Its 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.
I am somewhat amazed that you are clubbing somewhat unrelated issues with a problem that directly threatens freedom of internet access in India.While, I do not take any sides -tinting of car glasses was prohibited by few state governments before. Also I am not sure if installing speed regulators is a step in the right direction but people getting killed in road accidents is a real problem in India. Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people in New Delhi?
But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone. For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being enforced by ISPs.
"Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed" You are either misinformed or deliberately misleading.
"heavy vehicles like lorries ... get speed regulators ... a over speeding accident" Studies have shown and statistics in India have shown that most accidents are caused by excess speeds.
Apparently you just don't laws. Careful, people like you end up in jail someday. Just because piracy is a difficult problem, doesn't mean that you don't put pirates out of business. Stop buying stuff on the footpath.
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?
The 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 . 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.
If 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.
Just 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) 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/20306526313290...
Exactly. 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.
No, 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.
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".
I'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"?
The 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..
How 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."
I 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.
It 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 ...
A 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.
Having 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.
This 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.
While 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.
> 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.
Are 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
Several 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:
[+] [-] kamaal|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gnufied|14 years ago|reply
But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone. For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being enforced by ISPs.
[+] [-] Jagat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anilgupte|14 years ago|reply
"heavy vehicles like lorries ... get speed regulators ... a over speeding accident" Studies have shown and statistics in India have shown that most accidents are caused by excess speeds.
Apparently you just don't laws. Careful, people like you end up in jail someday. Just because piracy is a difficult problem, doesn't mean that you don't put pirates out of business. Stop buying stuff on the footpath.
[+] [-] chives|14 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] emcl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoachimSchipper|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tutysara|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biggfoot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irahul|14 years ago|reply
"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|14 years ago|reply
There are OpenVPN clients available for most platforms, configuration is easy and using it is trivial ("install and forget").
[+] [-] biggfoot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnufied|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batpad|14 years ago|reply
tl;dr: sites are being blocked. wtf?
[+] [-] RealGeek|14 years ago|reply
Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
[+] [-] dnyanesh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shreyas-satish|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] super_mario|14 years ago|reply
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3423018.ece
[+] [-] samhan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|14 years ago|reply
"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."
[+] [-] samhan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tutysara|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biggfoot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kshatrea|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nitinalabur|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buildspace|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] statictype|14 years ago|reply
I guess the ISPs are only sniffing port 80?
[+] [-] asto|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sagarun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anilgupte|14 years ago|reply
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|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] barbazfoo12|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drostie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altrego99|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mqzaidi|14 years ago|reply
This is from our leased line via Airtel, so it seems that corporates are exempt from the ban.
[+] [-] senthilnayagam|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavanky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|14 years ago|reply