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Internet Backbone Provider Cogent Blocks Pirate Bay and Other 'Pirate' Sites (torrentfreak.com)
Several Pirate Bay users from ISPs all over the world have been unable to access their favorite torrent site for more than a week. Their requests are being stopped in the Internet backbone network of Cogent Communications, which has blackholed the CloudFlare IP-address of The Pirate Bay and many other torrent and streaming sites, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: When the average Internet user types in a domain name, a request is sent through a series of networks before it finally reaches the server of the website. This also applies to The Pirate Bay and other pirate sites such as Primewire, Movie4k, TorrentProject and TorrentButler. However, for more than a week now the US-based backbone provider Cogent has stopped passing on traffic to these sites. The sites in question all use CloudFlare, which assigned them the public IP-addresses 104.31.18.30 and 104.31.19.30. While this can be reached just fine by most people, users attempting to pass requests through Cogent's network are unable to access them.
Level3 should have nuked it when they were caught hot-potato routing in violation of peering agreements
Do you want to retain common carrier status? Or do you want to be charged for every illegal piece of data flowing through your network? I am sure if you look hard enough you can find illegal porn, drug deals, terrorist communications, plans to commit crimes, insider trading.. etc.
Silence is a state of mime.
Sorry, meant VPN, not VPF, although VPF sounds like it could be fun, lol
Someone puts a chain and lock across the front door of a business. But the place has a backdoor down a poorly lit alley that is still open and accessible, so IF PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT IT AND KNOW HOW TO GET THERE they can still get in. Do you think the blocked front door will cause some, maybe most, visitors to go away instead of looking for another way in?
Completely useless for anyone using a VPN with an endpoint that doesn't transit Cogent to get to Cloudflare, and even if that is the case you can *still* work around it since assigned IPs on Cloudflare are entirely administrative and almost any Cloudflare IP will work as long as you present a valid hostname and HTTP header. Add $blocked_site to your hosts file with a different IP (104.31.18.31 instead of 104.31.18.30, for example) and off you go.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Net neutrality? Wasn't that supposed to address this kind of thing? (I'm kidding..)
Oh that's right, ISP's and internet services are not generally seen as "common carriers" so maybe somebody wised up and started hinting at taking legal action for those folks carrying obviously (OK, Quasi) legal traffic?
I've always wondered why countries didn't start enforcement of IP law where the internet crossed international borders myself. Why a copyright owner couldn't get access to stuff they owned rights to blocked at the border by court order or something. I know it wouldn't really fix the problem, but it sure would make things like the "Kodi Box selling from the BBC" story from a few days ago easier for the UK government to address. Just block those sites that are providing the content illegally at the border, one IP/Port at a time, until it's too hard to make a buck breaking the law anymore...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If they start blackholing IP ranges just because of "infringing content", it's not much more to assume that they will start blackholing VPN providers, porn, non-backdoored services, inconvenient "alternate facts", the competition of their corporate friends, "undesirables", or indeed anything else that they want to. Best part of all is, it's all the blocking they could ever want, and it's not the government doing it but a private company. So there's no threat of lawsuit to reverse the policy as it's not a first amendment violation.
The citizenry needs a decentralized network NOW if we are to preserve freedom of expression, and association on the net. Guess we could start adhocing the APs, that would be a start. (Better yet someone produce an AP gateway that routes traffic to other gateways. With a passthrough for the central net if it can't find the destination on the citizen net.)
You don't have to make a claim of fake news. Just claim that some site is enabling piracy and an internet backbone that has no backbone will just block it for you.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
(N/T)
VPN may not solve that. It really depends on who your VPN provider's ISP is. The only sure way around this is by using tor.
"What if"? Don't you mean "when"?
Each nation has the right to filter what it chooses as it crosses it's borders... This means the 1st amendment only applies to USA sovereign territory. Consider China's strict filters as an example of this run amuck, but it's their country. However, I don't think that's an issue here.
Cogent has the right (with in the net neutrality regulations of course) to carry data for you or not. So if you want to get data from some IP they refuse to route, it might be time to chose another route if you can.... Unless they are somehow a common carrier, in which case they cannot pick and choose what they carry, but I don't think they are.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Doesn't the pirate bay have a tor node?
Using bittorrent over the tor network isn't a great idea.
* It's very slow over tor. The tor network can't handle that sort of load. https://blog.torproject.org/bl...
* bittorrent leaks identifying information (your IP address is included in the bittorrent headers, and most clients pick a random port to listen on, which is can be found on the tracker and every peer; combined, they can clearly ID you)
* Due to aforementioned point, if you're using bittorrent over tor, and you're ALSO browsing the web over tor at the same time, an attacking exit relay can break the anonymity of some of your web traffic. https://blog.torproject.org/bl...
No, it won't.
Instead people will ask on board and will be pointed to the backdoor.
The internet treats such things as damage and simply routes around them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And why should there be any "will"? What's in it for them?
Pay them to do it and you'll see them do it. Welcome to capitalism.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Somebody forgot there's more than one protocol in the stack.
No, it won't.
Instead people will ask on board and will be pointed to the backdoor.
The internet treats such things as damage and simply routes around them.
Well, to use a car analogy, there is road construction near me right now. The businesses on the other side of the construction are significantly closer than the ones in the other direction, but I still prefer to avoid the hassle of dealing with the special twists and turns to get to my preferred places, and instead go to the farther ones since they are easier to get to.
Fact - people are lazy animals, and if you put obstacles in front of them, the vast majority of them look for the path of least resistance, even if it yields an inferior result. Blocks like this one aren't designed to block everyone, just make it painful enough that a large number won't hassle with a workaround, and because of human nature, it normally works.
Love how the article doesn't just mention Pirate Bay, but gave me the names of a couple other site I didn't know about as well as IP addresses for a couple of them.
Now I know more ways to get my torrents. Well done.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Depends how many exit nodes are routing through Cogent to get to the destination (or if CloudFlare itself relies on Cogent for their connection, which would be the worst case scenario). If only a few exit nodes can see it, there still could be major degradation in connectivity.
It's a route blackhole that blocks 104.31.18.30 and 104.31.19.30 entering cogent: ...
$:~ phayes$ traceroute 104.31.18.30
traceroute to 104.31.18.30 (104.31.18.30), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 * 172.20.10.1 (172.20.10.1) 1.097 ms 0.549 ms
2 172.31.255.250 (172.31.255.250) 38.182 ms 42.392 ms 32.059 ms
3 172.31.255.10 (172.31.255.10) 40.190 ms 39.136 ms 47.807 ms
4 * p11-9k-1-be1024.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.5) 778.023 ms 718.829 ms
5 p11-9k-1-be2100.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.29) 47.728 ms 38.658 ms 39.877 ms
6 p11-crs16-1-be1004.intf.routers.proxad.net (78.254.249.129) 44.077 ms 35.318 ms 51.958 ms
7 th2-9k-3-be1001.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.86) 35.975 ms 34.663 ms 39.780 ms
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
$:~ phayes$ traceroute 104.31.18.3
traceroute to 104.31.18.3 (104.31.18.3), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 172.20.10.1 (172.20.10.1) 0.760 ms 0.534 ms 0.511 ms
2 172.31.255.250 (172.31.255.250) 43.636 ms 39.232 ms 40.144 ms
3 172.31.255.10 (172.31.255.10) 40.141 ms 38.507 ms 40.081 ms
4 p11-9k-1-be1024.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.5) 715.054 ms 891.669 ms *
5 p11-9k-1-be2100.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.29) 48.022 ms 42.905 ms 39.738 ms
6 p11-crs16-1-be1004.intf.routers.proxad.net (78.254.249.129) 52.004 ms 31.451 ms 40.011 ms
7 th2-9k-3-be1001.intf.routers.proxad.net (194.149.162.86) 36.100 ms 39.139 ms 40.123 ms
8 be4204.ccr31.par04.atlas.cogentco.com (149.11.115.13) 39.932 ms 42.901 ms 31.747 ms
9 be3184.ccr42.par01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.38.157) 39.915 ms
be3183.ccr41.par01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.38.65) 34.140 ms
be3184.ccr42.par01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.38.157) 39.195 ms
10 be2424.rcr21.par05.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.2.238) 43.208 ms
be2425.rcr21.par05.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.3.206) 35.184 ms
be2424.rcr21.par05.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.2.238) 31.005 ms
11 gttnet.par05.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.15.106) 39.691 ms 30.545 ms 39.862 ms
12 xe-8-2-0.cr0-par9.ip4.gtt.net (141.136.109.65) 40.385 ms 30.774 ms
xe-7-0-1.cr0-par9.ip4.gtt.net (89.149.185.118) 39.956 ms
13 ip4.gtt.net (46.33.81.218) 29.080 ms 31.297 ms 43.968 ms
14 104.31.18.3 (104.31.18.3) 39.838 ms 34.716 ms 43.958 ms
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
This isn't about using bittorrent over Tor; this discussion is about accessing TPB (the tracker), which is necessary in order to obtain either .torrent files or magnet links. Once acquired, the client can be run as usual (not over the Tor network), and Cogent's blocking will have no effect on that.
Sure, that's fine -- until, in a world where Net Neutrality is an utterly dead concept, and backbone providers feel empowered to block any traffic they decide they want to block for whatever arbitrary reasons they might have, they decide to start blocking all Tor exit nodes, essentially killing Tor altogether.
TPB isn't a tracker. It is just a source for torrent files. The torrent files contain a list of trackers. These trackers maintain an active list of who has what part of the original file.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The internet treats such things as damage and simply routes around them
Right up to the point where backbone providers start rerouting the traffic somewhere else, so packets go through, but not to where you intended them to go.
That would likely be the case, if there even were legitimate ways to pay for such content.
Now many people may chose "don't watch the content at all", but many more will still try to watch things that the studios have worked hard to avoid allowing people to pay them for.
My point still stands.
As you can tell, I'm not 100% certain on how BT works on a technical level... can't you use TOR to download the .torrent file and then open that through your torrent client outside of the VPN?
The GP didn't say that people treat such things as damage; s/he said that the internet does. And that is the crucial difference - the internet will figure out a way to route around the "damage" so that even lazy animals will be able to access it unimpeded.
(Those with long memories will note that this isn't the first time TPB has been violated. And EVERY time, it's come back up, usually within hours.)
Erh... we live in the world of Steam and Netflix. Unless you absolutely MUST see the latest blockbuster DAMN RIGHT NOW (and, bluntly, I can't even think of one that I want to see at all, let alone now) there are quite a few venues available that are way less of a hassle to get what you want than TPB.
If people have shown anything then that they will climb over the mountain on hand and feet instead of driving through the tunnel just to avoid the toll booth.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry, that's non-optional.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The backbones used to null-route and de-peer far more often. Frequently it was around spam. When one ISP had too much spam coming from their network, other backbones would cut them off.
Cogent themselves didn't route Telia traffic for several weeks in 1999. (Telia is one of the world's largest ISPs).
This stuff happened often enough at a MUCH larger scale than Pirate Bay, and the internet not only survived, it's even grown a bit since then.
Fact - people are lazy animals, and if you put obstacles in front of them, the vast majority of them look for the path of least resistance, even if it yields an inferior result. Blocks like this one aren't designed to block everyone, just make it painful enough that a large number won't hassle with a workaround, and because of human nature, it normally works.
Except that when you got no money for 30$ BD films and 200$ BD TV series, or you need it for booze and/or feeding your kid, the path of least resistance is still very much taking a few minutes to talk to your friends or post on some random forum, and get a walkthrough to follow blindly.
TPB is blocked in Italy (and has been for 7 years), the UK and Finland (for 5 years), Ireland (for 4 years), India (for 3 years), France, Spain and Russia (for 2 years), Australia (for 2 months)...
'Problem' solved, outside the US, then? Well, no.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18833060 :
"A major UK internet service provider (ISP) said peer-to-peer (P2P) activity on its network returned to just below normal only a week after the measures were enforced earlier this year".
People applied the various workarounds, or simply went to one of the many other search engines or trackers available... Private trackers have been particularly popular...
Sure some people did quit. But more people probably joined from the free 'advertising', and many people went to even higher-quality websites, with an even stronger community, meaning they are now even farther from paying the content industry more.
They cannot be ignoring it now... Remember Napster? it's been 16 years now... remember SuprNova? it's been 12 years now... and Megaupload, RapidShare and others? 5 years ago... isoHunt? 3 years... and a multitude of other closed or abandoned services... ever been on eDonkey/eMule or KaZaA (Lite) lately?
Thus the noise is actually mostly addressed to the producers they represent ("the situation is terrible, but we're doing stuff, please keep our pockets filled!"... you know, like Wall Street's "who cares about stocks crashing, investors will still fill our pockets with fees!"), and governments ("the situation is terrible, please create more taxes and send the easy cash our way so we can save creation!")... while actually, the content industry is having profit record years after profit record years... There had never really been a problem to begin with... Did they have to adapt to maintain and increase their profit? Well, yeah, but look how slow they've been, and how much there is still to be done to get to what most people really need...
If you want to dig deeper, though, it's not even about money (of course they have enough)... it's about maintaining a certain overall status quo in the mind of the general population, for the purpose of maintaining some level of control. People feel like they're "transgressing a little", it gives them some illusion of freedom and power. Just enough so apathy remains in fact firmly set. Is it good? does it prevent worse? Or is it bad? are we only exploited and prevented from happiness forever? are we in Hell? Well, to be sure, things could be much, much better. So if they were benevolent, they're not very good at it, considering their power... Still, do not attribute, etc.
CAPTCHA: "prologue"... ominous...
Posting to undo bad moderation.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I don't know that a citation is needed - Most of the people going to TPB are going there to acquire pirated content (that's an assumption I'm making, but I think a valid one.) Acquiring pirated content rather than going through official channels is hassling with a workaround. So, yes, I agree with the GP that the demographic for TPB is largely made of people looking for a workaround.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
> Cogent should loose its common carrier status
So go back to two years ago? Internet carriers were classified as common carriers on February 26th, 2015.
The companies vigorously fought that decision. Common carrier regulation isn't something you "loose" (or lose), it's something inflicted upon a company. Companies don't like being classified as common carriers.
> loose its common carrier status ... Let them be liable for all copyright infringement they happen to route.
Oh I see, you think common carrier classification has something to do with their copyright safe harbor. The copyright safe harbor in under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, which says they are not liable for user's infringement if the carrier follows certain procedures in handling complaints.
if you have an interest in this topic, I'd certainly recommend doing some reading about it. It's an interesting topic and with just an hour or so of reading you get some understanding - at least enough to know the vocabulary so you can post on Slashdot without saying the exact opposite of what you intended to say.
Yes. And that's why people "pirate": the copyright cartels have made it so inconvenient to get usable content that even if you throw a bunch of caltrops in the road to TPB, it's still better than a DVD with unskippable warnings and ads, or stuttering streaming video.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
... when I posted a successful tracert in Facebook, the post had a warning at the bottom:
Direct IP Address Not Allowed | CloudFare
You've requested an IP address that is part of the CloudFlare network. A valid Host header must be supplied to reach the desired website.
If I post "https://thepiratebay.org/" in Facebook, the link survives and Facebook provides the usual thumbnail and stuff.
I posted some random (and valid) direct IP addresses and the link simply posted without comment.
Maybe Facebook is at CloudFlare?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Erh... we live in the world of Steam and Netflix. Unless you absolutely MUST see the latest blockbuster DAMN RIGHT NOW (and, bluntly, I can't even think of one that I want to see at all, let alone now) there are quite a few venues available that are way less of a hassle to get what you want than TPB.
Forget about the latest blockbuster - it's the old library. Netflix and Hulu have maybe 1% of the content they should. The MAFIAA still seems to think there a vast fortune to be made in streaming rights for the likes of Hogan's Heroes and Gilligan's Island. Older shows come and go, but mostly go, in streaming availability.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If TPB had a Tor Onion site, there are no exit nodes in that story. Onion sites have proven quite weak against nation-state attackers, but I bet the tech stands up well against corporate attackers (to the extent a difference still exists, I guess).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
For most content for most people on the globe it's actually easier to access pirated content.
The Internet needs a way to select preferred routes that avoid trouble states/companies. Yes, the US and China are the trouble states.
Acquiring pirated content rather than going through official channels is hassling with a workaround
Official channels may not even be available, or be prohibitively expensive. The Pirate Bay is easy. Very easy, and I've found wrestling with online streaming (like when I wasn't allowed to stream HBO online from HBO using the HBO app on my PS3 because Comcast has a contract with HBO not to allow streaming through PS3s) that sometimes the pirated content is just easier. And of course, price is a big barrier for many -- lower the price to near zero, and people will watch a ton of stuff they wouldn't have bothered buying, or slapped money down to rent. The Pirate Bay is popular because there aren't a lot of barriers to entry. Sometimes fewer barriers than the legitimate channels.
The internet treats such things as damage and simply routes around them.
Who's doing the routing?
Only that assumes paying the asking price is all you need to do, which often isn't the case...
Media is often available from different places (eg music streaming services having exclusive deals) which makes it inconvenient as you'd need multiple subscriptions...
Media is often available only on certain devices, which you may not have or be able to easily obtain.
Media availability often varies in different locations, with artificial barriers making it more difficult for you to buy it from an area where it's more readily available. There are various shows and movies i would like to watch but my choices are either flying halfway across the world or pirating.
I may want to do something which is perfectly legal with the media, but which is made difficult by whatever ridiculous drm scheme they're using.
The media companies add all those hoops themselves, the pirate version is often easier. And you're right, the more hoops the media companies keep adding the more people will choose to pirate instead.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Again, my point still stands.
Thank you for the clarification. You are absolutely correct, as was the original AC poster, who I misunderstood.
For anyone affected by the cogent block, they're unlikely to be running tor already, so they'll need to heed those warnings if/when they do start using it. IE:
* access TPB and other web sites over Tor (this will anonymize your access to that site, and bypass the IP filters)
* do NOT run bittorrent over Tor (it will still work fine, and using it on tor is problematic)
It is a tracker too, or at least it was a few years ago... it seems like the newer torrents are magnet-only.