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Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#111
post #33

I don’t understand why they go on DNS level . The web is hosted somewhere, the actual files are hosted somewhere (on a different site), yet they don’t go after either of these actual websites but after a DNS resolver? That’s just weird. On the other hand my country now DNS-blocks Russia Today so I guess it’s just the minimal viable block

well good luck going after a website that is probably hosted in an offshore country where piracy is legal and they won't even bother to answer to you. it's easy and enough effective to just block it dns level, most people outside here don't even know what dns is anyway so they won't bother finding a way around it

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#113

I don’t know this case or the site, I’m only commenting on this because, shouldn’t we be very concerned that anything can be silenced, globally, online? Where does it stop if we do it? Who gets the say? Who watches them? You see what I’m getting at? Google started self censoring “Russian propaganda” and everyone was so distracted with the war itself that nobody seemed to take notice of what gears that type of thing s…

I'm sure this will be an absolutely abhorrent take to the HN audience, but I've been recently wondering if perhaps a bit of censorship could be a good thing. Not complete censorship, of course, but not complete freedom of communication either. In the past 25 years or so we've gone from being only able to freely communicate our ideas with people we know directly to being able to share anything with anyone all over the…

Who decides what should be censored?

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this will be an absolutely abhorrent take to the HN audience, but I've been recently wondering if perhaps a bit of censorship could be a good thing. Not complete censorship, of course, but not complete freedom of communication either. In the past 25 years or so we've gone from being only able to freely communicate our ideas with people we know directly to being able to share anything with anyone all over the…

Who decides what should be censored?

if a restaurant removes people if they stand on their tables and scream weird shit at the other diners, is this "censoring"?

if hackernews removes child porn or spam, is this "censoring"?

if a music venue, who has spent years building a reputation as an amazing place to see goth bands or metal bands or hyperpop bands, is it "censorship" if they don't book a country band?

if your email provider removes spam, are they "censoring"?

i've found this "who decides" things to be getting increasingly ridiculous. the restaurant owner decides. this isn't rocket science. the music venue owner decides. if a gathering place of humans has spent years cultivating a reputation for certain genres, again, goth music, electronic music, rock music, etc... or fine dining, fast food, bbq, etc.. we don't scream from the rooftops when mcdonalds doesn't serve foie gras. we don't run in panic circles and scream "censorship" when a goth club doesn't book nickelback.

we don't clutch our pearls when our email provider removes spam or child porn and proclaim "omg that dick enlargement pill email was removed! censorship! who decides. oh my who decides."

if you want to argue against centralization of services, im right there with you. no large city has 1 restaurant. there are hundreds if not thousands. no large city has 1 music venue, again there are hundreds. different places for different experiences. if you want to argue that having 1 gateway to the internet is an absolutely absurd and terrifying dystopia, ill be in the front of that line with you carrying my pitchfork. and if you want to argue that just a handful of centralized increasingly walled off social media sites is absolutely awful, again, im with you. we need hundreds or thousands of gateways to online experiences, not the small handful we have today. at this point the "who decides" thing becomes naturally irrelevant.

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#115
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s entertaining to watch Sony throw these tantrums after one of their prime complaints with the Activision + Microsoft merger was how it might give Microsoft exclusivity for CoD while forgetting how much they love exclusivity for Playstation titles.

The problem is Microsoft has leverage in other areas. I understand Sony's nervousness.

On the flip side, Microsoft might be nervous that Sony can leverage other areas, like their film division, to make a game they can’t compete with.

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#116

I don’t know this case or the site, I’m only commenting on this because, shouldn’t we be very concerned that anything can be silenced, globally, online? Where does it stop if we do it? Who gets the say? Who watches them? You see what I’m getting at? Google started self censoring “Russian propaganda” and everyone was so distracted with the war itself that nobody seemed to take notice of what gears that type of thing s…

"We need to wake up" Maybe stop relying on third party DNS 24/7. Most web users visit the same sites over and over, at a frequency of several times per month or even per week. Few of these sites are changing their IP addresses with the same frequency. Some (most, based on personal experience) will go years without a change in address. Yet people keep looking up the addresses every single day if not more frequently. G…

For the self-hosters among us, here is a guide to setting up your own recursive DNS server, along with PiHole:

https://martinkubecka.github.io/posts/general/recursive_dns/

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#117
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What philosophical principle justifies censorship, which is just propaganda through ommision? How can someone decide for themselves that they agree something is bad, if they aren't allowed to see it, or even know it exists? I don't think there is any philosophical principle that resloves to "and therefor we should commit ignorance"

I think the typical rejoinder here is Germany's denazification. There's a difference between preemptively censoring things and deciding some things are just wrong and not worth debating for the umpteenth time. FWIW we preemptively censor things all the time. Information is classified, we don't let you post plans to build nuclear or biological weapons, etc. And to broaden a little, we also have lots of speech restrict…

What does wrongness have to do with anything?

No one in Germany studies the history of Nazis and how they came to be?

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not banned in NL, I can access it just fine.

It is banned by Ziggo in the Netherlands. When I open it incognito I am redirected to a Ziggo.nl page saying: Deze website is geblokkeerd Europese sancties De Raad van Europa heeft besloten dat de websites van RT (voorheen Russia Today) en Sputnik News niet meer mogen worden doorgegeven. De website die je probeert te bezoeken, valt onder deze Europese sanctie. Vodafone Ziggo is verplicht de sanctie uit te voeren en h…

I'm connected through Ziggo so this surprises me. It's working for me without any problems.

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#119
post #19

Isn't everything on YouTube for free? Then downloading is as simple as any software that extracts audio tracks from a YT video.

Youtube serves the audio and video separately; yt-dlp (the successor to youtube-dl) can download only the audio part, so there isn't any extraction necessary. Honestly, I don't understand "piracy" much anymore -- almost everything folks want is legally available on a streaming service for cheap or no-charge. If something has been censored or banned (or the owner refuses to sell it anymore), then that's a different st…

Also think of the remastering, recutting and censorship of material. The version you get now online might be in many ways altered to the original.

Re: Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order

#120
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the typical rejoinder here is Germany's denazification. There's a difference between preemptively censoring things and deciding some things are just wrong and not worth debating for the umpteenth time. FWIW we preemptively censor things all the time. Information is classified, we don't let you post plans to build nuclear or biological weapons, etc. And to broaden a little, we also have lots of speech restrict…

What does wrongness have to do with anything? No one in Germany studies the history of Nazis and how they came to be?

Germany doesn't censor any mention of Nazism; they censor support for Nazism.
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