
Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin, Xmarks & Major Torrent Sites Blocked in India - RealGeek
http://www.indiancustomers.in/vimeo-dailymotion-pastebin-331.html
======
kamaal
Its getting ridiculous by the day, the way laws are being set here in India.

Recently the Supreme Court of India, has ordered that all cars must get rid of
their sun films. Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed.
This is because they think the kidnapping, terrorism and crimes against women
will stop if the cars get rid of sun films and tint on windows. People are
predicting heavy bribe business in early days after ban is enforced.

In another instance, the court has also ordered that heavy vehicles like
lorries, trucks and other goods/passenger vehicles get speed regulators fixed
preventing them from going above some level(I guess that is 60 Km) this is
because some boy died in a over speeding accident. From what I hear, there is
a strike planned to counter this.

Coming to Piracy, its ridiculous to think that they are going to stop piracy
by banning torrent and video sites. In a country where pirated CD's are
available on the footpath for the price of peanuts, Piracy isn't going to be
that easy to solve. In fact of bulk of the piracy business happens, through
those means. Very few people apart from the computer savvy ones know how to
use torrents, or even know what torrents are.

~~~
gnufied
I am somewhat amazed that you are clubbing somewhat unrelated issues with a
problem that directly threatens freedom of internet access in India.While, I
do not take any sides -tinting of car glasses was prohibited by few state
governments before. Also I am not sure if installing speed regulators is a
step in the right direction but people getting killed in road accidents is a
real problem in India. Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people
in New Delhi?

But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were
passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a
totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone.
For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through
and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being
enforced by ISPs.

~~~
biggfoot
> "It is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through" I would
> get worried if this were the case. Serious cases take years to pass through
> Indian courts. If Copyright Labs (which I increasingly feel is a facade
> company) got this rushed through the court AND got the ISPs to block access
> at such a blanket level I would start getting worried about the integrity of
> that court.

~~~
gnufied
My point was the cases that drag for years generally has two sides, but what
if the case had only one side? Copyright Labs wanted certain sites banned and
obviously Vimeo, Pastebin etc have zero ground presence in India so there
wasn't really anyone protesting the case of Copyright Labs. I am betting, if
there was someone opposing what Copyright Labs was claiming, the outcome would
have been different.

~~~
ktizo
If a court is banning a publication, surely at least someone might be expected
to go and double check that the claim isn't bullshit. You know, just on the
basis of it being their job, or something nice like that. Otherwise it isn't
really a court, is it? Is more like just a carefully staged sketch show with
unusually high consequences.

------
emcl
The really disturbing aspect of these blocking is the blatant manner in which
websites which are known for their self-regulation (mainly for quality
control) like Vimeo have been blacked out presumably by twisting the Chennai
High court order against 'video sharing websites' by Copyright Labs, which
seems to be a dummy company <http://goo.gl/a1rjS> . There is an alarming lack
of internet literacy among the law makers and keepers who need to be educated
on these issues so that such ridiculous incidents don't happen again.

~~~
tutysara
"We Protect your move from spreading through Torrent" - They haven't even ran
a spell checker on their site, can't stop laughing at these people.

~~~
SquareWheel
None of those words have been misspelled...

~~~
biggfoot
'protect your move ...' Move? What move?

~~~
seabee
His point is a spell checker wouldn't have helped here!

~~~
pavel_lishin
Not a software one, anyway.

------
irahul
If you want to access the blocked sites, the surest way is to get a free mini
instance with amazon(or use an existing one), and use ssh dynamic port
forwarding for you browsing.

    
    
        ssh -D 8080 -i your_amazon_key.pem username@ec2-instance
        # Followed by changing your browser/system settings to use localhost:8080 as socks v5 proxy
    

If you are concerned about some ass-hats censoring the web because of some
upcoming movie I don't give two fucks about, or Airtel/Reliance bending over
backwards to enforce the ban, I don't know what to do.

"Some movie is coming out, we are afraid we will lose revenue if people pirate
it. I know what to do. Let's get a court order asking ISPs to ban sites which
are infringing upon the movie(the good old ISP, takes the safer route and
blocks whole sites since it doesn't know or doesn't want to stop just the
movie). Hey look, people are still able to get through to the movie. Let's get
another court order asking the ISPs to stop service altogether for 6 months."

"Rape cases on a rise and most rapes happen at night. Let's stop people from
going out at night. Still not working. Let's stop people from going out
altogether."

I can understand the concerns about loss of revenue over piracy, but these
dystopian measures aren't worth whatever hypothetical losses you might be
suffering.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
In that case may as well install a proxy on the mini-instance, along with an
OpenVPN server.

There are OpenVPN clients available for most platforms, configuration is easy
and using it is trivial ("install and forget").

------
biggfoot
Just to clear up some air here ... The government, as in the Central or State
governing bodies have not blocked any sites, nor have they passed any orders
for the same. The issue involves a company, Copyright Labs
(<http://www.copyrightlabs.in/index.php>) which through the Madras High Court
got a John Doe order to get ISPs to block access to certain sites to 'ensure'
that an upcoming movie is not pirated. What is worrying w.r.t. the government
is summed up quite aptly here:
[https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/20306526313290...](https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/203065263132905472)

~~~
gnufied
Exactly. Drumming this news as somehow - Executive arm of our constitution
took power in its hands and decided to block websites unilaterally is false. I
still lament the lack of knowledge judiciary has, when it comes to passing
judgement on such things but I don't see Central or State Govt. at fault here.

~~~
ajross
Is that really a meaningful distinction? The judiciary is part of the
government, and the other parts are bound by its decisions. Honestly I don't
know how judges in India are selected, but presumably it's subject to the same
democratic checks as elsewhere (either because they are directly elected or
because they are appointed by elected politicians). "The government" doesn't
get off the hook just because it was a court that did the dirty work.

------
batpad
No, these sites are being blocked. I am on Airtel as well and things weren't
blocked until yesterday. I think Reliance was the first to enforce the block -
I believe they're also the ones who filed for the court order. It's really
good to see this on the HN front-page, and hope there's more awareness /
discussion. Blocking pastebin is a bit ridiculous :/ - the message one gets
when one goes to any of the sites is just "This site has been blocked as per
Court Orders", without any other explanation. Changing DNS servers does not
work, so they are doing it at a different level.

tl;dr: sites are being blocked. wtf?

~~~
RealGeek
I checked it on Airtel broadband, Airtel 3G and MTNL in New Delhi. It is
blocked here, I get this error:

Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders

~~~
aniket_ray
All sites work fine for me using Google's DNS servers on Airtel.

------
shreyas-satish
Here's the court order for the inclined -
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to-
block-s...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to-block-sites)

IANAL, but as far as the court order goes there are no specific sites
mentioned to be blocked. This implies, service providers like Airtel have
_perceived_ the aforementioned sites to be liable for copyright infringement.
It is curious as to how they decided Pastebin and not Youtube could be used
for "copyright infringement".

~~~
bmuon
I'm confused. It says "...or anyone claiming through them be and are hereby
restrained (...) from in any manner infringing the applicant's copyright in
the cinematographic film...". How is it that a court can order someone not to
break the law? And how can that be understood as "cease all operations"?

------
super_mario
Isn't it great India also wants to rally all the world's governments to take
control over the internet, overseen of course by the UN

<http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3423018.ece>

------
samhan
The indian govt is trying to get the UN to regulate the internet with help
from countries like Russia and some Arab countries . Its trying to form a 50
member UN Committee called the Committee for Internet Policy . They re saying
its to end the US dominance over Internet Policy .. Im suspicious..

~~~
Apocryphon
How ironic they do not listen to their own countryman, U.N. Commissioner
Pravin Lal.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of
information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people
whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with
freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on
public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who
would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your
master."

------
tutysara
I am on airtel, got the "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders"
message when trying to access vimeo this morning, and was taken by surprise.
Why would one want to block vimeo? These guys have to at least say why they
blocked it. The most stupid thing is blocking pastebin, if they are going to
block a site due to someone writing something that is objectionable, then I
think almost all sites which accepts and displays user inputs qualifies to be
taken down. If you see the comments in youtube.com/indiatimes.com during an
IPL match you can find all sorts of nasty comments and one can easily argue
that these sites should be taken down. I am even considering switching from
Airtel to some other ISP if they are not blocking traffic.

~~~
biggfoot
It is a John Doe order being enforced because some big movie is being released
and they don't want it to be pirated. Those of us who use Vimeo for leisure or
work are evidently lesser citizens ...

------
muon
A few days back, customers of Reliance faced blocking of Torrent and Vimeo,
which was later unblocked. Meanwhile, BSNL did not block any of these sites.

~~~
fjellfras
I think that the reason behind this block-unblock cycle that reliance goes
through every time a movie of theirs is released is quite simple. They do not
want to block these sites permanently because then they lose an edge in the
competition with airtel.

On the other hand whenever a movie from Reliance entertainment comes out they
want to avoid the cams to spread for the first few weeks so they block these
sites. Once the first couple of weeks have passed they undo the blocks.

------
gsa
A more detailed article: [http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks-
vimeo-dai...](http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks-vimeo-
dailymotion-all-major-torrent-sites-in-india/)

------
kshatrea
Having a Tata Photon+ wireless (EVDO) connection, as well as an MTNL (Mumbai)
broadband and a local internet provider (Hathway) in my home and/or at work, I
haven't seen this in action. I am not sure whether Airtel and Reliance have
any vested interest (far be me from it!), but Reliance is also the owner of
BIG Entertainment and BIG Pictures (both owned by the younger Ambani), and the
Mittals of Airtel have tied up with BigFlix. In other words, this may be a net
non-neutrality move, not the first of its kind.

~~~
nitinalabur
why pastebin then?

------
buildspace
Now Anonymous - operation India have protested by taking down the websites of
supreme court of India and AICC (ruling party of India) websites.

------
statictype
They only blocked http access, it looks like. Sites that support https still
work.

I guess the ISPs are only sniffing port 80?

~~~
fjellfras
At least vimeo is still blocked on port 443.

~~~
statictype
I think that's because they redirect to http?

The Pirate Bay works on https (I love that they have legit certs)

------
asto
This is happening so often in India that it isn't even newsworthy anymore :(

For those outside India who are wondering, only Airtel (private) seems to have
blocked sites. I have a BSNL (state owned) broadband connection and everything
still loads fine for me.

~~~
utkarshsinha
That's probably because the BSNL employees are still having the samosas/chai
they ordered?

------
sagarun
Here is the copy of "John Doe" order
[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1)

------
anilgupte
While I agree that Vimeo and DailyMotion should not have been blocked since
they don't allow pirated video, it is possible that KolaveriDi did appear
there and that evidence must have been presented to the court to get a block
on those sites. If that is not true then I am sure someone will appeal.

However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file downloads.
There is a good reason why Bollywood is so much smaller than Hollywood -
rampant Piracy in India. Remember you are doing India a great disservice by
pirating - India loses jobs and creative people suffer.

~~~
qxcv
> However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file
> downloads.

Except this isn't shutting down pirate sites, this is making sure that 90% of
people can't access them by ordering major ISPs to interfere with
communications between their customers and the websites in question (some
might call this "censorship" or "protectionism"). I agree that TPB-style
piracy is usually a bad thing, but do the ends really justify the means here?
The blocking of Vimeo and Dailymotion suggest that this is a very, very
slippery slope.

------
barbazfoo12
Are they blocking by IP or just DNS? Are you guys typing just domain names, or
are you trying the IP addresses too? Add a line to your HOSTS file and see
what happens: 74.113.233.128 vimeo.com www.vimeo.com

~~~
drostie
Several are claiming that HTTPS still works, which means it's not DNS-level
_or_ IP-level. It may be IP+port level, or the only thing that I can really
think which is left is deep-packet inspection: a Linux user in India could
easily test this with something like:

    
    
        curl -v -H "Host: thepiratebay.se" http://www.google.com/

~~~
gsa
I got "Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when
I tried this.

It's not surprising, because a year or so ago Airtel was using deep packet
inspection to throttle torrents and file sharing sites. They already have the
necessary equipment in place, they can use it when and as they please.

------
mqzaidi
I am using airtel in New Delhi and the sites seem to be working. specifically
checked vimeo, xmarks, pastebin.

This is from our leased line via Airtel, so it seems that corporates are
exempt from the ban.

~~~
senthilnayagam
it is banned in chennai, can't access on my office leased line

------
pavanky
May be
relavent.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q5ZQsxSWk_A)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
YouTube has live streams now? That's the second I've seen, the only other was
IPL...

------
_feda_
I suppose we just have to have faith in the average techie's ability to bypass
these restrictions, which seem to be becoming a global phenomenon, not just a
western one. OK I know china has blocked a huge amount of sites for years, but
it's only recently in the west that serious impingements on our right to
information have begun to happen. As for the masses who don't have a clue how
to use a VPN or a proxy, I feel sorry for them. They're becoming victims of
control.

------
biggfoot
Just in: the motion to get the draconian IT Rules 2011 act annulled has been
negatived.
[https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030...](https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030528)
This and acts like it are central to such ridiculousness even being possible
...

------
jk
Court _has not_ ordered to block any website. The order asks ISPs to make sure
that illegal copies of movies does not get distributed.
[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1)

------
stfu
I personally think that it is actually a good thing that they are targeting
these sites and hope they are going to ban YouTube as well. People need to
feel the pain of censorship in order to act, and the more popular the censored
websites are, the more I see a chance for action.

------
factorialboy
Let's hit them where it hurts. Sign and share this petition..

[http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-
the-c...](http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-the-congress-
party-for/)

..and we can announce that we're a vote bank that can hurt them.

~~~
biggfoot
How does this help? At all?

~~~
factorialboy
If there are enough votes at stake, the politicians will back our interests.

~~~
nnnnni
Ha.

------
jezclaremurugan
No it isn't. Everything is working fine for me. I checked in Airtel, and over
NIC (National Informatics Center). If it isn't blocked by the NIC (gov. body,
btw, I am a gov employee) I doubt whether anyone else would block it.

~~~
RealGeek
It is blocked on major ISPs like Airtel, MTNL & Reliance. Some ISPs may have
not implemented the block yet, but may follow soon.

~~~
Arun2009
My reliance connection allows TPB, Vimeo and Pastebin. I can confirm that at
least vimeo and TPB were blocked till a few days ago when I checked.

------
mikehoward
This should shift the s/w outsourcing edge away from India.

I think the rest of the world should consider this good news and encourage
them to find more creative ways to 'protect' against imaginary criminal
activity.

------
sdqali
I use Airtel at home and these sites are blocked. But we use a different ISP
at work and vimeo and pastebin are not blocked. Can anybody who uses another
ISP confirm that it is not just Airtel?

------
Praveens
It may be working via few isps and dns servers. But the whole point of
excercising a ban on websites is absurd. Wonder how the court is controlled by
the big shots in India.

------
unpsynd
The CEO of Copyrightlabs was just on TV. He says he wanted the ISPs to only
block specific URLs serving pirated content but the ISPs went ahead and
blocked the whole sites

~~~
fjellfras
What channel was this on? I want to follow this on TV but have not seen this
reported yet.

------
sadevil
i think freedom is our fundamental right. but it seems some political parties
want that people in India, behave like a Chinese people, where you do not have
any right to say anything against govt.its very ridiculous person like some
leader is free to move anywhere and they can promote any lady to just full
fill one demand of sex.our Leader says that its fundamental right of that
person.but,we are not allowed to watch video according to our choice.

------
_rj
This is pretty lame, blocking sites is not the way to go. If you find
something that is pirated, flag/report it to get the video removed.

------
desipenguin
No it isn't. I checked vimeo after I saw a tweet about it being blocked. Was
working fine for me. My ISP is semi-govt org.

------
blrblr
No website can be blocked. If they think they blocked any, they are only
fooling themselves.

------
samal
Main thing is ISP guys don't know why they are blocking sites. Specially MTNL.

------
neokya
Damn. It is blocked in certain ISP only. Everything is working on my network

------
kmatthews812
Pretty lame. This is just going to push more and more people to use VPNs.

------
arc_of_descent
I am using Airtel in Mumbai and the sites are blocked. Crazy stuff!

------
paraschopra
My faith in universal human rationality is decreasing day by day.

~~~
SudarshanP
Very few humans are rational...

------
axitkhurana
No problem accessing vimeo or pastebin. Checked on Tata photon+.

------
rkwz
This is what I get:

Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders

~~~
desipenguin
Which ISP ? Location ?

~~~
paraschopra
Delhi. Airtel.

------
option_greek
Blocked on Airtel :( MTS seems fine for now.

------
altrego99
Solutions? Using Firefox & Windows.

------
owaislone
India is a retarded nation

------
playhard
fine with Tata Indicom

------
hackermom
I wonder what Vimeo and Pastebin did to end up on this list. These two are
definitely odd (and harmless) apples in that bunch.

~~~
solnyshok
same about xmarks, it's bookmarking service for god's sake...

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bkvirendra
WTFFF !!!!! What does Pastebin & Vimeo even have to do with the "Piracy Stuff"
!!!

How foolish is the Indian Government !! Seriously !!!

------
xxiao
why is that? esp on pastebin that is.

