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Iranian state-funded media, including PressTV, possibly censored by the US

22 points by guerrilla 5y ago

2Gkashmiri 5y ago
What then if Iran does the same to CNN for example and the us is up in arms for "democracy" and "press freedom"?
- philwelch 5y ago
  > Iran is one of the countries most strongly identified with internet censorship.[5][6] As of 2012, an average of 27% of Internet sites was blocked at any given time.[7] As of 2013, almost 50% of the top 500 visited websites worldwide were blocked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran CNN is one of the blocked sites. So is PBS, actually, if you want to go by the "state media" angle.
ev1 5y ago
The `com.` NSs are overriding its 'correct' authoritative nameservers, it seems. WHOIS of the domain says: Name Server: ns1.presstv.ir Name Server: ns2.presstv.ir Attempting to resolve it returns: presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-388.awsdns-48.com. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-977.awsdns-58.net. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1088.awsdns-08.org. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1900.awsdns-45.co.uk.
csamu 5y ago
How did they seize the domain? Did the US government use legal measures at the registry or registrar level? Would it be possible for them to do it even at ICANN level?
- zinekeller 5y ago
  > Did the US government use legal measures at the registry or registrar level? Assuming that it was indeed a seizure, Verisign (which in the U.S.) controls the .com TLD, so a seizure can technically happen. P.S.: at this time, someone at FBI or U.S. Department of State should talk about this if it is indeed a seizure. The lack of this make it hard to verify what's happening. It is also possible that whatever registrar (data points to an Australian registrar) they're using was hacked and the actual NS servers were re-pointed to AWS (note that Whois data != what's actually stored at Verisign's name servers, which can be inaccurate even in mundane websites).
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Still no comment from the US despite CNN trying: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/22/politics/us-seizes-iran-website-domains/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/22/politics/us-seizes-iran-w...
nkurz 5y ago
I have no idea about their politics or reliability, but this seems to be one of the source articles: https://southfront.org/the-end-of-global-internet-u-s-seized-foreign-domains/ https://southfront.org/the-end-of-global-internet-u-s-seized... They say that the affected sites include: PressTV (Iran) PalToday (Palestine) Al-Masirah TV (Yemen) Al-Alam TV (Iran) Nabaa TV KafMedia (Iraq) LuaLua TV

22 points by guerrilla 5y ago

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

What then if Iran does the same to CNN for example and the us is up in arms for "democracy" and "press freedom"?

philwelch 5y ago
> Iran is one of the countries most strongly identified with internet censorship.[5][6] As of 2012, an average of 27% of Internet sites was blocked at any given time.[7] As of 2013, almost 50% of the top 500 visited websites worldwide were blocked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran CNN is one of the blocked sites. So is PBS, actually, if you want to go by the "state media" angle.

ev1 5y ago

The `com.` NSs are overriding its 'correct' authoritative nameservers, it seems. WHOIS of the domain says: Name Server: ns1.presstv.ir Name Server: ns2.presstv.ir Attempting to resolve it returns: presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-388.awsdns-48.com. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-977.awsdns-58.net. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1088.awsdns-08.org. presstv.com. 172800 IN NS ns-1900.awsdns-45.co.uk.

csamu 5y ago

How did they seize the domain? Did the US government use legal measures at the registry or registrar level? Would it be possible for them to do it even at ICANN level?

zinekeller 5y ago
> Did the US government use legal measures at the registry or registrar level? Assuming that it was indeed a seizure, Verisign (which in the U.S.) controls the .com TLD, so a seizure can technically happen. P.S.: at this time, someone at FBI or U.S. Department of State should talk about this if it is indeed a seizure. The lack of this make it hard to verify what's happening. It is also possible that whatever registrar (data points to an Australian registrar) they're using was hacked and the actual NS servers were re-pointed to AWS (note that Whois data != what's actually stored at Verisign's name servers, which can be inaccurate even in mundane websites).
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Still no comment from the US despite CNN trying: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/22/politics/us-seizes-iran-website-domains/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/22/politics/us-seizes-iran-w...

nkurz 5y ago

I have no idea about their politics or reliability, but this seems to be one of the source articles: https://southfront.org/the-end-of-global-internet-u-s-seized-foreign-domains/ https://southfront.org/the-end-of-global-internet-u-s-seized... They say that the affected sites include: PressTV (Iran) PalToday (Palestine) Al-Masirah TV (Yemen) Al-Alam TV (Iran) Nabaa TV KafMedia (Iraq) LuaLua TV