Australian ISP's ordered to block torrent sites by todays federal court decision
Illustration by John Shakespeare [source]
The Australian government has just ordered all local internet service providers to block all access to these websites, with 15 days to comply :
- The Pirate Bay
Torrentz(malware warning)- Torrent Hounds
- ISOHUNT
- Solar Movie
In total 61 domains will be blocked- the list can be viewed in the court order here.
This case will be the first time site-blocking legislation has been successfully used in Australia, so of course it's being used to protect profits for massive media companies.
Who pushed for the site blocks ?
The case was filed by Foxtel and Village Roadshow in Federal court back in February 2016 , and the major respondents are Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 .
No representatives of any of the affected sites were present in any court proceedings - the defending ISPs never argued against the block being implemented, they only wanted to make sure that implementation wasn't too difficult or expensive for themselves.
How will the block be implemented ?
ABC coverage of the decision gives a few clues as to how it would be implemented
Once the sites are blocked, people who continue to visit the blocked sites will see a warning page informing them the site cannot be accessed.
The "landing page" as it is referred to, will be hosted by either the ISP or the rights holder.
The page will show that access has been disabled by order of the Federal Court because it "infringes or facilitates the infringement of copyright".
This sounds like DNS hijacking - simply redirecting specific domain names to servers under ISP control instead of the rightful owners of the domain.
How do I bypass the block ?
If you're an aussie just make sure you're using not using your ISP's DNS server and in many cases you will have already bypassed the "block".
OpenDNS DNS Servers - 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Google DNS Servers - 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
Even if your ISP uses other attacks on top of DNS hijacking you would only need to use a proxy or VPN connection (riseup rock) and you'll still avoid the "block" completely.
Reactions and conclusion
Personally I think that until the content is made available in a convenient format at a reasonable price at the SAME TIME as international releases , the vast majority of Australians will continue to pirate their media.
This is a big expensive bit of theatre that will not really affect piracy, or drive anyone back to Foxtel .
This comment from shirro in the reddit discussion broke my sarcometer :
This day will go down in history as the day when millions of Australians threw off the shackles of illegal downloads and value for money streaming providers and embraced Foxtel Platinum HD at $137 per month. Truly a genius move by Foxtel that will bring people flocking back to their product.
Here's a quick look at the siteblock hashtag on twitter :
In the end, this decision and media attention is only going to serve to educate people on how to pirate more privately and securely - and teaches them not to trust their local ISP's DNS server.
This was just a massive waste of taxpayer money, court resources and time. Good job guys, you stopped piracy!
Step 1 in fixing the internet has been accomplished.
Soon, by trying to protect copyright, there will be no copyright.
Go mainstreammockingbirdfakenewsmedia!
The world will be a better place.
the more they demonstrate their hatred of freedom, the more freedom loving people will recognize them as enemies. the controllers are dooming themselves.
People still download movies? I just stream with kodi
Aha yeah I hear it's hard streaming at 4k in straya , sometimes we've gotta rough it and use Quasar to start the big torrents early ;)
BTW you're still technically downloading when you "stream" it just saves to a temporary file instead (or sits in memory) , same with youtube and every other streaming site. I hear this all the time and it drives me nuts :P
Well I don't even have a 4K tv ha ha. Still use torrents for music though
Cool! A nice big list of torrent sites to access with Tor! :D
We are special in AUSTRALIA 🇦🇺 that's why we can't have nice things.
I thought Torrentz.eu was shutdown already. Seems pointless to block it now.
Torrentz.eu still works for me I missed the shutdown news
It tries to load malware when I attempt to input a search term. I'm not so sure anyone should visit now.
Will add a warning to the links thx
Thanks for the heads up mate .great post to well crafted
Damn, this is all about Australia? Really?
Not North Korea, or China, or Russia? I'm shocked!
TOR is not blocked there yet?
I wish it wasn't true :(
Tor's not blocked yet, but downloading it puts you on a watchlist
Silly Geese...
Agreed. I remember the sixties in the UK when Rock and Roll music would never be played on Public Radio - then came Radio Caroline (Dial 999) and many other Pirate Radio stations. Now classical and modern music are available throughout the world. Although I am aware of these site, I just have no interest in them - but what happens when a Government decides to censor sites that I am interested in?
Hasn't every form of media / communication been suppressed at some point? I bet even cave men plonked each other on the heads for magically painting their hands on the walls...
https://steemit.com/funny/@inphiknit/sometimes-it-s-best-to-speak-with-a-stranger
I'm not really great with the nuts and bolts; is the NBN going to give Canberra any extra control over accessibility?
The fact that all other fixed options are being disconnected by law, is incredibly unsettling.
LOL the NBN? I remember when that boondoggle started up in 2000. Still the same shit. iiNet helped smack down the last attempt to do this nonsense. iiNet is the only good ISP in australia. Laws can't make money but they can destroy it. I hate the Aust govt. I never want to go back there and I don't even bother to replace my passport... I would love to disavow my Aust citizenship, though it is really just a middle finger and really wouldn't help me in any way.
Yes, they won't let you renounce your citizenship unless you're taking up elsewhere, due to some UN resolution against statelessness. (Which is meant to be a bad thing refugees are caught in, but sounds pretty fantastic to me)
I have also Dutch citizenship so I would not be stateless from this. But like you I like the idea of being stateless. There is an old UN resolution which is obscure and a bit complicated and not fully implemented despite most governments ratifying it, and they have to give you a document of identity and let you register to pay tax. The benefits of citizenship are very dubious but it is a lot of time and some money to get the right to settle.
I think there is a much bigger problem these UN bastids are doing nothing about. In fact the EU mandates address registration for almost everything, and at least here in the Netherlands, half the people are stuck on the street because of this nonsense. I had a really big problem when my passport expired, I was not allowed to work! A great job was into the stage of interview at the time and I couldn't follow it up.
I don't really want help from these bastards. I want them to stop getting in my way.
"""Helping"""
Yes it definately will. We already have a spy infrastructure in place to rival the NSA, with far less oversight and public awareness - I doubt things will be improved by centralizing all of the control to a single company.
This new system allows for "service providers" with no infrastructure of their own at all, basically just handling billing and customer support - things like network wiretaps happen at a level above this sort of ISP and they would have zero control or knowledge.
This is like choosing to start the Telstra monopoly all over again imo :(
Are we too sparsely populated for mesh wi fi?
I've read Havana has a great setup.
Most cities could do it but inland would struggle.. I used to run some nodes on brismesh back in the day, not sure what happened to that project..
I remember reading about Brismesh back in my uni days. Thought it was an interesting concept.