
Swedish ISP Protests ‘Site Blocking’ by Blocking Rightsholders Website Too - kawera
https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-site-blocking-by-blocking-rightsholders-website-and-more-181102/
======
lostmyoldone
As a Banhof subscriber I'm a bit saddened that they have to engage with
blocking any sites at all, but since they do, I'm happy that I'm paying an ISP
with some sense of courage and integrity.

As with all copyright related issues, the application of hilariously outdated
rules onto modern situations never cease to amaze.

~~~
tzs
> As with all copyright related issues, the application of hilariously
> outdated rules onto modern situations never cease to amaze.

What do you view as the justification for having copyright before modern
situations, and what about modern situations makes that justification no
longer applicable?

Most of the time I hear arguments that some older law is outdated in modern
times, the underlying human and economic relations that the law is dealing
with have not changed. All that has usually changed is that it is now easier
to violate the law. That usually strengthens the case for the law, not weakens
it.

For example, I've seen arguments that libel laws are outdated when applied to
online forums, comment sections, mailing lists, and similar. (Reminder: libel
is written defamation, as opposed to slander, which is spoken defamation). Due
to those outlets, compared to a few decades ago a much bigger fraction of our
communication is in writing. It's also much more informal now, more off the
cuff, and more often with people we do not have an in person relationship
with. This makes it a lot easier to commit libel.

If the basis of libel laws is that it is wrong to intentionally falsely damage
the reputation of someone else, then the technology changes over the last few
decades do not change that. If it was wrong to make some accusation in a
printed flyer posted around your town, it is is wrong to make the same
accusation posted to Facebook.

On the other hand, we might justify libel law as a way to limit the power that
comes with access to printing presses. When producing and distributing printed
material was expensive, those who owned the presses or those wealthy enough to
afford to hire them would have a lot of influence over public opinion. Libel
laws would put some restraint on that power.

If that is how we justify libel, then you can make a case that it should not
apply online because there is much more equal access. (I'm not sure, but I
think historically the justification for libel law is the "wrong to
intentionally falsely damage" justification, not the "power restraint"
justification).

~~~
thayne
There are several ways copyright and patent laws are outdated, though most
aren't directly relevant to this discussion.

Scientific journals are an especially interesting case. They way copyright law
applies to scientific journals is certainly broken, but I think it has been
broken for a long time. Afaik, in most cases scientists are not paied
royalties for the papers they publish in journals, and in some cases even have
to pay for the privilege of submitting a paper. Peer reviewers also aren't
paid for their time reviewing papers. Yet publishers charge very steep rates
for access to the journals. Essentially all the publisher does is, well
publish the papers, and select which papers they think are important enough to
include in the journal.

Technology changes the landscape in three ways. First, digital publishing is
significantly cheaper and more efficient than publishing hard copy journals,
so in a competitive market you would expect the price for journals to go down.
Second, in digital publishing, there is less need to limit the number of
published papers in an issue to a set number, which again should reduce cost.
Finally, it makes it much easier for "pirates" to distribute copies of
journals without restrictive paywalls.

I would also be very surprised if many of the scientists whose papers were
"pirated" would complain that their papers are easier to access by other
scientists. I mean, the more scientists that have access to the papers, the
more likely the paper is to be read and cited. And most scientists will care
much more about that, than how much money the journal is making off of it. The
only people that benefit from high pawalls for access to scientific papers, is
the publisher.

------
wolco
What a great way to fight back. I hope other ips take notice and block
elsevier elsewhere.

If someone put another domain up could the court be unable to assess whether
it breaks the law with the court blockage?

More interestingly could the isp put a rule in there terms forbidding anyone
employed or hired by Elsevier from assessing the isp services so anything
submitted by this company becomed null and void?

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Discriminating against someone because of their employer sounds like a very
dangerous precedent to set.

I don't understand what you mean by "assessing the isp services". Could you
clarify?

~~~
forevertogether
Is it though? It is always interesting to me how some seem to not be concerned
with their employers' conduct, isn't that what led Adolf Eichmann to do the
bureaucratic work for concentration camps in World War 2?

How is this different to engineers writing the code for drones that murders
children in Yemen? Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or if they see it
differently?

What is a government or corporation but a group of individuals? What about the
collective behaviors and values? Should we not use our human empathy and
evolve them?

I've come to think about it as American imperialist/colonialist/domination
thinking. It reminds me of some American's attitudes to non-Americans - the
dehumanization used by it's corporate controlled media, e.g.
'terrorist'/'thugs'. Black Mirror has a great episode on dehumanization called
'Men Against Fire', for me the eye lens tech is a metaphor for being in
control of the narrative:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkiZaWvE4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkiZaWvE4Q)

If you're not following me, check out the book 'Columbus and Other Cannibals'
by Jack D. Forbes to understand where I'm coming from. Or anything by Howard
Zinn or Noam Chomsky.

~~~
notatcomputer68
Copyright stuff is just not comparable to death camps, so extreme forms of
protest are not justified.

~~~
forevertogether
Isn't it though? Copy 'right' \- think about it. Would you really charge a
friend to borrow a book from you?

Can we think of a better way to share cultural wealth and sustain ourselves
and meet our needs?

-

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it
for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published
over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and
locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers
featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send
enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but
instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow
anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only
apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have
been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the
work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the
folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite
universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's
outrageous and unacceptable.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you
have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge
while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally,
you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it
with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling
download requests for friends.

…

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have
been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the
information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called
stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral
equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't
immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to
let a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed.
The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt
at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing
laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light
and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to
this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share
them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it
to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We
need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.
We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message
opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past.
Will you join us?"

\- Aaron Swartz

------
raverbashing
Good

As Elsevier is behind the copyright lobby I really hope they enjoy being
blocked.

~~~
janoc
Well, given the market size of that ISP, I am sure Elsevier has noticed and
are running scared already ...

Sadly the only people being hurt by this sort of protest are researchers that
happen to use the same network (i.e. Bahnhof's own customers) and now are
unable to access neither the legit website nor the pirate one.

And no, as a researcher you rarely have a choice to not publish in Elsevier
ran journals and conferences when your university/department is evaluated (and
funding assigned) based on number of publications in these venues. This is
often imposed by the government, the uni and even less the individual
researchers have pretty much zero say in it.

I have worked at a uni in Denmark where the government literally had lists of
"approved" journals and conferences. If you have published there, you have got
a score weighed by the importance of the publication. If you have published
elsewhere, you got nothing and were effectively working for free because the
university funding was directly tied to those scores.

For some fields this was pretty much a death sentence because the "approved"
publications were either stuff where most people never manage to get a paper
in (like Nature) or most of their usual conferences/journals were not on the
list (a lot of humanities and arts where otherwise producing an artwork or
composing a piece of music counts as a publication).

~~~
askmike
The "Elsevier block" is just a PR stunt, there is a button on the bottom of
the page that directs to the (unblocked) Elsevier website.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The "Elsevier block" is just a PR stunt, there is a button on the bottom of
> the page that directs to the (unblocked) Elsevier website.

Better would have been to provide instructions on how to evade the Elsevier
block using general purpose anti-censorship tools.

~~~
qilo
On that same "blocked" page there's also this:

 _Would you like some tips about avoiding DNS blocking? Take a look at our
practical guide about VPN and DNS blocking here!_

Which links to this (in swedish): [https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press-
releases/2018/11/01/bara-...](https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press-
releases/2018/11/01/bara-patent-och-marknadsdomstolen-verkar-tro-att-
blockering-av-sidor-fungerar)

Google DNS and its IP addresses are mentioned, so they are probably enforcing
just DNS blocking.

------
0xfaded
I wonder if the order was vague enough that it would allow them to comply by
blocking the scihub domains but resolving elsevier to a scihub ip

I mean technically the requested URL was blocked, right?

~~~
calcifer
As the article says, they have also blocked Elsevier's website :)

~~~
natch
Whoosh...

------
daxterspeed
So am I understanding correctly that this is just DNS blocking? Surely this
court-ordered blocking can be trivially bypassed by switching your DNS server.

~~~
stordoff
Depends on the method used. Virgin Media in the UK intercept HTTP requests
(and send resets to HTTPS connections), so even tunneling my DNS traffic over
a VPN doesn't help.

~~~
manquer
For dns blocks, DNS over HTTPS should work Firefox supports it, or you could
run a local DNS resolver, or use host file for domains that you use and are
blocked.

Also I am not even sure it is possible to intercept any traffic over VPN
without having the keys, so not sure why tunneling over VPN is a problem , DPI
and MITM techniques are not even used by the Chinese government for the most
part and people can generally VPN out if they want to.

~~~
stordoff
For clarity, the HTTPS were in the clear. Only DNS traffic was over the VPN,
to ensure I got an untampered DNS result (and I later verified that hosts
files do not help either). You can obviously VPN out, I was just curious how
the system was implemented (as the typical advice of change your DNS provider
does not help).

------
writepub
I'm sympathetic towards the ISP and the readers of academic journals.

However, this is also a gross violation of net neutrality. The ISP's power
over a website is evident from their ability to block a website they have
differences with. This is both encouraging (that the ISP cares) & frightening
(that the ISP has total control)

~~~
bigiain
Seems eminently fair and reasonable to me.

Elsever got a court to order a gross violation of net neutrality.

The ISP had no interest or desire to implement blocking of any sort. Once it's
hand is forced via legal means, it needs to obtain that capability - and using
it with discretion as a protest is a perfect demonstration as to why they
should _not_ have that capability.

~~~
writepub
About ideals and philosophies - they only matter when pushed to their limits.
Free speech only matters when the said speech is disagreeable, ISP power only
matters when the ISP disagrees with a website.

Yes - we all approve of the ISP's action, but this instance was in our favor.
Will the next be against? Power begets corruption.

~~~
bigiain
"The next"? How about "one of the previous"???

[https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-
xfinity-...](https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/07/comcast-xfinity-
paypal-net-neutrality/)

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080213/133855251.shtml](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080213/133855251.shtml)

Banhof's stance is that they do not even want the capability to block
websites. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. It certainly means
some speech with which I strongly disagree is protected as well as speech with
which I do agree. ISPs should _not_ have this kind of power. Banhof do not
want it, but since they're being forced into acquiring and using that
capability, using it to protest against it seems eminently reasonable.

------
garaetjjte
In case of DNS blocking, I'm always wondering what would happen if ISP
wouldn't provide DNS resolver? Instead recursive resolvers could be run on
customers routers. Would they still be obliged to block it, even as this is
not their resolver?

------
CGamesPlay
Blocking the court from accessing the company’s own website seems like a
strange move. Do the courts in Sweden write laws or regulations, or are they
enforcing the laws and regulations that were already written? Does anyone with
the power to change the decision even see the company’s protest?

~~~
larkeith
Courts establish precedents in how they rule cases. While they don't write
regulations per se, they certainly clarify and establish how far they reach.

------
pm24601
A taste of their own medicine. I wonder if the court will try to order Bahnhof
to unblock Elsevier?

~~~
jaimex2
They cant without a legal reason. It's quite brilliant.

------
SwellJoe
That's funny as hell. I dunno about the effectiveness of the tactic, but, the
comedy is top-notch.

------
hadrien01
This is just a rewording of [https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-
site-blocking-b...](https://torrentfreak.com/swedish-isp-protest-site-
blocking-by-blocking-rightsholders-website-and-more-181102/)

~~~
sctb
Thanks! We've updated the link from
[https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the-
balkanizer...](https://boingboing.net/2018/11/03/balkanizing-the-
balkanizers.html).

------
dscpls
How do we feel about this with regard to net neutrality? Are we ok with the
blocking they choose to do here because we agree with them ethically in this
case?

~~~
hbaum
I'm pretty sure that this is not in line with EU NN law where blocking access
to sites is only allowed for security, legal reasons, or to preventing
impending network congestion (Article 3(3) of Regulation 2015/2120) Blocking
arbitrary websites out of spite is probably neither of these reasons and
therefore not justified.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
Protest is legal.

~~~
rayiner
Presumes corporations have free speech rights.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
_shudder_ This is the closest I've come to identifying with the Mitt Romney
quote "Corporations are people, my friend." I recognize corporations are a
collective entity comprised of people and people have free speech rights. I'm
trying to figure out for myself where the boundaries of those rights are,
since a collective naturally has more power to impact others than an
individual, simply because it takes less individual energy for a collective
action than it does for an individual action of the same magnitude.

I have to meditate on this. Anyone have thoughts to share on this to help me
find clarity?

~~~
yifanl
Well, it depends on how you think rights should be granted. I personally don't
agree with how rights is handled in a lot of cases, giving a sufficiently
powerful entity freedom is equivalent to taking away freedom from every other
lesser entity it happens to dislike.

Only an entity with greater authority than yourself can grant you any rights,
so what happens when it reaches the point where a company is as influential as
a small government? A national government?

------
jerkstate
Sounds like a pretty significant violation of net neutrality to be blocking
companies that they don't "like" out of spite. Doesn't Sweden have NN laws?

~~~
drb91
This seems to be a different conception of net neutrality than we have in the
US where registrars have a right to terminate service at will.

~~~
jerkstate
I just find it ironic that in NN threads here, the prevailing thought is "NN
is necessary to prevent censorship!" and then in censorship/deplatforming
threads like this one, the prevailing thought is "this is a good thing and
actually necessary"

~~~
tjoff
I don't. The isp is forced to censor, so they choose to also censor the entity
that abused the system.

The difference is astronomical. The purpose is also to send a signal...

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I don't. The isp is forced to censor, so they choose to also censor the
> entity that abused the system.

Exactly. There is a huge difference between wanting to censor your enemies and
not wanting to censor anybody but being forced to, and then responding by
doing so in a balanced rather than asymmetric way.

It would be best for the ISP not to be blocking anything, but given that is
not a permitted option...

------
Illniyar
Let me get this straight an ISP is choosing to censor a website of it's own
volition out of spite, and people are cheering for it?

This is a protest move, and arguably political. I don't want my ISP to have a
tantrum. What if next time it decides that some party or movement doesn't fit
it's views and block that?

~~~
Zofren
I think the context matters here. The ISP is demonstrating the dangers you've
pointed out in site blocking by blocking a site that opposes site blocking --
that's genius. Why wouldn't people cheer? Clearly this is indicative that the
ISP wouldn't support any kind of block in the future, even for material that
doesn't support its views.

If your argument is that this should be put into law and enforced, I imagine
this ISP would also agree with you.

------
buboard
OTOH, maybe blocking sci-hub is for the best. Blocking sci-hub is a bigger
inconvenience to scientists, who often take it for granted and use it as a cop
out to keep publishing with closed access.

Oh , and maybe google should consider pushing Elsevier's websites down in
their search ? I mean almost all articles are indexed in pubmed which even
loads faster.

~~~
janoc
90% of scientists have no choice. Your funding and career as a scientist are
directly linked to where you publish (impact factors and so on). So if you
have a "choice" between publishing in a major journal published by Elsevier
and a no-name but open journal, guess where you send your paper ...

And the "open access" options offered by Elsevier and others are just an
insult added to injury - "pay $4000 for making your work publicly accessible"
or "pay nothing but then we put your work behind a paywall, will own the
copyright on it and will charge you exorbitant subscription fee to access it".

Unless universities and governments start to actually boycott this and outlaw
these practices, nothing will change. That's really not in the hands of the
individual researchers that are pressed to publish publish publish and collect
"points" for their departments by doing so.

~~~
dorchadas
And I feel like governments can easily change this, simply by requiring that
all publicly funded research must be published in open access journals. So,
y'know, the people who actually fund it can read it.

As it stands, I'm fully behind Sci-Hub simply because I'm not affiliated with
an academic library, and can't afford to pay all their damn fees. It harms
individual researchers as well as individuals who are just plain interested in
the material.

~~~
janoc
The problem with open access is that typically you, as an author, get a
choice:

\- assign copyright to the publisher, have your work paywalled and pay for the
access to it via exorbitant subscription fees the university pays

\- ask for having it available as open access - and then the publisher charges
you thousands of USD/Euro ($4000 is common) for the privilege as a condition
of having it published.

Very few university departments can afford to pay such fees so you can guess
where the papers end up.

And if you mean open access journals that don't demand these fees - well,
that's of little use to an average researcher when their career depends on
_peer reviewed publications in reputable journals_. Publishing it wherever, in
a journal nobody heard about with who knows who doing the reviews has zero
value and you won't get any credit for that.

~~~
dorchadas
That's definitely part of the problem, and would inhibit laws since the
publishers know they'd get the free money. Perhaps the government could also
regulate the publishers and say they can't charge any more for open access
than they can for subscription fees?

Or, perhaps the different agencies can create their own journals for their
funded projects and let the research appear in them? Basically, create new
reputable journals precisely for open access? Or make it where a paper has to
be submitted to a "prestigious" one _and_ an open access one a year or so
later (i.e. author keeps copyright, period), which would hopefully build up
the prestige of them?

I'm not sure the solution, just trying to think of ideas.

