The Pirate Bay Moves to .SE Domain To Prevent Domain Seizure

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-moves-to-se-domain-prevent-domain-seizure-120201/

by dazbradbury • 14 years ago

257 81 14 years ago

maeon32• 14 years ago

Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts when the government wants it to just disappear?

A free internet is going to need a "deploy website to the hive" tool. Something that would force the FBI to have to raid computers in 50 different nations.

I'd like to see a message: "this site has been DNS blocked in your region, please download this program to seed this website for others over an encrypted subnet".

udp• 14 years ago

Isn't that pretty much what Tor is?

wladimir• 14 years ago

Tor does not distribute sites. You can have hidden services, but they're still hosted at one server (or, at most the sites that have the private key), which are hard to trace but can be taken down when found.

I think gp is talking about something more like a content-addressable distributed filesystem. TAHOE/LAFS (https://tahoe-lafs.org/) comes to mind.

cdash• 14 years ago

There is the freenet project (https://freenetproject.org/) which is a distributed data store.

mrleinad• 14 years ago

You mean, there's a freenet project, until it gains massive traction, and the US government starts blocking its ways of getting donations from people.

slowpoke3• 14 years ago

As far as I understand it, Freenet is exactly that. Participants offer a part of their harddrive as storage for the network, and content is distributed in an encrypted manner. Websites and other services can be (and are) build on top of this network.

superasn3• 14 years ago

Right now there is not a lot of incentive for the "average" user to install Tor, Freenet or any other de-centralized to make such a network popular commonplace.

But if pirated bay or other popular torrent sites started telling people that for direct downloads they can use this ONE particular software and assuming the software is easy to use (as compared to the fake Usenet software scams) a ton of people would download and install such software in a jiffy and when enough people do it (for whatever their reason be - free internet, file sharing, etc) we get a free internet developing side-by-side which the govt. can't seize.

The software is free and anonymous (unlike Napster, Limewire which can be shutdown) and is easy to use for the avg. user. So while sharing files like uTorrent could be the main feature, it will also give options to add a local DNS resolver (that does not depend on the root servers), and a custom web server (to host mirrors of sites). I'm sure millions of people are running uTorrent but just imagine if those same people were running this software instead of it!

spodek• 14 years ago

I believe the Freedombox project would help in situations like this, though wouldn't solve it entirely, and that situations like this would help gain support for such projects.

From http://freedomboxfoundation.org and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn

What is FreedomBox?

    Email and telecommunications that protects privacy and resists eavesdropping

    A publishing platform that resists oppression and censorship.

    An organizing tool for democratic activists in hostile regimes.

    An emergency communication network in times of crisis.

If you live near New York City, there will be a hack-fest February 18, 19, 20.

maeon32• 14 years ago

Wow. Freedombox is exactly what im looking for. You could put a secondary dns system on it which can't be fiddled with by ISP's and oppressive governments. My freedom box could reach out to nearby freedom boxes to find the quickest route in, around and through oppressive firewalls through encrypted tunnels and what not. Where do I buy?

hobin• 14 years ago

In fact, this shouldn't be too difficult to build. I don't know much about Freenet, but I do know that if we can use bittorrent to share files using P2P, the same can presumably be done with websites. The most immediate problem that comes to mind is that, while the files being shared over P2P stay fairly constant, a website is more dynamic and gets updated a lot. I presume this could be solved by a PGP-like web of trust.

I'm sure there are plenty of other difficulties to deal with I and other can think of if I spend some more time thinking about it, but I think this would actually be a pretty neat thing to build. The great thing about this would be that the more likely something is to be censored right now, the less likely it is to be censored on something like this - more people would visit/download such things, thus creating extra nodes for other people to visit/download from.

EDIT: I just thought there would be an issue of privacy here that needs to be solved first. For example, if you can track the IP addresses of the people you're downloading your 'website updates' from, and you're visiting explicit sites, it becomes easy to tell whom of your friends are viewing those. ;) The easiest solution is to let people decide for themselves which sites to share, of course, but I wonder if this would mean many sites would be excluded, or whether the effects of this would be minimal.

iwwr• 14 years ago

You can use the bitcoin block chain as a reliable way to store information (append-only).

Was wondering why this isn't being advertised as the killer app of the service.

wcoenen2• 14 years ago

Not information in general, just transactions.

Currently only small text messages are being embedded in the block chain. It wouldn't scale to larger files.

VMG• 14 years ago

I think the search functionality could even be integrated back into Bittorrent clients, back to a system close to what eDonkey2k was in the good old days.

rmc2• 14 years ago

Yes, we need a technical solution to these attacks on the internet freedoms. It's about time we ignored the laws and made the stupid laws irrelevant.

zotz• 14 years ago

http://www.oneswarm.org

Peaker2• 14 years ago

Van Jacobson's take on this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking

Locke16892• 14 years ago

That's really not how CCN works. CCN is basically a content-based IP that affords easy caching for routing providers. Servers would still exist in their same general form.

pwg• 14 years ago

> Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts when the government wants it to just disappear?

Maybe not completely as "decentralized" as your request, but take a look at I2P:

http://www.i2p2.de/

noselasd• 14 years ago

You might be able to have something like that if Van Jacobsens vision here, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 , gets realized.

eslaught• 14 years ago

Phantom might be a good place to look:

http://code.google.com/p/phantom/

dpres• 14 years ago

List of Anonymity Networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anonymity_networks

My Top 3:

1. .i2p Eepsites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P

2. .onion sites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_...

3. Freesites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

mef• 14 years ago

Supposing one law or another was passed giving the US govt the power to block offending domains, if push came to shove couldn't the US government ultimately block any domain anywhere via control over the .NET TLD of ROOT-SERVERS.NET and GTLD-SERVERS.NET? e.g. punish/block any nameserver allowing thepiratebay.se to resolve to it's real IP

slowpoke3• 14 years ago

This isn't about blocking domains, this is about the DHS or FBI seizing the domain, which they can only do with TLDs whose registrar is located in the US (.com, .net, .org, .us, amongst others)

dangrossman• 14 years ago

It's not the registrar but the registry (Verisign) they go to. Lots of people switched from GoDaddy to Gandi last month, a French registrar, but that won't help against this .. problem.

Gring• 14 years ago

The way I understand it, who controls the root servers can take down .se as a whole, but not individual .se domains.

If the US would take down .se as a whole, big diplomatic issues would arise immediately, with the end result of either removing root server control from the US or a split of the domain system (between the US and an opposing global entity). But even then, as long as people inside Sweden have their computer pointed up to their ISP dns server which in turn has it pointed to the .se dns server, turning off .se in the root server would not stop swedish people from using swedish sites without any interruption.

ColdAsIce• 14 years ago

Yes, people forget that after each .tld there is a dot. news.ycombinator.com. is the real deal.

rmc2• 14 years ago

They can easily, legally block things in the USA for USA ISPs.

They risk sparking a diplomatic incident if they were to try to take down a .ccTLD domain. Non-USA based root servers would not have to abide by USA rules, and in fact, local websites might get court injunctions to force ISPs to continue to resolve example.xx into what ever was there before. This means whether a domain resolves depends on what DNS servers you talk to.

What your describing might fragment the DNS system into multiple different ones.

maerek• 14 years ago

It appears that thepiratebay.org points to a server that then handles redirection. Question: Why hasn't the .org URL already been seized at the DNS level? DiG output below:

  ; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> @localhost thepiratebay.org A
  ; (2 servers found)
  ;; global options:  printcmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5372
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
 ;thepiratebay.org.		IN	A

  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
 thepiratebay.org.	3587	IN	A	194.71.107.15

  ;; Query time: 0 msec
 ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
 ;; WHEN: Wed Feb  1 15:37:02 2012
 ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 50</code>

Karunamon5• 14 years ago

Probably because it's a lot harder to seize a site in another country which isn't technically breaking any laws.. It's different from say, megaupload in that no infringing content resides on their servers.

It's only going to get harder once TBP stops hosting even torrent files and moves to magnet links entirely. Once that happens, the site basically goes viral, since any random can just spider the whole site for magnet links and host a mirror.

kzrdude• 14 years ago

And Google's Cache will contain the full information of the site itself. Think about that.

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

Honest question, as I don't use TPB: haven't they hosted magnet links for a long time? What's stopped people from doing that already?

lignuist2• 14 years ago

I wonder, why they didn't move to a .is domain, since Iceland claims to be a safe data haven.

toyg• 14 years ago

That law is pretty new and quite untested.

mato• 14 years ago

Link please? I wasn't aware Iceland has passed anything that might put it in the position of a data haven, but then I don't follow Icelandic :-)

SeanDav• 14 years ago

There is something called "darknet" which apparently runs as part of the freenet. I have heard about and read a few articles. This may be the way forward.

Sami_Lehtinen• 14 years ago

Well well, there seems to be an issue with their SSL certificate. It still says .org even if you try to access .se domain. - fail.

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

SSL certificates take time to authorize/generate, depending on the issuing CA.

kayoone• 14 years ago

All of the mentioned services only work if the government does not fiddle with your ISP to block certain IPs/HOSTs/DNS Servers etc. Since our way into the net is controlled by local companies who have to comply to local laws, theres always a way to prevent people from using certain services.

batista7• 14 years ago

Permit me to address a few things in a way that is contrary, maybe, to the common HN reader's sentiments. I'd like a serious discussion of said matters rather than knee-jerk reactions.

1) "It's not stealing, because you only take a copy". We're playing with words here. First, the point is not the common definition of the word, it's what a court deems "stealing". Second, even in everyday life, we say things like "he stole the exam answers" or "He stole the recipe" (when in fact he only read them).

2) "The losses are imaginary, because not everybody would have bought the stuff he pirated". Sure, the estimations of the losses are imaginary. All estimations are imaginary --by the very definition. You can argue about the accuracy of the estimations, but not of the need of an estimation (even if you put that estimated loss to zero).

Also, the fact that "not everybody would have bought the stuff he pirated" bypasses two things:

a) some people WOULD have bought the stuff, because they want it, if it wasn't available for them in pirated form. Those are actual money lost (I have downloaded for free lots of things that I would have bought if they weren't available because I just had to have them. Surely, other people have too. How many, is the topic of the aforementioned estimation).

b) those that would never in any case had paid for the item, do not represent "actual lost money". But they have violated the wish of the content creator/distributor regarding the (paid) use of his product. This can also be punishable by law, and fined, and in many legal systems, it is.

This "respect of the will" of the copyright owner, is like GPL etc works. If you want GPL respected, you also want copyright respected, even if the owner is not using a permissive license. Because the court doesn't upheld GPL for it's permissiveness, but because of it being a copyright license.

3) "The creator gets nothing anyway, it's all the big media". This doesn't matter. For one, people still pirate things that are sold by their creators directly. People have pirated even the Radiohead "pay what you want" album.

Second, if the creator sold the rights to some "big media" company, that's his choice (or mistake) to make. That doesn't mean you have the right to grab a copy of his work as you see fit.

Third, for a lot of the content the creator is the big media company. People pirate like crazy BS teen-pop idols and hollywood blockbuster movies, which represent like 1% creative talent and 99% big media bucks for effects, marketing and production.

4) "Their business model is broken, they should find something else to make money" - Actually their business model is not broken. They make and sell something people want. The only broken part is that people copy it for free and give it around illegally. If I get me some GPL code, and make a closed source black box extended program out of it without giving back my source, just because I can, would people say that the "GPL model is broken"?

5) "People only pirate because the prices are absurdly high / the buying process is inconvenient" - Well, companies can set their prices to whatever they want for their own stuff, and they can make the buying process as convoluted as they want. That's not an argument in favor or copyright infringement, as much as high prices for Ferraris is not an argument in favor of stealing them, and the difficulty of attaining a university degree is not an argument for printing a fake in our printer.

6) "They can make it up on concerts" - Directors and shrink-wrapped software programmers don't give many concerts.

And even for musicians, a lot of musicians don't like giving concerts. Not everyone is like your local bar band or Rolling Stones. Especially in modern kinds of music, from electronica to ambient, there are lots of people that don't like playing concerts that much or feel that that is not their artistic medium (even the Beatles stopped playing concerts after '65). They still deserve some money for the use of their work.

Even for artists that DO play concerts, a gig used to be mostly a loss leader for album sales. The only people making big money from concerts are mainly established artists with a managerial team, everything organized, big following and sold out venues and bands with a largish cult following (think Phish, Pearl Jam, etc). That doesn't bode well for artists that still used to make a decent living selling around 50.000-100.000 albums a year. Some artists also have actual integrity and don't want to be seen dead selling "merchandise". Not everything is "rock'n'roll".

7) "What's the proof of piracy's harm? Record company profits are at a high this year" - How is this contradictory? One can have record profits and still be ripped off. The sets of "people buying record company stuff" (profits) VS the number of "people that WOULD have bought record company stuff but they download it illegally" (actual lost money due to piracy) are not the same set.

Those are some arguments.

My personal opinion?

1) Software patents must go. Especially trivial. A patent period of 5 years of actual use of the patent in production seems ok for everything else.

2) Copyright must be restricted. 20-30 years at max.

3) Illegal downloading should remain illegal. Not everything should be available for free against the owner's wish. "Metallica" releases and "The managing secrets of Attila the Hun" books are not an undeniable right for everybody, there are just stuff for sale. There are lots of copyleft software, music and books, one can use.

DenisM• 14 years ago

1. The so called "illegal downloads" aren't illegal. It's the uploads that are illegal. Hence the downloads can't "remain" illegal.

2. The courts do not deem copyright infringement to be "theft". They deem it to be "copyright infringement".

3. A productive balance of interests between creators and consumers is probably more intricate than "all rights go to producers, no matter how convoluted they want to make the lives of consumers" or "all rights go to consumers". The reason why producers are given imaginary property rights is to facilitate development of useful arts (it says so right there in the American constitution), not because those rights are "holy" like right a right to live.

batista7• 14 years ago

Thanks for your response. Now, on to some points:

1. The so called "illegal downloads" aren't illegal. It's the uploads that are illegal. Hence the downloads can't "remain" illegal.

I'm not sure I follow. If the uploads are illegal, how are the downloads not so? Isn't it something analogous of "possession of stolen goods"? Or, to avoid the word "stealing", like directly benefiting from an illegal activity? The downloaders also violate the copyright of the content owner.

2. The courts do not deem copyright infringement to be "theft". They deem it to be "copyright infringement".

The term "intellectual property theft" is also used in court (even more so in other countries). And in the US Legal Code, copyright infringement laws fall under the "stolen property" category: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_1...

Specifically, "§ 2319. Criminal infringement of a copyright" is a subcategory of: "CHAPTER 113—STOLEN PROPERTY".

FBI also uses it: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/cyber/ipr/ipr

This might also be relevant: "In Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Stevens and O’Connor, said, “deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft.”

The Supreme Court has been comfortable referring to copyright infringement as theft on other occasions.

Lower courts and Congress have also used “theft” to describe copyright infringement on various occasions."

vacri2• 14 years ago

A wall of text a thousand words long... and not one of them has anything to do with The Pirate Bay moving domains to avoid seizure.

batista7• 14 years ago

It is 964 words long to be exact. And all of them have to do with what the Pirate Bay did and does, and with common threads that arise in the discussion of such matters.

That said, if you prefer discussion confined in tidy little boxes, feel free to skip it.

hxa72412• 14 years ago

If you want to understand, you have to start by doing one thing: stop taking copyright for granted, and imagine it as not a fixture of reality, not like a basic law of physics -- because it isn't.

Copyright is a law we have made, and those who reject it see it as bad and unjustified. From a principled position it is basically immoral, and from a pragmatic position it is unproven by evidence.

From the anti position, all the notions of 'stealing', 'losses', 'will of the creator' no longer exist -- they are entirely dependent on accepting the copyright concept. If there is no copyright, there is no stealing, losses, or primacy of creator's will.

If a law is not justified and well-founded we really ought not to have it. Is that not important?

newbusox2• 14 years ago

That's a fair point. I suppose it relates to why people follow laws in general: is it because all laws we've adopted are good? Is it because laws, by virtue of being a law, are good? Is it because we are afraid of being punished for violating the law? These are major legal and political science debates (e.g. H.L.A Hart, Ronald Dworkin, etc.).

Anyhow, point being, although the law may be unjust, punishment for disobeying the law is not either unexpected or unfair. So while we can bemoan that people are punished for violating copyright law, that doesn't mean that they weren't justly punished by a government enforcing the law.

batista7• 14 years ago

If you want to understand you have to start by doing one thing: stop taking copyright for granted, and imagine it as not a fixture of reality, not like a basic law of physics -- because it isn't.

Copyright is a law we have made, and those who reject it see it as bad and unjustified.

Who said it isn't "a law we have made"?

I surely did not. I would also drop the patronizing "If you want to understand" start.

I know fully well that copyright is not a physical law.

Access to free copies of things someone else created and sells is not a physical law either. It's something some people want.

I (and the law) happen to find the rights of the creators regarding the distribution and sale of their creation, to be more fundamental than the rights of people merely wanting to have those creations.

And, what I set up to do above is not prove that the copyright law is just or correct as it is, but that some arguments against it (those I examine) don't hold much water.

From a principled position it is basically immoral, and from a pragmatic position it is unproven by evidence

It's a law. It cannot be "unproved by evidence", because it does not make an observation to prove or disprove, but declares how some things are to work. Even a totally arbitrary law, like: "Every person wearing red should be jailed" cannot be "unproved by evidence".

As for the "basically immoral" you make it sound like a statement of fact. It is not. Lots of people, including legislators, don't see it as immoral.

If a law is not justified and well-founded we really ought not to have it. Is that not important?

Of course. But it must be proved that it's not justified. I don't see many arguments in your comment. You write, for example:

The same holds true for everything, even for murder. All the notions of murder being bad and illegal depend on the acceptance of the "life is a right" concept. Which is a societal concept, no much concern in raw nature about killing and eating other animals or even your own species.

beedogs• 14 years ago

> This "respect of the will" of the copyright owner, is like GPL etc works. If you want GPL respected, you also want copyright respected, even if the owner is not using a permissive license.

This is true to a point. I do not respect copyright as much as you think I should, because I do not believe it should have been extended past its initial 14-year term. As it stands now, copyrights are effectively infinite; this is a complete perversion of the original intention.

fluxon• 14 years ago

Anyone else noticing non-response from the site? I'm supposing it's temporary, as usual...

The Pirate Bay Moves to .SE Domain To Prevent Domain Seizure

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