Swedish ISP Bahnhof Fights Sci-Hub Blocking Order (torrentfreak.com)

thomst writes: "After being ordered to block a number of piracy-related domains following a complaint from academic publisher Elsevier, Swedish ISP Bahnhof retaliated by semi-blocking Elsevier's own website and barring the court from visiting Bahnhof.se," reports TorrentFreak. "Those actions have now prompted Sweden's telecoms watchdog to initiate an inquiry to determine whether the ISP breached net neutrality rules."

Bahnhof is under investigation for diverting its users who attempt to click on links to Elsevier -- the complainant in the case -- to a page that explains the giant journal publisher forced the ISP to block access to a number of Sci-Hub domains, via a court order it doesn't have the resources to fight. That page includes a link to Elsevier that Bahnhof doesn't intercept. So, is it reasonable for Bahnhof to divert its users to a "fuck you" page, rather than allowing them to freely access Elsevier?

Comments

Children

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds like a bunch of children running the day care

Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is it reasonable for Bahnhof to divert its users to a "fuck you" page, rather than allowing them to freely access Elsevier?

If censorship is being requested by company X because of Y reasons, call them out for it and make people aware of their slimy behavior.

Blocking pages for copyright reasons is stupid, and it's nice for some ISP to actually put it into perspective.

Elsevier blocks more than Bahnhof

[swell]

I've never tried to visit Bahnhof, but Elsevier has blocked me on many occasions from reports I really wanted to see. The paywall is high there and the riches as well. Around the world many point to Elsevier as the worst example of greed in the sciences.

Counterpoint

[SuperKendall]

Playing devils advocate here

Er, yes, of course it is. Because that's not how the web (which is part of the net) works.

Technically redirects are absolutely part of how the web works, letting you know there is a problem trying to reach some resource, possibly directing you to a login page for instance.

In this case, the problem is the destination is full of dicks (and not the viewin' kind).

The ISP is just supposed to send the URI that was requested to the correct server, and then relay the response back to the requester

What about proxies? CDN's? All kinds of caching? It's really not that simple.

It's not like they are disabling any way to reach the resource, you just have to use the link they provide when you try the original link after being re-directed. Perfectly valid HTTP.

It's pretty ironic that just because it suits the politics of the pro net neutrality people, that suddenly this would become magically OK.

I'm really on the fence on this one, being pro Network Neutrality but against regulation without cause.