watched for free with commercials when aired now the streaming services are charging
$2 per episode or more. I would rather have a version with commercials. Luckily though my local library has most tv series available for checkout.
I just wish my local library would start stocking movies too.
This is a reasonable assertion.
Perhaps, then, it is also reasonable to pay for n items out of x? (Not necessarily in the case of the shows you prefer to have commercials, but movies, for example.) That is to say, if you feel Hollywood movies are worth $2 rather than $10, buy one $10 movie for every 5 you watch?
I dunno, just a thought.
Perhaps, then, it is also reasonable to pay for n items out of x? (Not necessarily in the case of the shows you prefer to have commercials, but movies, for example.) That is to say, if you feel Hollywood movies are worth $2 rather than $10, buy one $10 movie for every 5 you watch?
I dunno, just a thought.
That's terrible reasoning. That's like saying if oranges are too expensive it's ok to buy one and
shoplift the other two. In an ideal world you could negotiate with the seller and you can a little bit
with redbox, libraries, etc.. but if you can't then you will need to do without. Like buying bananas
when oranges are too expensive.
no legit company uses CloudFlare
These companies use CloudFlare services. Names I recognize include Reddit, eHarmony, Bain Capital, League of Legends developer Riot Games, Cisco Systems, Quicksilver, Y Combinator, NASDAQ Stock Market, Eurovision Song Contest, Massachsetts Institute of Technology, and Metallica. I've also seen CloudFlare services in use on Stack Exchange (the Stack Overflow company). If you can explain what you mean by "legit" and show how all of these companies fail tests for being "legit", I'll believe you.
CloudFlare blocks any IP address that sends an insane number of page hits in a short period of time
Then it blocks search engines and reduces the SEO of its customers' sites on search engines that aren't big enough to get whitelisted the way Google and Bing are.
CloudFlare was treating Amazon's web crawler bot's IP range as a potential spammer and showing it a captcha page for every result
If any other CloudFlare customer sees behavior like this, try whitelisting each smaller search engine on which you want your site to appear.
[CloudFlare's CAPTCHA] is trivial for end users to get around and thus is not a true block
Even for blind users?
If HTTP, inspect the host name. If HTTPS then the IP will be enough by itself.
HTTPS allows multiple hostnames on one IP address on any platform whose TLS stack supports Server Name Indication. This includes essentially every web browser in common use except Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.x. So if HTTPS, inspect the SNI header, as it's cleartext.
CloudFlare has been using SNI since Slashdot's previous story about CloudFlare expanding SSL support in September 2014. It became practical in April 2014 when Windows XP, the last desktop operating system in common use whose pack-in browser does not support SNI, reached end of extended support.
The second problem is that UK ISPs implemented the block sloppily instead of complaining, "The technology to implement the filter you describe does not exist" and not doing it
If compliance with a law is actually impossible, the only way for a company to comply is to cease trading and return the company's property to its shareholders. One company that chose this route was Lavabit.
I assume you've taken steps to contact the content creator
For a lot of works, the company that produced a work no longer exists. What are the standard steps to track down ownership of copyright in a decades-old work?
and try to find other means to pay?
Plenty of people have requested a copy of the film Song of the South on DVD or BD from Disney. I can't think of one case in the past couple decades where Disney actually sold a copy to the public.
I'll stand by you in at least calling for people to stop shitting on content creators.
I'll stop pooping on "content creators" once people stop using that horrid term "content creator" to refer to what the law calls "authors and publishers". "Content" connotes "something to fill a box" more than creative works of authorship, and "creator" compares authors to deities.
We should have a Gutenberg project of sorts for movies...
The difference between books and movies is that movies have advanced so far in storytelling techniques and production values since December 31, 1922 (the current public domain cutoff date), that there is little demand among the public for movies whose copyright has expired. The "classic films" are still under copyright.
I haven't read the British copyright statute, but both the U.S. copyright statute (Title 17, United States Code) and the English language version of the Berne Convention use "work", "author", "publisher", and "infringe" rather than "content", "creator", and "steal". Using the same terms as the law helps show that you aren't parroting the opinions of someone with a second- or third-hand understanding of what copyright really is. Perhaps I can try to overlook these terms, much as I overlook "could care less". But one thing I see on Slashdot and can't overlook is the use of "copywrite" to mean anything other than "creating the text of an advertisement".
On Backslashdot?
LOL, right, it's about some mythical hivemind, and not because often the people supporting more restrictions come off as completely extremist nutjobs who like the opposite extreme. Right. *facepalms*
No amount of piracy jsutifies overreaching, and draconian measures. Seriously, yes it's something that needs to be kept in check, but if you default to the most extremes without trying to look at alternatives, and justify it - the lack of trying - by the existence of piracy, how are you any better?
That's a funny comment.
You ever hear of "Customer is King":
A customer does not want to be told what to do. It is he who demands, not the other way around.
You should be where your customers are because saving them the hassle and the bustle will make them more likely to patronize you.
If you don't want my money, then I am taking my business elsewhere. And by elsewhere I do not necessarily mean "piracy". I simply spend my money on something else or don't spend it all.
I,too, am a content creator, and it's disrespectful at best and harmful at worst to pirate content. I don't care what words you choose to use to refer to it (copying, stealing, liberating, whatever), it treats the creator with a disregard to his well-being.
Deep Purple’s Concert Violates Deep Purple’s Rights
Jul. 7th, 2009 at 7:22 PM
The Russian Authors Organization (RAO), a collective right-management organization, sued OOO Yug-Art, a Russian company that had organized in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, a concert of Deep Purple, a legendary English rock band. RAO demanded from Yug-Art compensation for “unauthorized pubic performance” of songs copyrighted by Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Steve Morse, and Ian Paice, on whose behalf RAO allegedly acted. The peculiarity of the case is that on the concert Gillan, Glover, Morse, and Paise (the Deep Purple members) performed their own songs themselves. Nevertheless, the court agreed that the performance was indeed “unauthorized.” RAO won the award of 450,000 rubles (cr. $15,000, or $1,000 per song). http://russian-law.livejournal...
You seem quite mad. Perhaps you are frustrated by the state of truth?
The big boys are repackaging and reselling our culture like they own it. They don't, and I see nothing morally wrong with people personally sharing meaningful culture that they care about.
From the way you describe it, it's at least 80 years too long, and the one time rule seems capricious. Patents are only 20 years and the sky hasn't fallen.