{"id":66848,"date":"2022-08-30T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T09:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=66848"},"modified":"2022-08-30T09:00:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T09:00:56","slug":"austrian-isps-had-no-choice-but-to-block-pirate-sites-and-cloudflare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=66848","title":{"rendered":"Austrian ISPs \u2018Had No Choice\u2019 But to Block Pirate Sites AND Cloudflare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Page<\/a>In common with many countries in Europe, Austria couldn\u2019t escape pressure from rightsholders to implement site blocking to prevent piracy.<\/p>\n

Local ISPs didn\u2019t like the idea but following a ruling<\/a> by the European Court of Justice in 2014, rightsholders took legal action to have sites blocked. ISPs fought all the way to the Supreme Court, but to no avail<\/a>. Concerns over net neutrality were also brushed aside<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Movie companies went on to target several major streaming sites<\/a> and then in 2015, The Pirate Bay, 1337x and other torrent sites were blocked following action<\/a> by music industry group IFPI.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, many more domains were blocked following rightsholder complaints. Publishers also joined the action with Sci-Hub and Libgen blocks but at the end of 2019, instructions for ISPs to block pirate sites suddenly stopped after several domains belonging to notorious streaming site Movie4K were added to the register.<\/p>\n

Blocking Resumes \u2013 Badly<\/h2>\n

After a considerable pause, last week ISPs were instructed to block a new batch of domains following legal action by Satel Film GmbH. They included domains operated by BurningSeries, SerienStream, Fmovies and SeasonVar \u2013 around 30 overall. Another blocking order, obtained by DOR Film, targeted another 40 domains.<\/p>\n

This batch was closely followed by yet another blocking order obtained by collecting society Wahrnehmung von Leistungsschutzrechten GmbH (LSG<\/a>). Austrian ISPs were instructed to block music piracy site NewAlbumReleases.net and 10 additional unblocking site domains facilitating access to it. <\/p>\n

The ISPs also received instructions to block music piracy site Canna Power. If the instructions had stopped at Canna-Power.to and Canna.to, that would\u2019ve been the end of the matter, but that wasn\u2019t the case here.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"austrian<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The court-sanction blocking instructions also contained a list of IP addresses to be blocked at the same time \u2013 all of them belonging to Cloudflare<\/a> and used by a large number of innocent sites, as well as the piracy site in question. After more than a decade of blocking orders around the world, this was a rookie mistake but that didn\u2019t reduce the consequences.<\/p>\n

ISPs Had No Choice But to Obey The Court<\/h2>\n

After internet users in Austria began to complain of unexpected website outages<\/a> on Sunday, Der Standard says<\/a> it began asking questions.<\/p>\n

Up until now, ISPs have been given lists of domains so that blocking can be conducted by DNS. This time IP addresses were supplied in addition to domains and because non-compliance can lead to legal action, ISPs had no choice but to follow the orders. Worryingly, ISP Magenta said that the whole thing could\u2019ve been avoided. <\/p>\n

Previously, through a process involving the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR), it was possible for ISPs to offer their input on blocking. That is no longer the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, RTR had the option of a determination procedure. Internet providers could use this to check in advance whether a block is permissible or not. However, this procedure no longer exists due to a supreme court ruling,\u201d the company told Der Standard.<\/p>\n

In this case, RTR can check whether the blocks are admissible, but only after the damage has been done.<\/p>\n

Cloudflare Works on Technical Solution, Calls for Action<\/h2>\n

Approached for comment, Cloudflare said it was working hard to find a way around the blocks. It also called for the public to get involved in the debate while putting pressure on the government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently working on finding a technical solution for the affected websites. At the same time, Austrian Internet users are being asked to put pressure on politicians. Perhaps then the knowledge will prevail there that the blocking of IP addresses always has undesirable side effects,\u201d the company\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n

Blocking can have undesirable side effects but the more fundamental problem is the drive to conduct site blocking via agreements between stakeholders, negotiated in private processes, with no public oversight. <\/p>\n

If Austrian ISPs hadn\u2019t published the details of what they are required to block, the public would\u2019ve had blank screens and no answers today. Publishing blocking lists for scrutiny should be required wherever blocking is put in place but according to rightsholders, that only serves to encourage piracy.<\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In common with many countries in Europe, Austria couldn\u2019t escape pressure from rightsholders to implement site blocking to prevent piracy. Local ISPs didn\u2019t like the idea but following a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2014, rightsholders took legal action to have sites blocked. ISPs fought all the way to the Supreme Court, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}