
Microsoft Censors Pirate Bay Links in Windows Live Messenger - zotz
http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-censors-pirate-bay-links-in-windows-live-messenger-120324/
======
jacquesm
We'll be seeing a lot more of this in the next couple of years. The RIAA and
the MPAA will get more and more desperate and will call in more favors with
industry buddies as they get closer to the recognition that they are losing
the war in spite of winning a couple of battles.

In the Netherlands 'Brein', one of the rights organizations has done more to
promote the pirate bay than the pirate bay ever could have hoped to achieve by
themselves.

This is the biggest case of disruption that I've witnessed in my life so far
and even though the outcome seems all but certain it remains to be seen how
much damage the wounded bear will be able to inflict before finally keeling
over.

edit:

This prompted me to post a thing I wrote a while ago but didn't publish:
<http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+death+throes+of+an+industry>

~~~
javert
I'm disappointed to see the destruction of property rights (intellectual or
otherwise) being lauded on HN.

The RIAA and MPAA make deals with artists to distribute their music, and you
want to interfere and just steal it instead. It's dishonest, it's juvenile,
and it's eroding at the basis of society (equality under the law, property
rights, basic respect and goodwill towards others, etc.).

~~~
VMG
What is fascinating to me is the hypocrisy.

Most HNers probably believe some sort of property rights for software (or even
blog designs). May here would argue that the GPL is a great license and
violators should be punished.

You can also often read that Hollywood and the Music Industry are producing
worthless crap, but yet The Pirate Bay is dominated by commercial
entertainment, not by Creative Commons content.

Much of it is certainly an emotional reaction to the aggressive behavior of
RIAA/MPAA, but it really is sad to see so little capacity to see things from a
different perspective.

~~~
pohl
It's interesting, because there are sources on the internet that catalogue a
taxonomy for all manner of fallacious arguments (Wikipedia is one obvious
example), but there doesn't seem to be a name for claiming that internet posts
written by the people in set A are hypocritical because they presumably-
contradict either 1) posts by people in set B happened to appear on the same
website, or 2) some hand-waving characterization of the zeitgeist of the
site's denizens.

This is clearly fallacious, I don't know why people keep using this technique,
and we really should give it a name so that it can be referred to by
shorthand. (Any suggestions?)

If you happen to find a person in the set A intersect B, then you've got a
case against that individual. But nobody seems to go to that much effort.

~~~
anthuswilliams
It's called the ecological fallacy -- the idea that a phenomenon which is
observed (or in the GP's case, totally made up) at the population level can be
automatically assumed to apply at the individual level. Stereotypes are a
common example of this fallacy.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy>

------
trotsky
While I'd be willing to bet this is due to some malware flag (as that pretty
much always ends up being the case with IM provider X is censoring Y), I am
baffled as to why people would consider it scandalous that a multi-billion
dollar company who makes pretty much all of its revenue from selling
intellectual property licenses might drop links conveyed using its free
service to a site that is unabashedly one of the world's foremost facilitators
of intellectual property rights violations.

~~~
jacquesm
The would consider it scandalous because:

1) they consider their communications private

2) they think that what they type into an IM client will pop out on the other
end unchanged

3) they believe that their relationship with the facilitator of their
communications media should not be subject to relationships that provider has
with other commercial parties.

Where does it end? Being unable to share the link of your favourite restaurant
because it hurts the interests of your communications provider?

The amount of modification of any messages by two parties that trust each
other enough to engage in one-on-one communications should be set to '0' by
default, unless they request otherwise.

~~~
rwmj
That gives me an idea for the most evil chat system ever: modify links to
hotels, restaurants etc based on the size of kickbacks from competing
establishments.

More seriously, chat _should_ work so that the client signs and encrypts each
message, hiding it from the provider and anyone other than the intended
recipient.

~~~
jhaile
Or you could just create a chat client that modifies links to amazon and other
retailers to automatically include your affiliate link. Profit!

------
Animus7
I wonder what the political forces behind this are, because I'd like to think
that the engineers that implemented it understood that

a) it will do nothing to stop piracy, and b) it will reduce usage of Live
Messenger

~~~
pavel_lishin
To be fair, there is a lot of malware masquerading as The Lion King.torrent.
They may not care about the piracy aspect; they may just want their users to
have less malware on their computers, especially since Windows machines seem
to be a prime target for botnets.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
The comment section always have people informing if it is malware or not,
besides; in that line of logic they would have to censor all file hosting
services (those don't even have comment section)

~~~
jstepien
Firsty, comment sections are usually full of noise and it's next to impossible
to distill any valuable information out of it. Secondly, don't expect an
average person to bother checking for potential malware.

------
udp
So, what's the most convenient way to IM with end-to-end encryption? I don't
like the idea of it being _possible_ for an intermediate to scan through my
private messages.

~~~
7952
Possibly Skype? It does have end to end encryption but this is hard to
validate independently.

~~~
drchaos
Well I for one hope they roll out this "feature" in Skype too, ASAP. I've been
preaching to (some of) my buddies for years now why it is not a good idea to
rely on a closed, centralized platform for communication, but they keep on
telling me that Skype is just "so convenient" and they "don't need anything
else".

Making Skype less convenient (by means of censorship) would mean that open and
decentralized alternatives like XMPP get more attention, and that's a good
thing IMHO.

~~~
7952
Of course its a bad idea to rely on a closed platform. Except that the
majority of people rely on closed platforms (Windows and iOS) to communicate
all the time. MS could prohibit pirate bay links on windows using the
automatic update system; but they probably wont't.

You have to use software that people are actually comfortable with and operate
within that ecosystem. At the moment Skype may well be the best bet. Try
finding another piece of software that has end to end encryption and is widely
adopted by non-geek's.

------
citricsquid
I'm a regular WLM user and this has been happening for years, I've seen
innocuous links to small websites blocked too. It's rare that links are
blocked but I wouldn't be so quick to suggest this is intentional on the part
of Microsoft. The frequency at which a new URL is being shared could have
triggered some sort of automatic blocking system because it's assumed to be a
worm?

> Apparently, the company is actively monitoring people’s communications to
> prevent them from linking to sites they deem to be a threat.

Everything passes through their servers, it's not P2P and never has been,
doesn't everyone know this about WLM? It's how they're able to support offline
messaging.

~~~
udp
There's a difference between having a private conversation pass through your
server and scanning it for naughty words.

------
nextparadigms
If this was actually done by mistake by their software, then we can expect TPB
links to start working again in Windows Live Messenger any minute now, right?

I don't need Microsoft to "protect" me by not allowing me to see something. At
most what they should do is warn me that it might contain malware, which is
something they used to do with file transfers, too. But today I believe they
just outright block most of them - even .rar files, unless they are scanned
with some special MSN software of theirs that you need to download.

No thanks, Microsoft.

------
spdy
As more and more of this surface in critical times of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA etc. we
will see an "outer net" emerging soon based on a p2p solution and highly
encrypted. I know there is TOR but it`s not cutting it yet.

Maybe one of the big players (Google?) will join this battle for free speech
and an open internet. Most of us do not want to be censored in any way.

The Unstoppable Force vs The Immovable Object.

~~~
flyt
Google needs the cooperation of the content industry to make its media
service, Google Play, anything approaching successful. If the choice is
between censoring content and having a successful product then kowtowing to
the other entities will always win.

------
jstepien
I wonder whether they block magnet links as well. In either case, URL
shorteners seem to be a sufficient solution.

~~~
udp
Maybe switching IM networks is an altogether better solution.

------
res0nat0r
HN is slowly turning into Reddit.

TPB is probably being censored by the software because some automated process
to ingest and aggregate threating sites flagged that site as hosting malware.
This is just like Google stopping you from clicking thru to sites which they
know host virii / trojans. Calm down.

------
rbanffy
If Microsoft is able to police conversations carried over Live Messenger,
shouldn't it be unable to invoke the dumb pipe defense and be held responsible
for any piracy its service allows to happen because its negligence in blocking
the evil activity happening on its own network. They even _profit_ from those
activities! And not only copyright infringement - bank robberies, terrorist
attacks, child molestation, heresy - it's all their fault for not blocking it
in the first place.

I would _love_ to see this idea in court.

OTOH, who can be sure they do not store IP and login (or other personal
information associated with the Live profile) and hand it to anyone with the
proper court order?

------
NiekvdMaas
MSN/Live Messenger is blocking all URLs ending in .torrent for years already.
But blocking a FQDN like thepiratebay.org is even stranger... who
makes/maintains these censoring block lists, and why is this not explained to
users?

------
slug
That's why people should move to open and decentralized instant messages
networks.

xmpp/jabber for example are easy to setup, federation is supported by some
major parties (google talk for example) and use OTR (or PGP if you can
convince your friends) encryption whenever possible.

Pidgin, Adium and others support it out of the box or through easily
installable plugins and even your [mom] can use it since the key generation
and handshake can be automatic, requiring only optional authentication if you
are paranoid.

------
pearkes
Facebook does this as well. (Or at least, they did until The Pirate Bay
changed it's TLD to `.se`)

You could argue that it's for the user's security. Torrent sites do have a lot
of sketchy cruft.

~~~
zotz
> You could argue that it's for the user's security

Who would believe that argument?

~~~
pavel_lishin
People who frequently have to clean out their parents' computers because they
wanted to watch something, and ended up joining a botnet.

~~~
v-yadli
+1

Tech people detect malware with bare eyes,average users do this by installing
the malware.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> average users do this by installing the malware

And even then, I'd say they only detect it 50% of the time, at best.

------
b0rsuk
Is there anything stopping them from doing the same in Internet Explorer ? And
they're not stranger to issuing automatic updates that mess with Firefox, so..

------
sdfjkl
Just one more example of why you shouldn't use private communication without
end-to-end encryption.

------
ggwicz
This doesn't bother me. Or, I should say, I'm not inherently opposed to it.

Microsoft is a private company acting on their own will. This censorship is
one I might not agree with, but it could just make the case for another
uncensored client to become popular.

As long as this type of behavior isn't forced by a government, I actually like
it in the long run. I think companies should take a stance on things, and
seeing Microsoft act this way just makes me more happy with companies who take
the opposite stance. If that favorability change happens with enough people,
theoretically Microsoft could hurt financially. This would then make it more
profitable to be open and uncensored.

So, in a nutshell, I've seen comments elsewhere about this that were SUPER
negative and hateful. I understand them, but at the same time, I think this is
just another signal to instead focus on and promote those platforms that focus
on and promote freedom. And a big signal, to boot.

------
beagle3
It's an unregulated private service, they can. It's just that they can no
longer claim "commOn carrier" status. If they don't do that for everyone, they
are assisting piracy. Let the lawsuits begin.

------
jrockway
The text looks like it thinks TPB is malware. TPB is certainly not a site I'd
visit on a Windows box, the ads bring new meaning to the word "shady".

(Google's safe browsing database disagrees with me here, though.)

------
kogir
I think this is totally fine. Live Messenger is a private service, and
Microsoft can run it however they want. Users will simply switch to competing
services that don't suck. Let the market decide.

Also, as behavior like this increases in frequency, we'll finally be forced to
address the current usability issues with point-to-point cryptography and
adopt it more broadly. Microsoft shouldn't be able to read anything you write
unless you choose to share it with them.

A world where all communication is encrypted requires more software
development effort, but ends up better for everyone in the long run. Calls,
emails, text messages - none of them should be intelligible to anyone other
than the parties explicitly involved.

------
jhaile
Any censorship or modification of your "private" communication is a very scary
precedent to set. Will they start modifying hotmail emails or bing search
results next?

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tluyben2
wow I thought everyone knew this. I ran the 110mb.com infra and that domain
and subdomains were blocked in messenger. years ago that was.

------
dpn
So what does this mean for companies that conduct legitimate business over
TPB. Does this allow for some kind of action against MS?

------
gigantor
Solution from the comments: tinyurl.com (or similar). This should be instinct
for many twitter users by now

~~~
fotbr
Shortened urls are trivial to check, and could still be easily blocked. Or
else the url shortening services will just be flagged themselves as being
"bad" links.

------
wisty
Microsoft knows very well that people will just write
"thep!!!!!ratebay.se/slug".

------
nyellin
I feel sick to my stomach. Companies shouldn't censor personal chats like
this.

------
jsilence
Thank you, Microsoft for promoting endpoint to endpoint encryption.

------
sek
The Gmail Man seems to be working for Microsoft now.

------
judgej2
"Actively" by having software do it for them.

------
victorantos
this is clearly not a solution

------
billpatrianakos
Oh give me a break! I hate when they pull the censorship card like that. It
cheapens all other real threats to free speech.

If you like propaganda that justifies pirating, keep reading the Torrent freak
blog with their red herrings like censorship and their "battle for free
speech".

Microsoft is exercising their rights just like we get to exercise ours. It's a
private company offering you free software (as in no money exchanged) and they
don't want to let you share torrent files and for good damn reason. I'd do
that too if I were Microsoft!

Anyone who claims the Pirate Bay is a place to share cool new media that's
released for free is just kidding themselves. Look at their most popular
downloads. It's primarily all copyrighted music, movies, and software that are
being shared without the owner's consent. Sure, there are a decent number of
artists sharing their work via TPB and the Pirate Bay do a lot of promoting of
that stuff. But make no mistake, the majority of people are just downloading a
bunch of free, copyrighted work.

It would be censorship if Live Messenger were the only or one of few viable
options for IM but that's far from being the case. I sincerely doubt Microsoft
cares about you downloading albums for free. They just don't want you sharing
Windows 8 over their app (when it finally ships, that is) that's all.

Is that not a legitimate concern? To try to stop people from getting your
product without paying you? That's reasonable. They put a ton of time and
money into developing software and they don't do it for their health. Just
because it's digital and takes zero effort to copy doesn't mean that after the
first copy is sold everything else should be up for grabs.

Whenever the torrent people start yammering about censorship and free speech
and try to sound all hip, smart, and progressive, it's just a distraction.
It's really about continuing to operate while ignoring IP laws. Whether you
think copyright is okay or not is irrelevant because the laws are on the books
and enforced. If all you do in protest of those laws is pirate music and
movies you're really just creating more problems for yourself. Piracy alone as
a protest only creates more censorship and restrictions of free speech as
Torrent Freak would call it. If you really believe in all those nice sounding
ideals you have to get up from behind your monitor and write a letter, make a
phone call, or actually show up somewhere and do something.

This article was downright laughable. This is just a PR war and damn easy one
to win too. It's easy to hate "big evil corporations" and to love getting shit
free with little to no effort needed.

~~~
seanp2k2
>"It would be censorship if Live Messenger were the only or one of few viable
options for IM but that's far from being the case. I sincerely doubt Microsoft
cares about you downloading albums for free. They just don't want you sharing
Windows 8 over their app (when it finally ships, that is) that's all."

Not at all true. Free speech is free speech. Where do you draw the line? This
establishes precedent, and frankly it's pretty creepy to think that M$ is
monitoring all your communications.

Solution: tell M$ that you're dropping all of their products over this, and
actually do it. Then set up XMPP and dump their messaging service.

------
jxi
Now we know why Microsoft/MSN doesn't have a true "off the record" feature.
They want to be able to monitor your conversations and censor you like this.

------
Craiggybear
The world _has_ gone mad.

