[HN Gopher] 17-Year-Old Student Exposes Germany's 'Secret' Pirat...
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       17-Year-Old Student Exposes Germany's 'Secret' Pirate Site
       Blocklist
        
       Author : isaacfrond
       Score  : 370 points
       Date   : 2024-08-23 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
        
       | _blk wrote:
       | Given 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 wrote:
       | (unimportant comment, but) clean up the internet by blocking sci-
       | hub? excuse me, are you f*ing daft?
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | The use of clearing here means something like
         | 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 wrote:
       | > _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 wrote:
       | I 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 wrote:
         | It'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 wrote:
           | Some ISPs prevent you from using other DNS. Comcast/Xfinity
           | modem/routers for example.
        
             | haswell wrote:
             | This 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 wrote:
             | Most 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 wrote:
               | There 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 wrote:
             | Looks as though this Comcast "security feature" can be
             | disabled via your account settings.
             | 
             | Also, DNSSec?
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | I'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.
        
             | chii wrote:
             | how does that work? You can just set your operating system
             | to not use the ISP provided DNS server, even if the ISP
             | provided router/modem is locked and cannot be changed.
        
               | cortesoft wrote:
               | They could block all outgoing traffic to port 53,
               | although you could work around that by setting up a DNS
               | server on a different port outside the network
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Yes I'm pretty sure this is what they do. The DHCP from
               | the router gives 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.76.76. I've tried
               | overriding that with different resolvers in my
               | /etc/resolv.conf and it doesn't work. And logging in to
               | the modem/router config does not offer any option to
               | change DNS settings.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | i wonder if this will circumvent that sort of blocking:
               | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-
               | https
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | I just tried it. I enabled it at the "Max Protection"
               | level, used the default provider setting (Cloudflare) and
               | it works. So it seems the answer is yes. So that's a
               | pretty simple workaround that covers most cases. I'm
               | guessing that most of the DNS lookups that people would
               | want to be private are happening via a web browser.
        
               | pimeys wrote:
               | I'm in Germany, and running my custom opnsense router
               | with adblocker DNS connected to one of the big DoH
               | providers. Never had any issues, not even with using
               | plain old DNS in port 53.
               | 
               | Vodafone Kable, so YMMV.
               | 
               | Always a bit scared to switch providers of course, you
               | never know if you get cgnat and blocked DNS servers. They
               | are building a Deutsche Telekom fiber to our street this
               | summer. It's tempting for the 200 Mbps uplink, But I have
               | no idea is it then CGNAT and do they even provide real
               | IPv6. It's never mentioned in the advertisement.
        
             | lasr_velocirptr wrote:
             | I am sure if you use DoT or DoH it's going to be very hard
             | for ISP to block using your own DNS even if you rented a
             | modem/router from them. It does need client-side support
             | though.
        
               | pxc wrote:
               | > It does need client-side support though.
               | 
               | Not really! You can buy a router that ships with OpenWrt
               | out-of-the-box and just toggle a little checkbox. Plug
               | that into your ISP's router (or use a wireless bridge in
               | client mode, that's supported, too) and connect all of
               | your devices through that. Now all your devices use DoH
               | and don't even know it.
        
               | Asmod4n wrote:
               | No need for client support, you could just deploy it on a
               | Linux vm running somewhere on your network and let that
               | be the dns server served via dhcp.
               | 
               | For extra points you could deploy a firewall which
               | intercepts all DNS requests and forwards them to that
               | machine. Some apps have hardcoded DNS servers and ignore
               | what you have configured.
        
               | codedokode wrote:
               | ISP can simply compile a blacklist of publicly available
               | encrypted DNS resolvers and block them.
        
               | lasr_velocirptr wrote:
               | not really feasible for non technical folks but at that
               | point you start to run a dns proxy in cloud with static
               | ip and proxy all your dns requests using DoH to that IP.
               | That would be really hard to block without blocking all
               | outbound https connections
        
             | saghm wrote:
             | Is it possible to use your own router/modem for Comcast?
             | Between my last two apartments and my current one I've had
             | Spectrum, Optimum, and RCN as ISPs in the past decade or
             | so, and with all three of them I was able to use my own
             | router and modem (doing a quick google ahead of setup to
             | make sure that I found instances of people online saying
             | the hardware I had worked for them). It definitely
             | _shouldn't_ be something people have to do in order to be
             | able to have unrestricted internet, but sadly it's far from
             | the only thing that sucks about ISPs. In my current
             | apartment, I have no other option for ISP other than
             | Spectrum, and they seem to get outages far more often than
             | they should (and don't "notify" me until around 20 minutes
             | after I check their website for outages in my area and it
             | says there aren't any).
        
               | pxc wrote:
               | You can always plug your own router into the LAN port of
               | a shitty ISP's combo modem/router device, too, even if
               | they won't give a connection to any other device than
               | their own and they defeat all your spoofing attempts.
               | 
               | I haven't used a proprietary router in my entire adult
               | life, except as a WAN connection for my 'real' router
               | with some shitty ISPs.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Yes, you can use your own modem, but they give you
               | incentives to use theirs. You can also put their combo
               | modem/router into bridge mode and use your own router.
               | But that's a bit more of a reach for the average person,
               | vs. just changing the DNS addresses in a config page
               | (which is already more than 95% of people will do).
        
               | 0xffff2 wrote:
               | > even if they won't give a connection to any other
               | device than their own
               | 
               | AFAIK they are legally required to maintain a list of
               | compatible devices and accept any modem that is on that
               | list.
        
               | pxc wrote:
               | My cellular ISP doesn't seem to be bound by that, even
               | though every cable ISP I've been with has. :(
               | 
               | If there's some US law I can cite at them like a magic
               | invocation to make their dumb combo device go away in
               | favor of my own cellular modem, though, I'd like to.
        
               | staplers wrote:
               | They make it difficult but I've done it for over a
               | decade. They incentivize by offering no data cap if you
               | use their bs router.
               | 
               | However, once you learn how much data is collected/sold
               | about you from the router level you won't want to go
               | back.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | > They incentivize by offering no data cap if you use
               | their bs router.
               | 
               | Yes, this is why I switched over to their modem-router, I
               | was starting to hit their caps every month and it was
               | costing me a lot of money.
               | 
               | I really don't care if they monitize that my live-in
               | mother-in-law streams game shows all day.
        
               | salad-tycoon wrote:
               | 1.2 tb is a lot according to them.
               | 
               | >However, once you learn how much data is collected/sold
               | about you from the router level you won't want to go
               | back.
               | 
               | I need to be scared straight. Go on.
        
             | pxc wrote:
             | Do they block DNS-over-HTTPS? I bet not.
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | ISP equipment should be considered compromised. They even
             | have remote access. We should buy our own routers and
             | bridge them to the networks of ISPs.
        
             | loeg wrote:
             | I was a Comcast customer for 10+ years prior to 2017 and at
             | the time they did not block foreign DNS servers.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | They don't block them generally, but their newer consumer
               | modem/router/WAP "appliances" do. If you use your own,
               | you can set whatever DNS you want, but you will have
               | lower data caps and lose some incentive pricing that you
               | can get if you use theirs.
               | 
               | I'd guess if you get business tier service you have more
               | options also, but I've never had that.
        
               | loeg wrote:
               | I was on ordinary residential service. At the time, using
               | their device cost more money than BYO, and the data caps
               | were identical (or rather, there mostly weren't data
               | caps).
        
             | redprince wrote:
             | As this particular issue of DNS blocking pertains to
             | Germany: By law (EU Commission Directive 2008/63/EC and
             | national law TKG SS 73 Abs 1) the ISP must allow the free
             | choice of routers and has to provide all access codes. So
             | even if an ISP provided router would be uncooperative,
             | there is always the choice of just not using it.
        
         | marci wrote:
         | I imagine a lot of the normies that got blocked trying to get
         | to sci-hub didn't remain normies for long.
        
         | sulandor wrote:
         | true
         | 
         | it's an annoying precedent besides the tech-support labor of
         | folks like us trying to fix it.
        
       | darreninthenet wrote:
       | What's the betting that cuiiliste.de is added to the list next at
       | the "request" of some anonymous rights holder...?
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | UK ISPs block similar list-of-other-sites sites
        
       | thesnide wrote:
       | I feel that some will feel a kind of
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect soon
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | Yeah I bet this is exactly why they didn't publish the list :)
        
       | Jun8 wrote:
       | Other 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 wrote:
       | I 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 wrote:
         | New Zealand?
        
           | d3m0t3p wrote:
           | New Zealand, developing country ?
        
             | kridsdale3 wrote:
             | Until all the sheep have iPhone 15 Pro Max in their hooves,
             | it is.
        
               | passwordoops wrote:
               | I get the sense New Zealand is too Australia what Canada
               | is to the US
        
               | rukuu001 wrote:
               | So you're just insulting everyone now?
        
               | red-iron-pine wrote:
               | a vast source of natural resources and hockey stars?
        
               | tamimio wrote:
               | Replace sheep with moose and kiwis with geese first.
        
               | grecy wrote:
               | More importantly, Australia is to New Zealand what the US
               | is to Canada.
               | 
               | (Note: I'm Australian, been living in Canada for almost
               | 20 years and only recently had someone explain that to me
               | and suddenly it all made sense!)
        
               | lostlogin wrote:
               | There aren't many sheep. We have moved on to cows.
        
           | Brajeshwar wrote:
           | I think Maharashtra, India.
        
         | bloqs wrote:
         | Is there a service to rent these?
        
           | veqq wrote:
           | How much would you pay for that - compared to existing VPN
           | solutions? You can find cloud hosts or server rentals in
           | Bosnia, Colombia or wherever fairly easily.
        
             | amatecha wrote:
             | You can technically just get any ol' VPS and install the
             | respective/relevant software on it. Just check that the VPS
             | provider doesn't forbid torrenting/etc. in their ToS, I
             | guess :)
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | A service like that would be worth a premiumize amount
        
             | kridsdale3 wrote:
             | ISWYDT
        
           | everforward wrote:
           | This sounds similar to a seedbox, a server rented to do
           | piracy so DMCA complaints and such are sent to your seedbox
           | provider instead of you.
           | 
           | The seedbox providers are typically headquartered somewhere
           | where they can just burn DMCA notices. The servers themselves
           | are also often located in piracy friendly jurisdictions (the
           | Netherlands used to be common, not sure what's current).
           | 
           | They usually come pre-installed with a remotely accessible
           | torrent client like Deluge, Transmission, etc. Also often
           | includes other software like VPNs, Plex, etc.
           | 
           | You should be relatively safe using one. The server does all
           | the torrenting, you just download the files over FTP so you
           | never appear in the swarm directly. It's also a huge pain in
           | the ass for law enforcement because it becomes international
           | quickly. You're in country X, the server with its IP in the
           | swarm is in country Y, and the company that has the rental
           | agreement with the data center for the server is in country
           | Z.
           | 
           | Anecdotally, I used to spend some time in the space and I
           | can't recall a seed box provider ever getting raided. I think
           | they just generally don't bother with folks technical enough
           | to go that far; there are easier fish to fry.
        
             | princevegeta89 wrote:
             | Are these guaranteed to be permanently online?
             | 
             | Do they come with root access if we end up renting one?
        
               | lyu07282 wrote:
               | Depends on the seedbox most will give you root/ssh,
               | others just give you a APi/web interface to a managed
               | torrent client which can be convenient. Check r/seedboxes
        
               | princevegeta89 wrote:
               | thanks! this sounds interesting
        
               | everforward wrote:
               | They're guaranteed to be permanently online as much as
               | such a thing can be for $20/month or whatever. They don't
               | shut it down if you're not using it, if that's what
               | you're asking but they do occasionally come down for
               | upgrades/migrations/incidents/etc. I'd ballpark most
               | providers in the 99% uptime range.
               | 
               | Some provide root, some don't. Last I checked, you'll pay
               | more for root because most of the servers are physical so
               | you have to rent a whole server basically.
               | 
               | The servers are typically IO bound on the NIC so they
               | aren't super picky about what you do with CPU and memory.
               | They won't let you run a crypto miner or do heavily
               | parallel transcoding, but if you want to chuck a
               | Python+SQLite web app on there I doubt they'd care.
        
             | Xen9 wrote:
             | It's by the way interesting idea that developing countries
             | entertrainment industries may develop very differently due
             | to internet piracy being already prevalent, though foreign
             | investment may lead to this not happening, IE an
             | "agreement" like TiSA or TTP will mean laws that lead to
             | loss of investments like "no copyright" would become
             | "illegal."
             | 
             | I'd hope someone prepares for that, and when it happens
             | proposes a vote or public address, for laws that make the
             | attempts backfire.
        
           | sulandor wrote:
           | "residential proxy"
           | 
           | providing such a service (-network) is a popular monetization
           | option for all kinds of useless crapware. this is very
           | useful, but even more shady than regular vpn providers.
        
         | princevegeta89 wrote:
         | Netflix subscription - Netflix stopped access to streaming for
         | accounts unless you're in the original country of billing. Are
         | you streaming Netflix through your tunnel as well?
        
           | manmal wrote:
           | Why not, that's one of the main use cases for Tailscale.
        
           | krtkush wrote:
           | > Are you streaming Netflix through your tunnel as well?
           | 
           | Yep!
        
       | konstantinua00 wrote:
       | why was it kept secret?
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | To be fair, a public list of DNS blocking is guaranteed to work
         | even worse than a secret one.
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | I'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 wrote:
         | Ot 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?
        
           | Semaphor wrote:
           | It'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.
        
             | rurban wrote:
             | Private torrenting is certainly not commercial
             | distribution.
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | Tell that to our courts ;)
        
               | gruez wrote:
               | Commercial distribution isn't the only way you can
               | violate copyrights
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | Just violating copyright wouldn't really matter. Damages
               | would be tiny, and so would be what the lawyers can
               | blackmail you for. It's being on the hook for the damages
               | of distribution that gets the high fees.
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | Please tell me what's wrong about my comment instead of
               | blindly downvoting, thank you.
        
           | leafmeal wrote:
           | If 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 wrote:
             | Yeah 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.
        
           | loeg wrote:
           | > 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
           | 
           | That isn't how torrent sites work. You visit site.xyz and
           | download a .torrent file in the realm of 10s-100s (typically)
           | of kB and that contains some metadata that a dedicated
           | torrent client consumes. The torrent client connects to (1)
           | some tracker via http (or https, but usually http) which may
           | or may not be associated with the site the .torrent came
           | from, to register as part of the swarm, and (2) any number of
           | peer torrent clients. The actual data (X GiB) transfer comes
           | from those peers; not the original site.xyz nor the tracker.
           | 
           | ISPs can observe DNS lookups / connections to site.xyz;
           | tracker "announces" (that's (1) above), especially if they
           | are http. And even the peer-to-peer traffic has a distinct
           | protocol which is recognizable with packet inspection. But
           | the main avenue for finding offenders, I believe, is just
           | downloading the same .torrents for some specific copyrighted
           | content and using the torrents' associated tracker(s) to
           | enumerate swarm peer IP addresses.
        
             | Hypnosis6173 wrote:
             | Thats not how piracy in germany works. Torrenting for
             | german content is quite uncommon. Normally the pages either
             | point to sites hosting a streamabale version of the video
             | content or point to a external file hoster (e.g.
             | Rapidgator).
        
               | bonoboTP wrote:
               | > Torrenting for german content is quite uncommon.
               | 
               | Obviously, because, as the chain of comments above your
               | shows, torrent users are easily caught and get fined to
               | hundreds of euros per downloaded movie. Then they stop
               | using torrent and tell all their friends about the
               | experience. This has been going on for more than a
               | decade, maybe two. So by now, German culture has adapted
               | and people don't use torrents.
        
               | looperhacks wrote:
               | You are downvoted, but from my experience, you are pretty
               | correct. Most people I know will use a streaming site,
               | then sharehosters (good old boerse comes to mind -
               | Megaupload, Rapidshare and Uploaded were the big hosters
               | I remember)
               | 
               | I even know of more people using Usenet then torrents!
               | The amount of work to use torrents safely just isn't
               | worth it for most people.
        
               | tourmalinetaco wrote:
               | They are downvoted because it was an obvious and low-
               | quality statement, as another comment outlined. Torrents
               | publicly expose IPs and thus can be seen by copyright
               | Nazis, but streaming/direct downloading has so far been
               | safe.
        
               | loeg wrote:
               | This thread[1] is talking about torrents in particular.
               | 
               | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330098
        
         | Krasnol wrote:
         | They've been blocked because they became too popular.
         | 
         | I've heard from kinox from people I would have never suspected
         | to be even capable of finding such a site.
         | 
         | Guess those people have been the marker.
        
           | Sakos wrote:
           | Probably been told about it by friends. Whenever I find a
           | decent site, I pass it on to anybody I know who needs it.
           | kinox used to be one of those sites.
        
         | Green-Man wrote:
         | 700EUR per movie is a current rate, plus a couple of hundreds
         | as legal fees.
        
         | ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
         | nsw2u is something I've used when I wanted to look at the
         | current state of switch emulation
        
         | imhoguy wrote:
         | Sci-Hub domains are listed, that is big.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | What is that? I've never heard of it.
        
             | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
             | It's where we go to get peer reviewed scientific journal
             | articles.
        
               | manmal wrote:
               | An alternative that often works being annas-archive.org.
        
               | mazdayasna wrote:
               | It's also run by a Putin and Stalin worshipping crazy
               | lady
        
             | Sakos wrote:
             | You haven't heard of the biggest source of paywalled
             | research papers on the planet? It's a fantastic resource
             | for when you don't want to pay 40 Euros for a single paper
             | and you don't happen to be part of a university that
             | happens to be subscribed to the right journal.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | And libgen?
        
           | rightbyte wrote:
           | It wouldn't surprise me if not having access to Sci-hub is
           | about as bad for research and academiaishnesshood as ...
           | dunno... like really bad.
        
         | Sakos wrote:
         | I use and have used a large number of these. Many of them are
         | primarily German streaming sites. Ziperto is a file hosting
         | site, which you'd only come into contact with through certain
         | kinds of direct download piracy sites. I'm not surprised you
         | haven't heard of any of them, even though they are actually
         | quite popular in some circles.
        
       | cynicalpeace wrote:
       | "Secret" and "German" in the same sentence makes your ears perk
       | up
        
       | grishka wrote:
       | DNS-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 wrote:
         | For 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 wrote:
           | The 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 wrote:
             | So, 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 wrote:
               | For 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 wrote:
             | > 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 wrote:
           | Do 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-
           | sp...
        
             | Krasnol wrote:
             | Blocking content, even or especially not pirate content, is
             | common in Turkey.
             | 
             | It is not in Germany.
             | 
             | Therefore, more people in Turkey would know about measures
             | to circumvent it than in Germany.
        
           | bonoboTP wrote:
           | It's a hard stop because Germans don't really care so much.
           | They are rich enough that they can just pay for a legal
           | streaming platform or to just buy the movies and games. In
           | actually poor countries where the price is a real stumbling
           | block, people do figure out how to use the required tools. In
           | Eastern Europe, usage of torrent is common knowledge among
           | average people. Everyone has some friend or family member who
           | will explain and install it for them and they are motivated
           | to learn. It's remarkable how much better people become at
           | computer skills once it's about getting access to your
           | favorite TV shows, movies or games.
        
             | throwaway290 wrote:
             | > In Eastern Europe, usage of torrent is common knowledge
             | among average people. Everyone has some friend or family
             | member who will explain and install it for them and they
             | are motivated to learn
             | 
             | Germans are not using torrent not because they don't have
             | the knowledge but because they will get sued unless they
             | take other anonymization measures that cost money and slow
             | down speed so why not just pay for Netflix. In developing
             | countries enforcement is not so great that's all
        
         | azernik wrote:
         | The point is:
         | 
         | 1. Cynically, for bureaucrats to be able to claim they're doing
         | something about an issue the politicians care about, but which
         | the bureaucrats think is a non-issue. 2. Less cynically, to
         | take away plausible deniability for the torrenter about whether
         | the thing is allowed or not.
        
         | sulandor wrote:
         | germany had really nice internet until a few years ago
         | 
         | but yea, it's very annoying
        
       | 6510 wrote:
       | Besides 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 wrote:
         | Copyright 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.
        
       | 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
       | so many interesting new websites to check out ... LOL ...
        
         | pazimzadeh wrote:
         | yeah I appreciate them putting this together
        
       | WhatsName wrote:
       | My 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 wrote:
       | Openvpn / Wireguard service is preferable, but for free:
       | 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.
        
         | codedokode wrote:
         | Both 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 wrote:
           | makes 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.
        
           | lyu07282 wrote:
           | Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any ISP does DPI
           | for mass censorship, that would be way to expensive
        
             | codedokode wrote:
             | Russia and China uses DPI, although they often use
             | relatively simple heuristics (like matching a SNI in the
             | beginning of a TLS session).
        
           | ignoramous wrote:
           | > _wireguard protocols are trivially blocked by DPI_
           | 
           | There's at least 2 or more different efforts to make
           | WireGuard DPI resistant. Ex:
           | https://github.com/database64128/swgp-go
           | 
           | Interestingly, Cloudflare (and Apple?) have begun switching
           | to MASQUE: https://blog.cloudflare.com/zero-trust-warp-with-
           | a-masque
           | 
           | > _Everybody should use something standard ... like QUIC,
           | DTLS or TLS1.3, for their transport layer._
           | 
           | Very common for anti-censorship tools (V2Ray, XRay, Clash,
           | Hysteria, Trojan, uTLS, Snowflake, SingBox, Outline etc) to
           | use these.
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | > _something standard and indistinguishable, like QUIC, DTLS
           | or TLS1.3, for their transport layer._
           | 
           | Exactly this does exist, search for xray / xtls-reality.
           | 
           | A node pretends to be a valid web site, with a valid third-
           | party TLS certificate (like a CDN node serving that website),
           | until a correct secret key is presented, then it looks like
           | regular TLS-encrypted web traffic.
           | 
           | E.g. https://github.com/XTLS/Xray-core -- most documentation,
           | sadly but expectedly, is in Chinese and Russian, because
           | these folks seem to need this most.
        
       | submeta wrote:
       | Will using NordVPN help? Anyone knows this?
        
         | 3np wrote:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20368963
        
       | mtron_ wrote:
       | Austrian 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/
        
       | gustavus wrote:
       | Just imagine how easy this pirate list could be turned into a
       | "misinformation" list. Makes you think.
        
         | tamimio wrote:
         | Wait till you know that airplanes and landlords also maintain
         | secret, unregulated lists.
        
       | silexia wrote:
       | Sunlight and transparency are good. All attempts at secrecy
       | should be eliminated.
        
       | mattdee wrote:
       | save
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-23 23:00 UTC)