Slashdot Mirror
CloudFlare Puts Pirate Sites on New IP Addresses, Avoids Cogent Blockade (torrentfreak.com)
Earlier this month, several users worldwide reported that they were unable to access pirate websites including the Pirate Bay. It was because the internet backbone network of Cogent Communications had blackholed the CloudFlare IP-address of pirate websites. Less than a week later, CloudFlare is fighting back. From a report on TorrentFreak: The Pirate Bay and dozens of other pirate sites that were blocked by Cogent's Internet backbone are now accessible again. CloudFlare appears to have moved the sites in question to a new pair of IP-addresses, effectively bypassing Cogent's blackhole. [...] As of yesterday, the sites in question have been assigned the IP-addresses 104.31.16.3 and 104.31.17.3, still grouped together. Most, if not all of the sites, are blocked by court order in the UK so this is presumably done to prevent ISP overblocking of 'regular' CloudFlare subscribers.
Surely there are some MPAA/RIAA members who use Cloudfare.
Cloudfare should switch their sites to the previously blocked IP addresses.
We already have nations cutting off Internet during times of unrest, and applying massive filtering and spying efforts against communications to and from their populations regardless.
If you're going to apply national laws to an international system, that system is going to need to be chopped up into pieces that fit the political borders.
That really sucks if your nation is surrounded by nations who disagree on what should be passed through their borders, so ultimately there needs to be some kind of Internet Treaty, where it is agreed that traffic is only to be interfered with if one of the end points is domestic, or by agreement with one of the governments with authority over an end point.
Let governments be responsible for the border filters (and, presumably, spying), and then private companies like Cogent will have no interest in taking actions like IP block blacklisting.