[HN Gopher] Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order
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Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order
Author : gslin
Score : 123 points
Date : 2023-08-05 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| yankput wrote:
| I don't understand why they go on _DNS level_.
|
| The web is hosted somewhere, the actual files are hosted
| somewhere (on a different site), yet they don't go after either
| of these actual websites but after a DNS resolver? That's just
| weird.
|
| On the other hand my country now DNS-blocks Russia Today so I
| guess it's just the minimal viable block
| folmar wrote:
| The DNS provider has some German presence, and the site and its
| hosting don't. The serving of torrent magnet links alone is not
| illegal in most Europe.
| rolph wrote:
| quad9 should be blocking certain IPs in germany as well.
|
| such as the German branch of Sony Music.
|
| Sony uploads pirate torrents to the web, thus must be blocked.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Firefox should natively support OpenNIC and other alternative DNS
| providers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
|
| This will help Mozilla gain marketshare by being the goto browser
| for anyone wanting to access non-mainstream sites.
|
| But I admit, that also makes firefox hostile to corporate
| environments. If only firefox obeyed windows system/gpo/registry
| settings like chrome. I have never seen a non-tech company even
| permit firefox in their IT policy for these and other reasons
| anyways.
|
| If they really are for privacy for individuals, this is the way!
|
| It would also be ideal if alternative root systems supported DoH
| well. But that's only half the problem, discovering a list or
| resolvers is a big pain because those can also be blocked.
|
| My suggestion is for willing sites to frequently update their SRV
| records with new/current list of authoritative root IPs that
| support DoH. Supporting mainstream sites can also do that, so
| when you visit these sites you have the latest root list, and if
| that list is dynamic enough (have static root IPs but make them
| reachable with IPs that change all the time) blocking the system
| becomes a whack-a-mole and the difficulty is set by network size
| and how many new root resolver's can be added (DHT over https
| might help too).
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >But I admit, that also makes firefox hostile to corporate
| environments. If only firefox obeyed windows
| system/gpo/registry settings like chrome. I have never seen a
| non-tech company even permit firefox in their IT policy for
| these and other reasons anyways.
|
| Perhaps I'm missing your point, but Firefox does (and I use it
| in my own AD forest) provide Group Policy[0] management
| support.
|
| [0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-
| usi...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I've been using OpenNIC as my primary DNS for a while.
| midasuni wrote:
| Why would to want my applications to use what my operating
| system does? I control both, but typically I have more control
| over the OS, and importantly it's a single location to
| configure.
| codetrotter wrote:
| This is feels like the Barbara Streisand Effect in action.
|
| I had never heard about this Canna Power piracy website before.
| Probably a lot of other people haven't either. But now, when Sony
| and their friends made this DNS block happen, media coverage has
| made more of us hear about the Canna Power piracy website.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I heard of it ages ago, but it was a terrible experience
| (constantly opened new browser windows with ads etc) compared
| to torrents and by the time I actually got interested in music
| the industry had come up with convenient legal means to buy it.
| Didn't know that site is still alive though.
| cute_boi wrote:
| ublock origin fixes all
| _joel wrote:
| You and me both, nice one Sony.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I have been sailing the dark waters for everything - movies, tv
| shows, books, games, music, etc - since before the new
| millennium and I can tell you I've never heard of Canna Power
| until today. I usually get my content successfully off of the
| larger public torrent sites, so I guess there's no need, but
| it's good to have another bookmark in my arsenal! Definitely
| the Streisand Effect here.
| dizhn wrote:
| It seems to primarily cater to a German speaking audience.
| That's probably why it isn't more well known. I'd never heard
| of it either.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| I'm German and I've known of it 10 years ago ... and 10
| years ago it looked like a site from 20 years ago. I didn't
| know it still existed either.
| ur-whale wrote:
| DNS is the _one_ thing that needs to be based on bitcoin type
| tech so as to forever escape any attempt at centralized control.
|
| Also, being able as an end user to easily choose _where_ you get
| your name resolution from is essential.
|
| The whole idea of root DNS servers is utterly broken.
| franczesko wrote:
| THIS
| null0pointer wrote:
| I don't understand why ENS doesn't support normal record types
| (A, AAAA, etc.) Support for these was in the original design
| for ENS. I hope we see more support for alternative roots in
| the future. Brave browser, which is already fairly crypto-
| friendly, could add an ENS resolver for example. Maybe this is
| something someone could build as a browser extension?
| [deleted]
| pmontra wrote:
| Isn't everything on YouTube for free? Then downloading is as
| simple as any software that extracts audio tracks from a YT
| video.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Youtube serves the audio and video separately; yt-dlp (the
| successor to youtube-dl) can download only the audio part, so
| there isn't any extraction necessary.
|
| Honestly, I don't understand "piracy" much anymore -- almost
| everything folks want is legally available on a streaming
| service for cheap or no-charge. If something has been censored
| or banned (or the owner refuses to sell it anymore), then
| that's a different story, but legal services are cheap and easy
| now.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I definitely want to be in ownership of the things I
| purchase. With streaming services your content can be taken
| away from you. No thanks.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Where do I find Big Brother 3?
|
| Most things are not available in your location where that is.
| raun1 wrote:
| > almost everything folks want is legally available on a
| streaming service for cheap or no-charge
|
| The majority of TV shows and movies that I watch are
| unavailable on streaming services. I know there's some more
| specialty streaming services for film these days, but besides
| that, it seems like its mostly well-known classics, anything
| mainstream from the past 20 years, or new releases that are
| available.
|
| I solely credit piracy for enabling my appreciation of film
| and TV. I was never a big fan of either until I got access to
| a huge catalog and started watching classics that are not
| popular enough for streaming services to pickup.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Streaming services WERE cheap and easy. Now all the content
| providers are starting their own crappy streaming services
| and you end up paying more than you would for cable, when
| pretty much everything they offer used to be available
| through one or two services tops.
|
| I expect piracy to rise until there is a Spotify of TV/movies
| jorams wrote:
| > I don't understand "piracy" much anymore
|
| For music I agree for the most part. Tons of music is both
| available on streaming services, _and_ for sale as a DRM-free
| download. The rest of the entertainment industry hasn 't
| figured that last part out yet, unfortunately.
| folmar wrote:
| "Piracy" is still a thing for classical music - if you look
| for a specific performance of a piece you'd often find that
| it is not only not available online, but also permanently
| out of stock in physical formats since 1998.
| ransackdev wrote:
| I don't know this case or the site, I'm only commenting on this
| because, shouldn't we be very concerned that anything can be
| silenced, globally, online? Where does it stop if we do it? Who
| gets the say? Who watches them? You see what I'm getting at?
|
| Google started self censoring "Russian propaganda" and everyone
| was so distracted with the war itself that nobody seemed to take
| notice of what gears that type of thing set in motion. Sure,
| they've probably been doing stuff like that the whole time, but
| it was the first I'd ever seen them announce they were altering
| results publicly and giving us things they deem acceptable.
|
| We need to wake up
| Y_Y wrote:
| Vodafone have blocked RT in several EU countries, try it
| yourself: https://www.rt.com/africa/580875-france-niger-
| military-agree...
| mschild wrote:
| Not just Vodafone. But this happened because RT is one the
| EUs sanction list.
|
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-
| releases/2022...
| mdekkers wrote:
| > Google started self censoring "Russian propaganda" and
| everyone was so distracted with the war itself that nobody
| seemed to take notice of what gears that type of thing set in
| motion.
|
| I recently found out that all of Russia Today is banned and
| blocked throughout the EU, and whilst I appreciate it's pure
| propaganda, I don't appreciate being told what I can and cannot
| read/watch/hear.
|
| It's entirely against everything I was told to believe we stood
| for, and I find it deeply offensive ans disturbing.
| thejazzman wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm misreading this, but are you saying
| bad actors have an inherent right to exercise their bad
| actions? It's on every individual to defend themselves
| against whatever harm is being inflicted, and society should
| stand by because, again, inherent right to be awful should be
| protected?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Who define bad?
|
| And why can you not envision a scenario where someone else
| finds you, or a known good actor to be bad?
|
| The most juvenile view from censorship discussions, is that
| you will never be the one that's being censored.
| matrix_overload wrote:
| The idea is that people should have the skill of critically
| assessing the information they see, not trusting it by
| default, and knowing how to verify it. Like, check for
| conflicts of interest, historical precedents, correlate
| independent sources, etc.
|
| This skill only develops if people have to deal with lies
| on a daily basis. If we delegate the function of telling
| what's a truth and what's a lie to a 3rd party, it quickly
| starts abusing it for its own gain and the quality of life
| starts sliding downhill.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _people should have the skill of critically assessing
| the information they see, not trusting it by default, and
| knowing how to verify it_
|
| Unfortunately, in America and I imagine abroad, those
| skills have been actively eroded so as to favor of
| consumerism. Moreover, the tools to pull one over on your
| fellow man have gotten more and more sophisticated such
| that you cannot trust recorded voices to be real, you
| cannot trust recorded video of people talking, and likely
| soon won't be able to trust recorded video at all.
|
| There's a serious problem with that in its own. But it's
| compounded when people don't satisfy the very
| requirements you want of them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > This skill only develops if people have to deal with
| lies on a daily basis.
|
| It's called critical thinking, and applies to every facet
| of life. A person can honestly believe what they are
| saying, but their belief is not, on its own, evidence
| that what they are saying is true.
|
| I think schools in the US don't really teach critical
| thinking, so much as regurgitation. I almost wish schools
| required a full semester course of debate, pushing
| students to craft arguments both for and against various
| topics. I suspect our politics might look a lot different
| if people were generally more skeptical of the things
| they're told to just accept.
| boredpeter wrote:
| No I think he's saying the government should not get to
| decide which speech should and shouldn't be allowed. For
| example in the US the government attempted and was somewhat
| successful in banning speech that favored communism which
| was in no way justified.
|
| I think it's a reasonable criticism of these types of
| policies given how governments of the past have misused
| their power of censorship.
| azangru wrote:
| > bad actors have an inherent right to exercise their bad
| actions? It's on every individual to defend themselves
| against whatever harm is being inflicted, and society
| should stand by because, again, inherent right to be awful
| should be protected?
|
| I don't know about the right to be awful; but there is
| something deeply unsettling about governments not trusting
| their people to decide for themselves what kind of
| information they want to access. Centuries ago, people
| weren't trusted to read Wycliffe's translation of the
| Bible. In the Soviet Union, people weren't allowed to read
| The Gulag Archipelago. Now it's RT. It's preposterous.
| somethingreen wrote:
| I used to be a free speech absolutist, but now I believe
| phylosophical principles exist in service of humanity, not
| the other way around. If you consider that the goal of
| russian propaganda is to help Russia succeed in genocide of a
| 40 million nation, I think it should be fairly easy to handle
| some censorship, at least until genocide is stopped.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| What philosophical principle justifies censorship, which is
| just propaganda through ommision?
|
| How can someone decide for themselves that they agree
| something is bad, if they aren't allowed to see it, or even
| know it exists?
|
| I don't think there is any philosophical principle that
| resloves to "and therefor we should commit ignorance"
| camgunz wrote:
| I think the typical rejoinder here is Germany's
| denazification. There's a difference between preemptively
| censoring things and deciding some things are just wrong
| and not worth debating for the umpteenth time.
|
| FWIW we preemptively censor things all the time.
| Information is classified, we don't let you post plans to
| build nuclear or biological weapons, etc. And to broaden
| a little, we also have lots of speech restrictions and
| compulsions. Fraud is against the law and that's largely
| speech. Inciting imminent lawless action isn't allowed.
| We require nutrition facts on products, we require
| doctors to say things before performing abortions, we
| compel testimony, etc. I personally wouldn't like it if
| you posted my address and when I'm likely to be away.
|
| Speech is complicated, it's powerful, fundamental, and
| there are a lot of competing interests and principles.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I think you cut to the core of it: genocide.
|
| Governments are entrusted with great power. Enough power to
| decide an entire class of people no longer deserve to live.
| Without checks and balances that hold the people we put in
| government accountable, that power will be abused.
|
| "It should be easy to handle some censorship" is where your
| point went off the rails.
|
| When you trust your government with the power to control
| the flow of information, you trust them with the power to
| hide their own actions from you - including genocide. You
| trust them to censor people who vocally oppose an unjust
| war. You trust them to censor people who report on broken
| checks and balances. You trust them to censor people who
| question their accumulation of power.
|
| History doesn't care if you meant well. Our descendants who
| inherit these political systems won't care if you meant
| well. They'll remember the results of the system you build.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >When you trust your government with the power to control
| the flow of information, you trust them with the power to
| hide their own actions from you
|
| I think this is as false dilemma - no one's advocating
| that any institution or system that can regulate the flow
| of known bad information can operate without any
| constraints, oversight, etc.
|
| If we assume any exercise of power will ALWAYS be misused
| under any circumstance, then taken to the extreme we
| literally shouldn't let people exercise under the notion
| that they can and will use physical force to coerce
| people. So we can't run on that assumption; sometimes
| governments can use power over information to do good
| things, like prevent the spread of pro-genocide
| propaganda.
|
| We need to have a far more nuanced discussion about
| whether or not THIS instance of censorship is more
| positive or more negative.
| somethingreen wrote:
| You are talking about hypotethicals and I'm talking about
| reality of today. If you let actual real innocent people
| die for your principles - you are not virtuous, the
| future you build and try to protect is not virtuous. It
| doesn't matter how correct your principles are.
| salawat wrote:
| I have a question.
|
| How big does a group of people acting in concert have to
| grow before we start slapping on the shackles because
| they've reached a mass indistinguishable from an act of
| governance?
|
| Is it purely a factor rrqrqrawreeqEeaerrteutreeerqeeesrEr
| xdrdrwtrsraArRerrrsrssrrerAars numbers? Anything below N
| is !government? Or is there a factor of impact? Can one
| person's decision effect so many and so much that we have
| to put on the brakes in spite of the fact it is _just one
| person_?
|
| It's been no end of annoyance for me over the last few
| years, because I personally have had a fairly difficult
| time nailing down the sweet spot between _collective
| action_ , and _everyone needs to take a chill pill, cause
| this ain 't right_.
| sgift wrote:
| Do you mean rt.com? I just accessed that cesspool and Germany
| is part of the EU, so .. nope. Not banned.
| JackGreyhat wrote:
| I just checked and cannot reach RT from Germany, using the
| _ISP provided_ DNS server. I think that is key.
| mdekkers wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/eu-rt-ban-extends-online/
| philippejara wrote:
| given that rumble was ordered to remove what I can only
| assume is rt and decided to just stop serving the country
| instead, It's certainly banned at the very least in France
| itself.
|
| https://archive.is/Ryv67
| orangepurple wrote:
| Banned in NL it gives an HTHS error
| NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID the certificate common name
| in the attack is advice.upc.biz
| vlabakje90 wrote:
| It's not banned in NL, I can access it just fine.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It is banned by Ziggo in the Netherlands.
|
| When I open it incognito I am redirected to a Ziggo.nl
| page saying:
|
| Deze website is geblokkeerd
|
| Europese sancties
|
| De Raad van Europa heeft besloten dat de websites van RT
| (voorheen Russia Today) en Sputnik News niet meer mogen
| worden doorgegeven. De website die je probeert te
| bezoeken, valt onder deze Europese sanctie.
|
| Vodafone
|
| Ziggo is verplicht de sanctie uit te voeren en heeft de
| website geblokkeerd.
| erfgh wrote:
| Russia Today as a television network is banned because you
| need a license to broadcast and that license can be revoked
| when it is found that the network broadcasts only propaganda
| that has nothing to do with reality.
|
| On the other hand, the website of Russia Today is not blocked
| though it does have some intermittent ddos problems.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| you need a loicense to be on rumble lololol
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Copyright infringement is not protected speech. Google is free
| to provide or not provide results however they see fit.
|
| To me- freedom of speech is the right of citizens to criticize
| the government without reprisal.
|
| This does not mean that adversaries have the right to flood our
| airwaves with propaganda, lies, and other bullshit under the
| guise of protected speech.
| survirtual wrote:
| The same tools used to "prevent copyright infringement" are
| used to silence and censor legitimate protest and opposition
| to tyranny.
| landoftheice wrote:
| [dead]
| flangola7 wrote:
| None of this is new. Blocking is not even that strong of an
| action, ISIS domains are straight up seized and taken
| possession of by the United States.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| You're just "waking up" _now_?
|
| Tech clearly engaged in election interference on behalf of
| Trump's opponents in 2020.
|
| I don't like the man any more than anyone else, but that was a
| crime.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| I remember CannaPower from my first steps with piracy (also:
| eMule/eDonkey, KAZAA, BearShare, LimeWire). Good to know they are
| still operating.
| thefurdrake wrote:
| The harder Sony screams, the better things are going in general.
| This effort was pathetic and ineffective, just like every attempt
| Sony has made to combat piracy. If only they spent all that
| effort and money improving the user experience when accessing
| their products instead of something doomed to failure.
| ecf wrote:
| it's entertaining to watch Sony throw these tantrums after one
| of their prime complaints with the Activision + Microsoft
| merger was how it might give Microsoft exclusivity for CoD
| while forgetting how much they love exclusivity for Playstation
| titles.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It isn't called 'Sony Entertainment' for nothing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The problem is Microsoft has leverage in other areas. I
| understand Sony's nervousness.
| jrm4 wrote:
| When I think of the historical development of the internet,
| events like this and the early recognition of "net neutrality"
| makes me grateful for the bullets we did dodge.
|
| It's clear that we need to do some things better re: DNS, but
| this could have gone sideways so much earlier.
| derefr wrote:
| Question: why are torrent sites not generally run as a Tor
| hidden-site backend (that can therefore be accessed through any
| existing Tor public-web gateway, rather than needing to set up
| its own proxies) plus an IPFS-hosted SPA frontend (that can
| therefore rely on any IPFS web gateway, and can then point as
| many arbitrary human-readable DNSLink names at that IPFS CID as
| it wishes)?
|
| Is it just because the web piracy community predates these
| technologies?
| charcircuit wrote:
| To be more accessible and because they don't have to.
| fsflover wrote:
| It is not sufficient to serve the torrent files (or magnet
| links) anonymously: you will leak your IP unless you also
| download the actual files through darknet. However, Tor project
| does not recommend to use Tor for that:
| https://support.torproject.org/#misc_misc-4.
|
| The actual solution is torrenting through I2P:
| https://geti2p.net. They support it out of the box and there
| are a few good trackers.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| I'm pretty sure sure pirate-bay is an onion site exposed via a
| cloudflare gateway. You can use the onion service directly (and
| presumably through whichever gateway you want).
| plagiarist wrote:
| Cloudflare can work over TOR? I'm only familiar with the
| services they offer opening a tunnel across regular internet.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes it can, they have support for terminating TOR so you
| don't go over the public internet.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| Because it was veeeeeeeeery slow to me. As someone in East
| Asia, you are lucky if you can load a hidden service under 10
| seconds.
|
| First we should briefly talk about how hidden services work.
| You have a very long address encoding the portions of a HS
| public key, which is stored in a special directory (HSDir), and
| due to the P2P nature of Tor, that basically becomes a
| DHT/Torrent Tracker which draws parallel to a DNS service.
|
| Then you initiate a rendezvous request in HSDir to request a
| contact with the hidden service.
|
| The hidden service noticed the HSDir updated, then arranges a
| Tor circuit (of arbitrary length) and then write back to HSDir
| to tell the requesters to contact via that new circuit which
| this information will ultimately be signed with the hidden
| service's private key as a proof of identity so MITM is
| impossible (like bootleg TLS, or a mock PKI actually)
|
| As you noticed there would be at least three user circuits
| involved: the hidden service to Tor itself, the Tor end user,
| and the hidden service relay circuits (I would like to call
| that a transit tunnel, the middleman).
|
| The more the circuits and relays in between, the more likely
| your data will fly around the world, and too many circuits is
| the intrinsic reason why hidden services are very slow.
|
| Recall that each circuit is a linked list and to decrypt the
| data cells you have to wait for the "pipe" to flow back and
| forth serially. A to B to C, and C to B to A on back. Due to
| this recursive relation, no relay preemption is allowed.
|
| Keep in mind the real torspec is very complicated (that took me
| a few days) and I tried to make a gist for you, and in reality
| this may not be accurate up to date.
|
| Adding insults to injury, the vast majority of Tor relays are
| dominantly located in US and EU, and there are barely any Asian
| Tor operators like me, let alone exit node operators. This
| caused a serious "geofragmentation"/"geopartition" where one
| group of people have degraded services over the others.
|
| Fortunately, if your sites are mostly static or deterministic
| without any serverside dynamic and fancy UI (cough cough PHP
| and Ruby), given enough patient I would still got what I want.
| Just that it would have took it for me to be longer than
| others.
|
| That is why I think SPA and PWA, both client-side oriented
| application on such a low rate network like Tor hidden service,
| and abstracting server interaction as low overhead APIs such as
| gRPC and ttrpc, would be very useful as I was experimenting it
| before, but most people uses Tor Browser, they would likely be
| disabling JS with NoScript for...security reasons. They are
| really afraid there will be 0days in the JS engine that would
| pop them a dropper. There are couple of heap spraying 0days in
| V8 but so far Greasemonkey is fine...
| rightbyte wrote:
| 10s? Sounds like the v56 days. If the site is designed for
| it, with alot of info on each page, it should work fine but I
| guess most are not?
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| >Then you initiate a rendezvous request in HSDir to request a
| contact with the hidden service. >The hidden service noticed
| the HSDir updated, then arranges a Tor circuit (of arbitrary
| length) and then write back to HSDir to tell the requesters
| to contact via that new circuit which this information will
| ultimately be signed with the hidden service's private key as
| a proof of identity so MITM is impossible (like bootleg TLS,
| or a mock PKI actually)
|
| this sounds wrong. As far as I know the HS picks some nodes
| as introduction points and builds long losting circuits to
| them abd publishes them in ita descriptor.
|
| when a client wants to connect it fetches the list of IPs, it
| picks a random node as rendezvous and, via the IP, tells the
| HS about it which connects to it to allow communication
| (basically you -> rendezvous <- HS (+ a bunch of other nodes
| that blindly carry traffic for anonimization as is customs
| with tor))
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(page generated 2023-08-05 23:00 UTC)