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Uploaded.to blocked U.S. visitors as a response to the MegaUpload takedown
- mappu 15y agoHow about a screenshot for non-U.S. users?
- ortatherox 15y agoIt's nothing particularly special http://cl.ly/2R3G1t3l2Z2O2A0x1u08 http://cl.ly/2R3G1t3l2Z2O2A0x1u08
- mappu 15y agoIndeed, doesn't look blocked at all. Is the submission title correct?
- Vivtek 15y agoI'm in the US and it's blocked for me. Good for them - this is a rational response and I hope it gets a lot of press.
- nextparadigms 15y agoDo you have a US IP? Maybe it's not blocked for everyone. http://torrentfreak.com/uploaded-to-blocks-us-visitors-120121/ http://torrentfreak.com/uploaded-to-blocks-us-visitors-12012...
- arn 15y agoI think mappu meant the block message: http://imgur.com/BJJOs http://imgur.com/BJJOs
- cdcarter 15y agoWhen it doesn't work internationally, you guys want to see what U.S. users see. When it doesn't work in the U.S., you guys what to see what U.S. users see. Maybe you just want to be a U.S. user?
- mappu 15y agoBrilliant generalisations. Continental separations just don't make any sense on the internet. I'm perfectly happy not being a U.S. user - we speak english and have ruby, php and startups too, why can't I be interested in what we (the internet) are talking about today?
- cdcarter 15y agoIt was a joke.
- yuvadam 15y agoThis is a great initiative, and one that sparks an interesting dilemma. Might the US wake up one day to find itself secluded on the internets? Just like the average Nigerian, who has exactly 0% chance of successfully ordering a product on eBay. What happens when the world becomes fed up with the horrendous US legal system? I can easily see a file-sharing site (e.g. megaupload) blocking all US IP addresses from accessing its service. Essentially annulling any trace of liability against a corrupt and rotten legal and political system. Granted, we're still pretty high up on the slippery slope. But, it still would be very interesting the moment the US becomes the country with 'unfavorable political climate'.
- dmoy 15y agoI really hope that we do wake up. A cynical view might be that we'll instead force everybody else to adopt our draconian ip laws (we're trying really hard at least), in which case this exact scenario will depressingly become a non-issue. Speaking of waking up, having three emergency vehicles truck by your window at 2 am with sirens blazing is a really unpleasant way to wake up. At least I got to see this interesting topic :)
- ohyes 15y agoUnless the American hegemony collapses in the next few years, I think that it is a realistic view rather than a cynical one.
- VonLipwig 15y agoI was wondering why more websites weren't already doing this when SOPA/PIPA were on the horizon. The US has a problem with politics and when that problem endangers the internet, to me at least, the simplest solution is to block US users. It has got to be tempting now for site owners, especially considering how US courts do not seem to have much trouble seizing websites. If the site isn't US facing surely that would put a big dent in any legal action made stateside.
- iconfinder 15y ago
- jzs 15y agoI'm a bit unsure this is actually a good idea. I think the people behind SOPA are happy that uploaded.to decides to block US citizens. Cause that's exactly what they wanted in the first place. What i would rather see is that companies move off US soil as a response to US Law. And stay off TLD's controlled by the US. Also proxying should be promoted to circumvent the censorship that the government puts down over it's own citizens. The movie industry has to adapt to a new market. The government should not adapt to an industry that has lost it's ability to innovate.
- aw3c2 15y ago> What i would rather see is that companies move off US soil as a response to US Law. And stay off TLD's controlled by the US. The cowboys from the US and the bootlickers in the affected countries have shown again and again that they do not care about jurisdiction or common sense.
- tomp 15y agoIf I understood the MegaUpload news correctly, the founders were arrested in New Zealand. So, obviously the US has a much bigger jurisdiction than it geographically should have. I don't think that your suggestions would help. The reason why I believe uploaded.to did this is not to support/protest SOPA, but to protect themselves from liability.
- tankenmate 15y agoBut if US users can't access the site then the US has no forum to precede with legal action, and then they can't call for extradition either. In the end they would need to prosecute in the target jurisdiction via the Berne Treaty.
- mcherm 15y agoNo, they wouldn't. You have a nice legal argument there, but JUST THIS WEEK the owners and operators of Megaupload were arrested by US authorities with no extradition, no "prosecution in the target jurisdiction", just arrested in New Zealand for running a company from there.
- rplnt 15y agoIt's funny how legal content is blocked outside of the USA (every other movie/music/tv site) and the illegal one is getting blocked in the USA.
- dave5104 15y agoIsn't that because the content is only legal to stream in the USA? (e.g. what you'd find on Hulu) It'd technically be illegal to stream it outside of the USA, so it is blocked. That's how I've always assumed that online streaming contracts with the content providers worked. I'd love to know if it works differently
- rue 15y agoWhat could possibly be illegal about it? The TV companies just don't want to let non-US people watch.
- earbitscom 15y agoThat's not correct. You have to license different works for different purposes, and there are many, many stakeholders whose permission you have to get. This varies by country. For example, a network may by the exclusive rights to air a show in the US. They only pay for those rights. Then someone else buys the exclusive rights in the UK. And someone else buys another country. Then, when it comes time for internet streaming, you not only have to get licenses from the original owner, plus perhaps this organization or that organization, and then you have to get licenses from.... You get the point. So with all of that work involved they look at the revenue potential of smaller countries and, frankly, it's just not worth it in many cases. They don't know what the demand is there. They don't have a marketing plan, and they have bigger opportunities available to them by working on yet another show's licensing for the US or other large country, so they just don't go to all of that trouble to make things available in smaller markets.
- rue 15y agoI did express that poorly. There can certainly be logistic factors at play. But my point was that it's not illegal. It's a decision, not law.
- rickmb 15y agoAs a European who constantly runs into the same "go away, foreigner" notices on US sites, I find this way funnier than I should.
- statictype 15y agoYeah it's weird going to a site you expect to see blocked and seeing that it works just fine. Anyone have a screenshot of what it says to US visitors?
- abraxasz 15y agoWhen I was still living in France, I used to rent a vps in the US, so I could tunnel my connections via ssh, and get access to those websites. Well this was not the main reason for my renting the vps (I hosted my website, and played around with it), but it was a nice bonus anyway.. Now having the vps inside the US has become useless to me, and I'm seriously considering moving it back to Europe, just in case..
- drunkenmasta 15y agoI wrote about this a month or so ago. Sites self censoring. Much easier that way isn't it? http://danielmillsap.com/blog/technology-news/using-game-theory-to-break-the-sopa-code/ http://danielmillsap.com/blog/technology-news/using-game-the...
- josefresco 15y agoIf you read the 'evidence' against MU the mere blocking of US traffic to your website could be seen as 'evidence' that you are concealing a crime.
- drunkenmasta 15y agoI thought about this a little more this morning and realized that Megaupload was shut down because it was using piracy as a means to fund the owners' multi-million dollar lifestyle. Just because uploaded.to blocks US visitors does this make it safe from being taken down? I think not. Not if it is making $$$. They must be in #denial
- aneth 15y agoThis is an example of the chilling effect you get when you hold service providers liable for users' behavior. Are there any other examples of this post Megaupload?
- mpyne 15y agoExcept that in this case Mega Conspiracy (the company behind MegaUpload) is being held liable for their own behavior. I'm used to Reddit being ill-informed but I was not expecting to see this attitude being so prevalent on HN! Just in the comment thread for this post I've seen assertions that the U.S. avoided extradition treaties (untrue) and that MegaUpload was shut down just because of what their users were doing (also untrue). Just as an example of things from the indictment (which you should really at least read a summary of): * MegaConspiracy employees were discussing a way to avoid reposts of child porn by killing any video with a matching md5sum of movies which were deemed by MegaConspiracy to be child porn, but did not employ that same tactic for files uploaded that infringed copyright. Now you and I know that it's trivial to make the md5sum change without making the video look any different, but why does MegaConspiracy 'try harder' for some categories of illegal material and not others that just conveniently happen to make them more money? * MegaConspiracy seeded their own website with videos copied straight from YouTube (thing wget --mirror) without so much as bothering to verify the license of those videos. This wouldn't be acceptable with open source software, why should this be acceptable for Mega Upload? * MegaConspiracy distributed known infringing videos internally to staff (so it's not "just the users" doing it) * MegaConspiracy rewarded uploaders monetarily for uploading popular videos despite the lack of authorization on the part of those users to redistribute the video (so it's not "just the users" asking for it) So while I certainly appreciate that the movie/music industry are hopelessly out-of-tune with digital distribution, that doesn't make MegaConspiracy a bunch of good guys, and it doesn't make their behavior defensible.
- thefre 15y agoFor you 1st point: because in most jurisdiction CP is absolutely forbidden and typically you are not protected if you don't proactively act to eradicate CP on your service with reasonable dilligence, whereas an upload of a film might or might not be problematic, given that it can be for private use or public distribution. For the third point who are you kidding. Technically this is problematic. In the real world even representatives and people in grand jury exchange ripped films, most probably most judges do it too. So this is both technically a reason but an highly hypocritical one.
- pacmon 15y agoThis move makes no sense to me. Blocking US users will not stop them from seeking out foreign users uploading 'infringing' content. It's also as easily circumvented as the tactics many Europeans use to access those lame American sites that block Europe.
- qazplm 15y agoAccording to some who know the local NZ courts well, it's probably going to take some time, maybe a year or so, to get the MU people extradited to the US on charges like these, if the DOJ is even successful in doing so. If that's true, there will ample opportunity for this issue of "cyberlockers" and copyrighted content to be analysed and discussed among by the public. Who knows which side the public (i.e., the media industry's customers) will choose to take? It should be interesting to see where this leads.
- 16s 15y agoMaybe some start-up will establish a foreign VPN service (in China or Iran) to help people in the US to freely connect to these services without fear of reprisal.