It Took Us Less Than Five Seconds To Get Past The Government's Anti-Piracy Site Blocks

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It Took Us Less Than Five Seconds To Get Past The Government's Anti-Piracy Site Blocks

Seriously, guys. This is embarrassing.

The Pirate Bay, SolarMovie, Torrentz, Isohunt And TorrentHound Will Be Officially Blocked In Australia

In mid-December, an order from Australia's Federal Court directed Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 — four of Australia's largest ISPs, including their subsidiaries like iiNet and AAPT — to block access to The Pirate Pay, Isohunt and other websites often used to download copyrighted materials.

Those ISPs were left to choose their own methods of site blocking, whether it be a simple URL block or a DNS-based redirection. The method favoured by most uses DNS, which ties a website's URL to its numerical IP address and directs those requests through to the appropriate location.

A DNS block is phenomenally easy to circumvent.

On a Windows PC, it takes a matter of seconds to change your network connection's DNS settings to Google's public DNS. Open up your Wi-Fi, click a couple of things, tap the '8' key four times, et voila. It was quick enough that I could GIF it.

It's Laughably Easy To Circumvent Australia's Torrent Site Blocking

Comments

  • dinosaurhorse @dinosaurhorse

    That reminds me to change my DNS anyway. Now that iiNet have taken away Freezone on their cheapest Naked DSL package, there's absolutely no incentive to keep using theirs.

    0
  • jengaship @jengaship

    Shhh, let the dinosaurs think they got one over the people.

    1
  • grunt @grunt

    When the sites were originally blocked, and then the block bypassed a minute later, it got me thinking.

    Is this whole thing the ISP's being passive aggressive, and finding a way to legally drag their feet on the issue?

    Basic outcome of the case was that ISP's could block the sites, for around $50 per site, give or take. Vary the number around that, it was a godsend to the content holders.

    In short though, it dropped the cost onto the content holders. At $50 per site, they wouldnt care, it was a trivial cost, but I'm thinking the ISP's knew it wouldnt be so easy, so set up the content holders to bear the real cost somewhere down the track.

    Its $50 to provide a DNS block, but what about a deeper block that might actually achieve something? Pretty sure that aint gonna be $50, but given the content owners have happily accepted paying the cost now, do they have any excuse not to pay it if its suddenly $2000 per site, per ISP?

    Alternatively, the ISP's have done what they said they'd do, so now do the content owners have to go back to court to get them to try something else?

    I thought at the time that the ISP's didnt fight too hard, and that the $50 per site cost was ridiculously low. Given they'd know how easy it was to bypass, its just adding up more to me that it was a deliberate move on the ISP's part.

    0
    • fortalyst @fortalyst

      Deep packet inspection is already implemented by & performed by at least one major ISP on all traffic for "reasons". Implementing a new rule to block certain packets is not going to be terribly difficult for them to & financially it will be quite easy for the government to fund

      0
  • stendec @stendec

    None of them were ever even blocked for me. I've been using a VPN since before the metadata retention came in, and on top of that I've been using OpenDNS on my network router for ages.

    When the blocks started happening I didn't even notice.

    0
    • John Apple Guest

      Open DNS is owned by Cisco which is an NSA Partner! There is no point using a VPN if you are going to be using Open DNS. Besides a VPN is only one hop, which doesn't provide much if any anonymity. Use TOR which is three hops and does its DNS resolving differently in a way designed to protect your privacy.

      0
  • mdolley @mdolley

    It's not even that difficult. Google "The Pirate Bay", top result is a list of sites that mirror the pirate bay. Pick one that works.

    0
  • jake_d @jake_d

    I hadn't heard of SolarMovie and didn't realise the other sites were still running/useful.

    0
  • drrevenge @drrevenge

    I think the thing is that they feel this is going to stop the average joe/joleen, who doesn't know how technology works. They are used to going to TPB, plug in the show they want and click download.

    If they get the redirect because of it, that'll stop them, and the media contingent will declare it a win. If however, you know what you're doing, yes it is laughable.

    That's the only way I can think they can see this as a win. They'll never stop piracy, but don't want to release ways that will actually resolve the issue. :)

    0

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