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VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

torrentfreak.com

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Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#31

Post by eitally »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22
mitkebes wrote: post #14

Does double VPN get around these kind of blocks? My understanding is the VPNs are expected to block the websites for french users, but it sounds like people could use VPN #1 to appear as a non-french user to VPN #2. VPN #2 can then allow the user to access the blocked websites, because the law only applies to french users.

Is there some reason they wouldn't just use a VPN that isn't in France and therefore isn't subject to laws in France? There have to be VPNs in some other jurisdiction.

Does this mean a VPN company that doesn't have a legal nexus in France, or just a VPN provider that lets you use VPN servers not in France? If the latter, I do that anyway to watch region-locked cycling, frequently connecting to SBS in Australia, but also sometimes different European countries where streaming is (has been in the past) free.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#32

Post by numpad0 »

retrodaredevil wrote: post #19
space_firmware wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely they will be forced to implement IP level firewall rules. IE: Traffic from French users is not allowed to go to . This is one of the things the local ISPs already have to do.

It seems that the list of destination IPs would then be determined by whatever the domains listed resolve to (I assume). Since it's trivial to update DNS records, I wonder if they could lead to automated blocking of whatever IP those domains point to. With that in place, I wonder if that could ever be abused by these pirate sites. Imagine temporarily pointing your pirate site domain name at a valid IP address. When y…

That's called domain fronting. CDNs already switch between virtual hosts with headers on HTTP requests and HTTPS TLS SNI, so this even passively happen sometimes.

Now, HTTP headers and SNI are both unencrypted, so oppressive governments abuse these. Obvious fix is to make'em encrypted by enforcing HTTPS everywhere and upgrading SNI to ESNI with DoH-obtained per-server public keys.

Some of offensive side fixes to the defensive side fix are: blocking ESNI, blocking DoH, forcing use of MITM proxy, just blaming strawman terrorist groups for having to block affected IPs. etc.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#33

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fifteen1506 wrote: post #7

People tend to assume workarounds will be found. They will -- no doubt. But in time, it will be as easy as installing Linux on a PS5. I just hope unverified operating systems won't be blocked on similar grounds.

You're talking about two different things.

One is, you want to install Linux on your PS5. A PS5 is basically just a PC, so what are you getting out of that when you could much more easily just install Linux on a normal PC? The incentive to find a way to do it is low. Meanwhile the PS5 is manufactured by a company that doesn't want you to do it, so they make it take effort to do it.

The other is, people want to watch sports. Huge incentive. And they can use any device or service they want, not just one made by an adversarial company. Preventing this is basically having an effective censorship apparatus. The internet is an effective anti-censorship apparatus, because it connects everybody to everybody, and any single path through the network is enough to defeat censorship.

"We'll just block this path they're using over here" is like installing a single fence post in the middle of the ocean. Or worse than that, because that single fence post causes collateral damage to random innocent people (e.g. blocking Cloudflare IPs) which then gives those innocent third parties the incentive to start developing better anti-censorship tech.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#34

Post by viktorcode »

mitkebes wrote: post #14

Does double VPN get around these kind of blocks? My understanding is the VPNs are expected to block the websites for french users, but it sounds like people could use VPN #1 to appear as a non-french user to VPN #2. VPN #2 can then allow the user to access the blocked websites, because the law only applies to french users.

Just use a VPN that's not on the list. It is also will be useful to learn other ways to get around internet censorship which people use in the countries like China and Russia

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#35

Post by geodel »

jaoane wrote: post #29
Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

Not defending them or what they are doing, but if you can’t afford to watch football you always have the option of not watching it. I don’t know why this is always framed as “make it cheap or it’s right to pirate it”

Exactly right.

Behind all these reasonably priced or easily accessible arguments for digital goods is the plain threat "Give it to me on my terms or else I simply take it for free"

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#36

Post by AnthonyMouse »

netsharc wrote: post #30
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some reason they wouldn't just use a VPN that isn't in France and therefore isn't subject to laws in France? There have to be VPNs in some other jurisdiction.

I don't think e.g. NordVPN has any offices in France, but in theory the French authorities could tell French ISPs to block access to nordvpn.com (and all other Nord domains), though I'm not sure if the law applies to "secondary services" (instead of ordering ISPs to block domains that offer pirated sports streams, they'd be told to block domains that offer a service to circumvent the block). I believe Russia is doing…

Every VPS provider is "a service to circumvent the block" because you can configure one as a VPN in around 30 seconds, and these are all just legitimate foreign companies many of which use Cloudflare or other shared IP services for their own websites. Are you going to block AWS and Azure and everything on them because US-region instances don't implement French website blocks? You've gone from blocking a couple of pirate sites to blocking >95% of the internet.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#37

Post by miki123211 »

netsharc wrote: post #30
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some reason they wouldn't just use a VPN that isn't in France and therefore isn't subject to laws in France? There have to be VPNs in some other jurisdiction.

I don't think e.g. NordVPN has any offices in France, but in theory the French authorities could tell French ISPs to block access to nordvpn.com (and all other Nord domains), though I'm not sure if the law applies to "secondary services" (instead of ordering ISPs to block domains that offer pirated sports streams, they'd be told to block domains that offer a service to circumvent the block). I believe Russia is doing…

I think it's more likely they put pressure on Visa, Mastercard and French banks. If their choice is severing the relationship with Nord VPN versus the entirety of France, they'll choose the former. Losing Visa access would be very bad for Nord's business, so I think they'd rather comply.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#38

Post by teeray »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

> you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

It’s not even that. Just to watch the games for one sport and one team requires this. “Remember, next week’s game is available exclusively on ShitStreamTV.” Of course, ShitStreamTV is a Brand New Streaming Network that you’ve never heard of and need yet another subscription for. Then they can’t actually handle the traffic and crash halfway through the game. Trying to get your $24.99 back? Impossible. “Terms of Service mumble mumble blah blah.”

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#39

Post by cgh »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

Yes, NHL blackouts are a great example. You want to watch your home team? Great, you have to subscribe to what they refer to as your “RSN” (regional sports network, usually a regular tv channel).

But the RSN doesn’t show all the games across the league, nor will it show playoff hockey. So you need to also subscribe to a big streaming service like Sportsnet.

It gets worse: your RSN may not offer a streaming service. So you need an old-fashioned cable package to get it. The cost becomes ridiculous, just to watch hockey.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#40

Post by AnthonyMouse »

miki123211 wrote: post #37
netsharc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think e.g. NordVPN has any offices in France, but in theory the French authorities could tell French ISPs to block access to nordvpn.com (and all other Nord domains), though I'm not sure if the law applies to "secondary services" (instead of ordering ISPs to block domains that offer pirated sports streams, they'd be told to block domains that offer a service to circumvent the block). I believe Russia is doing…

I think it's more likely they put pressure on Visa, Mastercard and French banks. If their choice is severing the relationship with Nord VPN versus the entirety of France, they'll choose the former. Losing Visa access would be very bad for Nord's business, so I think they'd rather comply.

The VPN provider could obviously just accept cryptocurrency from users in France, so is the theory that France is going to threaten Visa with not accepting Visa anywhere in France if Visa doesn't block foreign VPN providers in foreign countries from accepting Visa from foreign users? How would even that be effective, since you would only need one VPN service to choose "stop accepting Visa"?
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