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Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin, Xmarks & Major Torrent Sites Blocked in India
- jezclaremurugan 14y agoNo it isn't. Everything is working fine for me. I checked in Airtel, and over NIC (National Informatics Center). If it isn't blocked by the NIC (gov. body, btw, I am a gov employee) I doubt whether anyone else would block it.
- altrego99 14y agoMay be he is infected by a malware that blocks these sites?
- RealGeek 14y agoIt is blocked on major ISPs like Airtel, MTNL & Reliance. Some ISPs may have not implemented the block yet, but may follow soon.
- Arun2009 14y agoMy reliance connection allows TPB, Vimeo and Pastebin. I can confirm that at least vimeo and TPB were blocked till a few days ago when I checked.
- rkwz 14y agoThis is what I get: Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
- desipenguin 14y agoWhich ISP ? Location ?
- paraschopra 14y agoDelhi. Airtel.
- desipenguin 14y agoNo it isn't. I checked vimeo after I saw a tweet about it being blocked. Was working fine for me. My ISP is semi-govt org.
- batpad 14y agoNo, these sites are being blocked. I am on Airtel as well and things weren't blocked until yesterday. I think Reliance was the first to enforce the block - I believe they're also the ones who filed for the court order. It's really good to see this on the HN front-page, and hope there's more awareness / discussion. Blocking pastebin is a bit ridiculous :/ - the message one gets when one goes to any of the sites is just "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders", without any other explanation. Changing DNS servers does not work, so they are doing it at a different level. tl;dr: sites are being blocked. wtf?
- RealGeek 14y agoI checked it on Airtel broadband, Airtel 3G and MTNL in New Delhi. It is blocked here, I get this error: Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
- aniket_ray 14y agoAll sites work fine for me using Google's DNS servers on Airtel.
- dnyanesh 14y agoI am on MTNL. I switched to Google DNS and all sites can be accessed again. Some days the Google DNS workaround was not working.
- muon 14y agoA few days back, customers of Reliance faced blocking of Torrent and Vimeo, which was later unblocked. Meanwhile, BSNL did not block any of these sites.
- fjellfras 14y agoI think that the reason behind this block-unblock cycle that reliance goes through every time a movie of theirs is released is quite simple. They do not want to block these sites permanently because then they lose an edge in the competition with airtel. On the other hand whenever a movie from Reliance entertainment comes out they want to avoid the cams to spread for the first few weeks so they block these sites. Once the first couple of weeks have passed they undo the blocks.
- asto 14y agoThis is happening so often in India that it isn't even newsworthy anymore :( For those outside India who are wondering, only Airtel (private) seems to have blocked sites. I have a BSNL (state owned) broadband connection and everything still loads fine for me.
- utkarshsinha 14y agoThat's probably because the BSNL employees are still having the samosas/chai they ordered?
- axitkhurana 14y agoNo problem accessing vimeo or pastebin. Checked on Tata photon+.
- emcl 14y agoThe really disturbing aspect of these blocking is the blatant manner in which websites which are known for their self-regulation (mainly for quality control) like Vimeo have been blacked out presumably by twisting the Chennai High court order against 'video sharing websites' by Copyright Labs, which seems to be a dummy company http://goo.gl/a1rjS http://goo.gl/a1rjS . There is an alarming lack of internet literacy among the law makers and keepers who need to be educated on these issues so that such ridiculous incidents don't happen again.
- biggfoot 14y agoThe site is quite ridiculous, so you are probably right about it being some dummy company.
- tutysara 14y agoIt is not a dummy company, it should be a company with significant backing, may be it should have been put up in a hurry. I was expecting something of this sort when many politicians and their kin started acting in movies and buying stakes in production companies. From their contacts page I could see that they are based in chennai
- biggfoot 14y agoDummy meaning it is a facade put up by some vested interests. To my mind there is no way a genuine company can get this done without a legal (or should I say, illegal) backdoor.
- tutysara 14y ago"We Protect your move from spreading through Torrent" - They haven't even ran a spell checker on their site, can't stop laughing at these people.
- biggfoot 14y ago"I worried more about piracy and it almost spoils everyone in the movie industry" ... only a man of such eloquence is capable of such otherwise impossible tasks ...
- samal 14y agoMain thing is ISP guys don't know why they are blocking sites. Specially MTNL.
- playhard 14y agofine with Tata Indicom
- tutysara 14y agoI am on airtel, got the "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when trying to access vimeo this morning, and was taken by surprise. Why would one want to block vimeo? These guys have to at least say why they blocked it. The most stupid thing is blocking pastebin, if they are going to block a site due to someone writing something that is objectionable, then I think almost all sites which accepts and displays user inputs qualifies to be taken down. If you see the comments in youtube.com/indiatimes.com during an IPL match you can find all sorts of nasty comments and one can easily argue that these sites should be taken down. I am even considering switching from Airtel to some other ISP if they are not blocking traffic.
- biggfoot 14y agoIt is a John Doe order being enforced because some big movie is being released and they don't want it to be pirated. Those of us who use Vimeo for leisure or work are evidently lesser citizens ...
- gsa 14y agoA more detailed article: http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks-vimeo-dailymotion-all-major-torrent-sites-in-india/ http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks-vimeo-dai...
- neokya 14y agoDamn. It is blocked in certain ISP only. Everything is working on my network
- sagarun 14y agoHere is the copy of "John Doe" order https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...
- option_greek 14y agoBlocked on Airtel :( MTS seems fine for now.
- pavanky 14y agoMay be relavent.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q5ZQsxSWk_A http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q...
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoYouTube has live streams now? That's the second I've seen, the only other was IPL...
- Praveens 14y agoIt may be working via few isps and dns servers. But the whole point of excercising a ban on websites is absurd. Wonder how the court is controlled by the big shots in India.
- hackermom 14y agoI wonder what Vimeo and Pastebin did to end up on this list. These two are definitely odd (and harmless) apples in that bunch.
- solnyshok 14y agosame about xmarks, it's bookmarking service for god's sake...
- kmatthews812 14y agoPretty lame. This is just going to push more and more people to use VPNs.
- kshatrea 14y agoHaving a Tata Photon+ wireless (EVDO) connection, as well as an MTNL (Mumbai) broadband and a local internet provider (Hathway) in my home and/or at work, I haven't seen this in action. I am not sure whether Airtel and Reliance have any vested interest (far be me from it!), but Reliance is also the owner of BIG Entertainment and BIG Pictures (both owned by the younger Ambani), and the Mittals of Airtel have tied up with BigFlix. In other words, this may be a net non-neutrality move, not the first of its kind.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nitinalabur 14y agowhy pastebin then?
- kamaal 14y agoIts getting ridiculous by the day, the way laws are being set here in India. Recently the Supreme Court of India, has ordered that all cars must get rid of their sun films. Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed. This is because they think the kidnapping, terrorism and crimes against women will stop if the cars get rid of sun films and tint on windows. People are predicting heavy bribe business in early days after ban is enforced. In another instance, the court has also ordered that heavy vehicles like lorries, trucks and other goods/passenger vehicles get speed regulators fixed preventing them from going above some level(I guess that is 60 Km) this is because some boy died in a over speeding accident. From what I hear, there is a strike planned to counter this. Coming to Piracy, its ridiculous to think that they are going to stop piracy by banning torrent and video sites. In a country where pirated CD's are available on the footpath for the price of peanuts, Piracy isn't going to be that easy to solve. In fact of bulk of the piracy business happens, through those means. Very few people apart from the computer savvy ones know how to use torrents, or even know what torrents are.
- chives 14y agoTime to start distributing tor. Though I am frankly amazed that pastebin was blocked. I know what its used for... everything. It is about as nefarious as a chalk board. When are those getting banned?
- kamaal 14y agoBasically anything that makes content sharing easy, becomes a threat to the government. The thing is Radio, TV and Papers are already bought by the government. Its paid media, and media that is isn't paid is generally killed. Internet is a dangerous beast. No centralized control, amazingly rich content can be shared seamlessly. This is dangerous to the government. That is why there is so much commotion.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Jagat 14y ago
- factorialboy 14y agoLet's hit them where it hurts. Sign and share this petition.. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-the-congress-party-for/ http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-the-c... ..and we can announce that we're a vote bank that can hurt them.
- biggfoot 14y agoHow does this help? At all?
- factorialboy 14y agoIf there are enough votes at stake, the politicians will back our interests.
- powerslave12r 14y agoNo, hitting them where it hurts is by cancelling your subscription. Speak the language they understand, vote with your money.
- biggfoot 14y agoJust in: the motion to get the draconian IT Rules 2011 act annulled has been negatived. https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030528 https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030... This and acts like it are central to such ridiculousness even being possible ...
- mqzaidi 14y agoI am using airtel in New Delhi and the sites seem to be working. specifically checked vimeo, xmarks, pastebin. This is from our leased line via Airtel, so it seems that corporates are exempt from the ban.
- senthilnayagam 14y agoit is banned in chennai, can't access on my office leased line
- statictype 14y agoThey only blocked http access, it looks like. Sites that support https still work. I guess the ISPs are only sniffing port 80?
- kamaal 14y agoNo, It means the people who are blocking sites don't know how to do it properly. Having said that, this is hardly surprising.
- fjellfras 14y agoAt least vimeo is still blocked on port 443.
- statictype 14y agoI think that's because they redirect to http? The Pirate Bay works on https (I love that they have legit certs)
- RealGeek 14y agoI can access most of the websites using https, but Vimeo redirects to http site.
- sceptre 14y agoNo it is not. I am on Tata and all the mentioned sites are still accesible.
- arc_of_descent 14y agoI am using Airtel in Mumbai and the sites are blocked. Crazy stuff!
- samhan 14y agoThe indian govt is trying to get the UN to regulate the internet with help from countries like Russia and some Arab countries . Its trying to form a 50 member UN Committee called the Committee for Internet Policy . They re saying its to end the US dominance over Internet Policy .. Im suspicious..
- samhan 14y agoMore details here http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article2604526.ece http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article2604526.ece
- Apocryphon 14y agoHow ironic they do not listen to their own countryman, U.N. Commissioner Pravin Lal. "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
- buildspace 14y agoNow Anonymous - operation India have protested by taking down the websites of supreme court of India and AICC (ruling party of India) websites.
- bkvirendra 14y agoWTFFF !!!!! What does Pastebin & Vimeo even have to do with the "Piracy Stuff" !!! How foolish is the Indian Government !! Seriously !!!
- mikehoward 14y agoThis should shift the s/w outsourcing edge away from India. I think the rest of the world should consider this good news and encourage them to find more creative ways to 'protect' against imaginary criminal activity.
- paraschopra 14y agoMy faith in universal human rationality is decreasing day by day.
- SudarshanP 14y agoVery few humans are rational...
- shreyas-satish 14y agoHere's the court order for the inclined - http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to-block-sites http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to-block-s... IANAL, but as far as the court order goes there are no specific sites mentioned to be blocked. This implies, service providers like Airtel have perceived the aforementioned sites to be liable for copyright infringement. It is curious as to how they decided Pastebin and not Youtube could be used for "copyright infringement".
- bmuon 14y agoI'm confused. It says "...or anyone claiming through them be and are hereby restrained (...) from in any manner infringing the applicant's copyright in the cinematographic film...". How is it that a court can order someone not to break the law? And how can that be understood as "cease all operations"?
- xxiao 14y agowhy is that? esp on pastebin that is.
- super_mario 14y agoIsn't it great India also wants to rally all the world's governments to take control over the internet, overseen of course by the UN http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3423018.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3423018.ece
- barbazfoo12 14y agoAre they blocking by IP or just DNS? Are you guys typing just domain names, or are you trying the IP addresses too? Add a line to your HOSTS file and see what happens: 74.113.233.128 vimeo.com www.vimeo.com
- drostie 14y agoSeveral are claiming that HTTPS still works, which means it's not DNS-level or IP-level. It may be IP+port level, or the only thing that I can really think which is left is deep-packet inspection: a Linux user in India could easily test this with something like: curl -v -H "Host: thepiratebay.se" http://www.google.com/
- gsa 14y agoI got "Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when I tried this. It's not surprising, because a year or so ago Airtel was using deep packet inspection to throttle torrents and file sharing sites. They already have the necessary equipment in place, they can use it when and as they please.
- altrego99 14y agoExcellent, http://74.113.233.128/ http://74.113.233.128/ works.
- _rj 14y agoThis is pretty lame, blocking sites is not the way to go. If you find something that is pirated, flag/report it to get the video removed.
- biggfoot 14y agoJust to clear up some air here ... The government, as in the Central or State governing bodies have not blocked any sites, nor have they passed any orders for the same. The issue involves a company, Copyright Labs (http://www.copyrightlabs.in/index.php http://www.copyrightlabs.in/index.php) which through the Madras High Court got a John Doe order to get ISPs to block access to certain sites to 'ensure' that an upcoming movie is not pirated. What is worrying w.r.t. the government is summed up quite aptly here: https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/203065263132905472 https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/20306526313290...
- gnufied 14y agoExactly. Drumming this news as somehow - Executive arm of our constitution took power in its hands and decided to block websites unilaterally is false. I still lament the lack of knowledge judiciary has, when it comes to passing judgement on such things but I don't see Central or State Govt. at fault here.
- biggfoot 14y agoThe Central govt general 'control everything' approach does make things worse, especially given their track record of not being able to do anything useful in the past 5, I dare even say 10, years.
- ajross 14y agoIs that really a meaningful distinction? The judiciary is part of the government, and the other parts are bound by its decisions. Honestly I don't know how judges in India are selected, but presumably it's subject to the same democratic checks as elsewhere (either because they are directly elected or because they are appointed by elected politicians). "The government" doesn't get off the hook just because it was a court that did the dirty work.
- sdqali 14y agoI use Airtel at home and these sites are blocked. But we use a different ISP at work and vimeo and pastebin are not blocked. Can anybody who uses another ISP confirm that it is not just Airtel?
- unpsynd 14y agoThe CEO of Copyrightlabs was just on TV. He says he wanted the ISPs to only block specific URLs serving pirated content but the ISPs went ahead and blocked the whole sites
- fjellfras 14y agoWhat channel was this on? I want to follow this on TV but have not seen this reported yet.
- jk 14y agoCourt _has not_ ordered to block any website. The order asks ISPs to make sure that illegal copies of movies does not get distributed. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...
- irahul 14y agoIf you want to access the blocked sites, the surest way is to get a free mini instance with amazon(or use an existing one), and use ssh dynamic port forwarding for you browsing. ssh -D 8080 -i your_amazon_key.pem username@ec2-instance # Followed by changing your browser/system settings to use localhost:8080 as socks v5 proxy If you are concerned about some ass-hats censoring the web because of some upcoming movie I don't give two fucks about, or Airtel/Reliance bending over backwards to enforce the ban, I don't know what to do. "Some movie is coming out, we are afraid we will lose revenue if people pirate it. I know what to do. Let's get a court order asking ISPs to ban sites which are infringing upon the movie(the good old ISP, takes the safer route and blocks whole sites since it doesn't know or doesn't want to stop just the movie). Hey look, people are still able to get through to the movie. Let's get another court order asking the ISPs to stop service altogether for 6 months." "Rape cases on a rise and most rapes happen at night. Let's stop people from going out at night. Still not working. Let's stop people from going out altogether." I can understand the concerns about loss of revenue over piracy, but these dystopian measures aren't worth whatever hypothetical losses you might be suffering.
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoIn that case may as well install a proxy on the mini-instance, along with an OpenVPN server. There are OpenVPN clients available for most platforms, configuration is easy and using it is trivial ("install and forget").
- _feda_ 14y agoI suppose we just have to have faith in the average techie's ability to bypass these restrictions, which seem to be becoming a global phenomenon, not just a western one. OK I know china has blocked a huge amount of sites for years, but it's only recently in the west that serious impingements on our right to information have begun to happen. As for the masses who don't have a clue how to use a VPN or a proxy, I feel sorry for them. They're becoming victims of control.
- altrego99 14y agoSolutions? Using Firefox & Windows.
- stfu 14y agoI personally think that it is actually a good thing that they are targeting these sites and hope they are going to ban YouTube as well. People need to feel the pain of censorship in order to act, and the more popular the censored websites are, the more I see a chance for action.
- blrblr 14y agoNo website can be blocked. If they think they blocked any, they are only fooling themselves.
- anilgupte 14y agoWhile I agree that Vimeo and DailyMotion should not have been blocked since they don't allow pirated video, it is possible that KolaveriDi did appear there and that evidence must have been presented to the court to get a block on those sites. If that is not true then I am sure someone will appeal. However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file downloads. There is a good reason why Bollywood is so much smaller than Hollywood - rampant Piracy in India. Remember you are doing India a great disservice by pirating - India loses jobs and creative people suffer.
- qxcv 14y ago> However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file downloads. Except this isn't shutting down pirate sites, this is making sure that 90% of people can't access them by ordering major ISPs to interfere with communications between their customers and the websites in question (some might call this "censorship" or "protectionism"). I agree that TPB-style piracy is usually a bad thing, but do the ends really justify the means here? The blocking of Vimeo and Dailymotion suggest that this is a very, very slippery slope.
- naveenrawath 14y agoMadras / Chennai High court violated Human rights.. By banning of torrent sites and video sharing sites or else more hacking of Indian govt site may rise
- owaislone 14y agoIndia is a retarded nation
- sadevil 14y agoi think freedom is our fundamental right. but it seems some political parties want that people in India, behave like a Chinese people, where you do not have any right to say anything against govt.its very ridiculous person like some leader is free to move anywhere and they can promote any lady to just full fill one demand of sex.our Leader says that its fundamental right of that person.but,we are not allowed to watch video according to our choice.