this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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How can it possibly be, that an ISP, which I'm paying for gets to decid, which sites I'm allowed to have access to, and which not?

All the torrenting sites are restricted. I know, I can use VPN, and such... but I want to do it because of my privacy concerns and not because of some higher-up decided to bend over for the lobbying industry.

While on the other hand, if there's a data breach of a legit big-corp website (looking at you FB), I'm still able to access it, they get fined with a fraction of their revenue, and I'm still left empty-handed. What a hipocracy!!

What comes next? Are they gonna restrict me from using lemmy too, bc some lobbyist doesn't like the fact that it's a decentralized system which they have no control over?

Rant, over!

I didn't even know that my router was using my ISPs DNS, and that I can just ditch it, even though I'm running AdGuard (selfhosted)

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[–] [email protected] 189 points 1 year ago (3 children)

...Just don't use your ISP's DNS.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sadly doesn't work for gov level blocks that look at the ESNI rather than blocking at DNS level

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (6 children)

You mean SNI, not ESNI. ESNI is the Encrypted Server Name Indication that gets around that, though the newer ECH (Encrypted Client Hello) is better in many ways. Not all sites support either though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If I utilise a DNS provider who supports ECH (mullvad) with a browser that supports ECH (Librewolf) will I still not be able to access certain websites? I haven't come across a website blocked by my ISP yet so don't know

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Most ISP blocking is pretty superficial, usually just at the DNS level, you should be fine in the vast majority of cases. While parsing for the SNI flag on the client hello is technically possible, it's computationally expensive at scale, and generally avoided outside of enterprise networks.

With that siad, When in doubt, VPN out. ;)

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sometimes the block is on whole different level than a DNS

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don’t know where you’re from and therefore don’t know what laws affect you but unless the ISP is involved in the media game (i.e HBO & AT&T) they don’t care about restricting access. In fact, they’re against it in most scenarios because if a competitor that doesn’t restrict access to piracy related websites exists, that competitor is likely to siphon customers from ISPs who impose restrictions.

On top of that, most ISPs do the absolute bare minimum to restrict your access so that you can bypass it easily, the most common being the modification of DNS records which you can easily bypass by changing your resolver.

TL:DR blame your lawmakers not your isp

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The DNS modification is slightly off. Some ISPs check UDP packets since they are insecure and will modify query results regardless of the DNS server you are sending to. Mediacom is known to do this for their billing and DMCA systems. They use DNS redirection to assist in MITMing the connection to load their own certificate to your browser. With that done, they can prepend their own Javascript to the response they receive from whatever web server you are trying to contact. That's how they get their data usage and DMCA popups loaded when you load up whatever site.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

ISP mitm sounds infuriating

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Even if it is not being done for a malicious reason, it is still a malicious practice. Websites can help prevent this by adopting wildcard Subject Alternate Names in their certificates thereby making the redirection much less likely to succeed, but you shouldn't have to view your own ISP as a threat actor.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They already do restrict you from using lemmy by charging full Internet price for it, and allowing special free data plans for Facebook.

Net neutrality matters.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago

My state of residence restricts access to certain sites. It's all bullshit.

Anyway... The ISP is either a common carrier or a content provider. Pick a fucking lane. You can't have half and half. Either you are responsible for ALL content provided or NONE.

If you choose none then you MUST NOT restrict access to any content.

If you chose ALL then you may restrict content based on what you are willing to take responsibility for. But in that case if someone does something illegal with content you provided you are liable.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

No offense but if they can do that you have to blame your government not the ISP.... as those are the ones allowing this to happen.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The government are the ones telling the ISPs to do it, not just allowing it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those companies choose to do so as well.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As if the government wasn't controlled by probate lobbyists.

Blame goes to private interests being allowed to influence public decision makers, in my opinion. Infrastructure companies should not be for-profit companies.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why we need more competition in the ISP space. And use a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or the FCC to make internet a utility and strip their ability to restrict access, throttle speeds, or be bias in any way. Always use a VPN. Getting Mullvad on my next paycheck.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Getting Mullvad on my next paycheck.

Good choice

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah this is government level. They tell the ISPs what to block and they do what’s ordered. ISPs want your money. All the legal crap they have to do is part of business.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

seems like a violation of our first amendment, it's none of the government business what site or what we can access on the net

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

my isp inserts ads into any http website

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Holy hell that sounds cursed. How obnoxious are they? Can you share a screenshot?

Next time I'm cursing Spectrum I'll remind myself that they aren't doing that at least.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Before Wikipedia default to https, I remember being surprised seeing ads in a Wikipedia page. I was so disappointed that Wikipedia has stoop so low before eventually realizing my cursed ISP was the real culprit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Next they put ads in your ads as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

this is UW website at http://washington.edu(they seem to offer https but dont redirect to it by default)
besides those "news" ads there is also a popup video ad that i didnt manage to capture this time
img

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does http sites exist at this point though?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

my uni's timetable :D
but yes otherwise its pretty obscure

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Shenanigan like this was one of the main driving force to push website operators to use https by default. The other driving forces are the computational cost of serving https got significantly cheaper thanks to modern CPU with accelerated cryptography instructions support, and letsencrypt providing free TLS certificate to everyone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Censorship is wrong. Every rational, adult human being should have the fundamental right to their autonomy, without third party intervention, with full awareness of the laws that apply to them.

If they decide to abuse that freedom and awareness by accessing illegal content (even CSAM), then they are taking the risk of being discovered, prosecuted, and punished accordingly. And, in many cases (like CSAM), I hope they are caught and punished.

Regardless of the outcome, it still starts with the freedom for that individual to make that decision for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's part of the price of freedom. Tor is a browser that makes it hard to be tracked down, so people use it to facilitate illegal activities. Crypto is a currency that makes it hard to be tracked down, so the same occurs. While most of us use and support these services for legal activities, just to be free from corporate and government oppression, there will always be people who use them to be from legal consequences.

Sadly, making it easier to find people who do things like post CSAM in turn makes it easier to find people who want to watch Porn without supplying a government ID. (Still can't believe my state of Virginia passed that law.)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

people who want to watch Porn without supplying a government ID

Yeah, and this is where the part of my comment that discussed "laws that apply" is nuanced. If the laws that apply are designed to abridge people's autonomy, and right to privacy,, then that's an unjust law.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

you could use tor project to surf the internet and i2p or i2pd for bittorrent

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Switch over to an ISP that doesn't do that. Leave record with your country's customer protection service and/or open press / open culture office that's why you did it. There. Done.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Lots of people come have a choice in who their ISP is. I don't. For my area, there's one provider. If I want to change that, I have to move.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For the last part of the post about restricting Lemmy because lobbyists/investors don't like that it can't be controlled, things like that can actually be protected against happening with Net Neutrality. Which in the US they're trying to bring back finally https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairwoman-rosenworcel-proposes-restore-net-neutrality-rules

Likely wouldn't help with torrenting sites considering the first go-around with it had "Consumers deserve access to the lawful Internet content of their choice." as one of the big things which is a contradiction to what Net Neutrality stands for, but it's at least a step in the right direction.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Counter rant: This is why we built encryption and VPNs many years ago. This is a solved problem, but rather than solving it you'd rather just complain ineffectually about it. The solution, the product of years of work of technical people and privacy people, is sitting right there staring you in the face available for you to use as a free service, a paid service, or your own self-hosted service. Use a VPN, that's what it's for.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

It's still right to complain and protest about something that is unjust, even when ways to circumvent it exist. Because the next logical policy step is to ban VPNs, as many countries already have, and the solved problem becomes unsolved again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Free VPNs should be avoided at all costs for many reasons, and the alternatives are an additional service to pay for, to fix another service you already pay for too that doesn't work the way it should work in the first place.

I don't see what's ineffectual about the complaints. Of course people will, and should, complain. Loudly.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Counter counter rant: both can be true.

Just because there's a workaround doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The problem is that VPNs can be a lot slower (for example large downloads) than a "normal" connection, at least iny experience.

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