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17-year-old student exposes Germany's 'secret' pirate site blocklist
- _blk 2y agoGiven the secrecy of the list, the lack of court orders and little to no accountability, I'm very impressed to find "only" 104 main domains.
- ulbu 2y ago[flagged]
- netsharc 2y agoThe use of clearing here means something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_house_(finance) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearing_house_(finance) , i.e. an independent body so that copyright holders don't have to contact every single ISP, and ISPs just have to argue against the DNS blocks with a single party instead of many copyright holders.
- fsckboy 2y ago>the site also links to various options available to the public to circumvent the blocking efforts. This includes switching to third party DNS resolvers says what is blocked is at the DNS level; I guess that means not blackholing routing to the IP addresses interestingly, the benchmark sites I use to conduct my censorship research are not even in their list?
- treprinum 2y agoI can confirm, they are banned but VPN or Tor can access them without any issues. So it's only to prevent normies from accessing them.
- johannes1234321 2y agoIt's even simpler: Those blocks are implemented in DNS. Pick 8.8.8.8 or some other public DNS server and blocks are bypassed. (And pick another ISP - it's their job to provide neutral net access, not mess with it, especially not mess with it without court order or something just by request of some private companies)
- SoftTalker 2y agoSome ISPs prevent you from using other DNS. Comcast/Xfinity modem/routers for example.
- haswell 2y agoThis can still be overridden on each client system behind those routers, but this is also another good reason to avoid renting your modem/router. Products like NextDNS also provide a client app to simplify the process of overriding DNS.
- hobofan 2y agoMost stock ISP routers in Germany I've seen allow you to set custom DNS in a straightforward manner. And even if they don't, for a few years now there is a law that guarantees you the right to choose your own router (because previously we had quite bad bundling that forced you to rent the ISPs router), so ISPs can't lock you in like that.
- Asmod4n 2y agoThere are two types of routers consumers get here. Those where you can nearly change everything regarding DHCP and such and those given you by cable companies where you can’t even change the IP address of said router. The latter usually allows you to disable its IPv4 DHCP sever though but enforce itself as the IPv6 DNS server across your network, which can’t be disabled on your own.
- Systemmanic 2y agoLooks as though this Comcast “security feature” can be disabled via your account settings. Also, DNSSec?
- vladvasiliu 2y agoI'm not an expert on DNS, but I don't think DNSSec can actually help here, and by help I mean "unblock". Sure, their NXDOMAIN (or whatever) response will appear bogus, but your client won't be able to rebuild the missing response.
- marci 2y agoI imagine a lot of the normies that got blocked trying to get to sci-hub didn't remain normies for long.
- cocok 2y ago"We all began as something else."
- sulandor 2y agotrue it's an annoying precedent besides the tech-support labor of folks like us trying to fix it.
- darreninthenet 2y agoWhat's the betting that cuiiliste.de is added to the list next at the "request" of some anonymous rights holder...?
- Retr0id 2y agoUK ISPs block similar list-of-other-sites sites
- freitzkriesler2 2y ago[dead]
- thesnide 2y agoI feel that some will feel a kind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect soon
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah I bet this is exactly why they didn't publish the list :)
- Jun8 2y agoOther than sci-hub they seem to be almost wholly sports and movie sharing sites (one site I saw had Nintendo switch games). Surprised that libgen is not on the list.
- krtkush 2y agoI have a RPi 5 running as a Tailscale exit node in my parent's house in a developing country. The said country does not care much about what people download. qbittorrent-nox makes it very easy to download stuff by just using my browser. Plus, I have access to local, region locked streaming content and very cheap Netflix subscription.
- killingtime74 2y agoNew Zealand?
- d3m0t3p 2y agoNew Zealand, developing country ?
- kridsdale3 2y agoUntil all the sheep have iPhone 15 Pro Max in their hooves, it is.
- passwordoops 2y agoI get the sense New Zealand is too Australia what Canada is to the US
- rukuu001 2y agoSo you’re just insulting everyone now?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- red-iron-pine 2y agoa vast source of natural resources and hockey stars?
- tamimio 2y ago
- konstantinua00 2y agowhy was it kept secret?
- marcosdumay 2y agoTo be fair, a public list of DNS blocking is guaranteed to work even worse than a secret one.
- gsich 2y agoit wasn't
- wkat4242 2y agoI'm really surprised this list doesn't contain any of the big names I'm using. In fact I've never heard of any of these sites. I'm using many of the book sites and general torrent ones (I won't name them here), but none of these are on the list. I also think the point is kinda moot because everyone doing torrents in Germany will already use VPN because it's only a matter of time before you get serious letters from lawyers there, demanding about 400 euro per move they've seen you download. ISPs always cooperate in giving subscriber info for each IP. Some lawyer firms actually specialise in this and go after downloaders on their own. I wonder if they leave the big torrent sites out to provide income for these lawyers?
- sudobash1 2y agoOt of curiosity, how does this work? If a site is over https, then the only information I would think the ISP would have is the subscriber downloaded from randompiratesite.xyz what seems to be a single X GiB file. They could see that the size roughly corresponds to FooBar.mp4 on that site (plus some HTTP headers). But this seems pretty unreliable. (Like what if someone was using a download manager to get multiple large files at once, using multiple download streams per file?) I'm sure that you can get in plenty of trouble for downloading a ton of data from randompiratesite.xyz or whatever, but how the ISP determine the number of movies they've seen you download?
- leafmeal 2y agoIf they're also downloading or seeding the torrent, the learn the IPs of their peers, so they know you were downloading that particular file.
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah you can use peerblock/peerguardian, but in general there's no point. It's much less risky to simply use a VPN because there's always a risk that new IPs are not on the blocklist.
- Semaphor 2y agoIt's not the sites, it's torrenting. Without a VPN, they get your IP, and you are on the hook for "commercial distribution" (as clients also upload) unless you pay X00 euros.
- cynicalpeace 2y ago"Secret" and "German" in the same sentence makes your ears perk up
- throwuop 2y ago[flagged]
- grishka 2y agoDNS-based blocking? As someone living in a country with ever-increasing internet censorship, that's not blocking, that's a trivially ignorable gentle suggestion to not visit these sites.
- pwg 2y agoFor 99.8% of internet users, DNS based blocking is a hard stop (for them). For the remaining 0.2% who know how things work, they are a brief bump in the road to getting to the site they want to pull up.
- redprince 2y agoThe solutions are just a Google search away and easy to implement. If that stops anyone even slightly motivated I must wonder what they are generally able to achieve with a computer.
- dunefox 2y agoSo, 99.8% of people on the internet. I know of maybe four people who could circumvent this DNS block, three of which I work with at the it department.
- scbrg 2y agoFor your anecdata is somewhat relevant you need to know around 2,000 people well enough to accurately judge whether they're capable of circumventing a DNS block :-)
- bonoboTP 2y ago> wonder what they are generally able to achieve with a computer Stuff they actually do day to day. Scroll social media, use messaging apps, watch Netflix, Youtube, Twitch etc, in the older generations (millennial and up) also email and MS Office.
- chgs 2y agoDo you have any citation for those numbers? When dns blocks were in Turkey using non isp servers was common enough for it to be graffitied https://www.mic.com/articles/85987/turkish-protesters-are-spray-painting-8-8-8-8-and-8-8-4-4-on-walls-here-s-what-it-means https://www.mic.com/articles/85987/turkish-protesters-are-sp...
- 6510 2y agoBesides my opinion about file sharing this scheme seems to bypass the legal system but pretends to be based on legal grounds. What we have here is [more] privatization of the legal system and bypassing democracy. To state the obvious: If you have someone doing things you don't like in office you can vote them out and replace them with someone who doesn't do those things. This is already a slow and cumbersome process that may take decades to materialize. Or does this provide a framework for implementing direct democracy? Have a website with law proposals that can be implemented in a privatized way, have the citizens vote for and against them then pressure corporations to implement them.
- matheusmoreira 2y agoCopyright monopolists employ lobbyists. They basically buy laws which favor and protect their own monopolies and rent seeking. Voting does absolutely nothing to stop this trillion dollar industry.
- 6510 2y agoDemocracy is like Voodoo, it only works if you believe in it.
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoso many interesting new websites to check out ... LOL ...
- pazimzadeh 2y agoyeah I appreciate them putting this together
- WhatsName 2y agoMy theory is that DNS blocking is chosen deliberately. There are more effective means of blocking, but if the bypass is just 5min work, those who care will bypass it and those who don't care enough will get blocked. It's just after people get accustom to having a censorship infrastructure in place, it slowly starts spreading like cancer and gaining momentum...
- mrinfinitiesx 2y agoOpenvpn / Wireguard service is preferable, but for free: https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy sudo apt install dnscrypt-proxy sudo systemctl enable dnscrypt-proxy (or system service dnscrypt-proxy start|enable) sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf ~/resolv.conf.bak sudo rm /etc/resolv.conf sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 127.0.0.1 #back up to dns over plaintext not recomennded if your dnscrypt-proxy service stops for whatever reason (enable in systemd, too lazy to write here) #nameserver 1.1.1.1 sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf Always use DoH / DoT (DNS over HTTPS / TLS) in firefox, settings -> DNS in search select Max protection choose NexDNS, make a NexDNS account for further privacy/setting up your local DNS restrictions like ad/tracker blocks or use cloudflare. Cheap VPS proxy: on a VPS, do said dnscrypt-proxy ssh -D 8080 -i ~/.ssh/sshkey username@vps.server (always use SSH key auth, no passwords) in firefox, set up proxy 127.0.0.1 8080 select 'Use DNS through proxy' - can set proxy settings at OS level to use DNS. There's some options for you. Tailscale works, haven't tried it though.
- ruthmarx 2y agoI don't see obscuring DNS queries as that useful when you just go ahead and connect to the server you wanted the address of directly anyway.
- codedokode 2y agoBoth openvpn and wireguard protocols are trivially blocked by DPI. Why do people make custom protocols today? Everybody should use something standard and indistinguishable, like QUIC, DTLS or TLS1.3, for their transport layer.
- red-iron-pine 2y agomakes me think of the Harvard kid that called in a bomb threat via Tor -- and was the only one on campus using Tor. so even though that stream was itself encrypted, it was trivially easy to track down that one guy and tie it to him.
- whatindaheck 2y ago
- submeta 2y agoWill using NordVPN help? Anyone knows this?
- stuffoverflow 2y agoSince you didn't get a serious answer yet... Yes, VPNs typically use their own DNS and NordVPN is no different. As far as I've seen, the copyright trolls in Europe always go for the lowest hanging fruit which are the IP addresses of residential users. I imagine IP addresses belonging to servers or VPNs are basically disregarded.
- submeta 2y agoThank you very much for the detailed response
- 3np 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20368963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20368963
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoNo, NordVPN sucks. I can tell by the fact that so many sites with trash content sing it's praises. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
- mtron_ 2y agoAustrian Provider liwest is since many years very transparent about their DNS blocks. All of them are based on court orders / eu sanctions. https://netzsperre.liwest.at/ https://netzsperre.liwest.at/
- slymax 2y agothe regulator in Austria (RTR) publishes all the blocked domains across all ISPs with information regarding the legal basis for each domain https://www.rtr.at/TKP/was_wir_tun/telekommunikation/weitere-regulierungsthemen/netzneutralitaet/nn_blockings.de.html https://www.rtr.at/TKP/was_wir_tun/telekommunikation/weitere...
- gustavus 2y agoJust imagine how easy this pirate list could be turned into a "misinformation" list. Makes you think.
- tamimio 2y agoWait till you know that airplanes and landlords also maintain secret, unregulated lists.
- silexia 2y agoSunlight and transparency are good. All attempts at secrecy should be eliminated.
- mattdee 2y agosave
- janandonly 2y agoI am shocked that sci-hub is on that list. Could this explain the economic and academic decline of Germany these last few years?
- bowsamic 2y agoNo? What a bizarre suggestion
- gverrilla 2y agotorrentfreak.com is legendary
- nilsherzig 2y agoHow nice of them to collect this list of working piracy solutions haha