
GitHub blocked in Russia - uldus
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.opennet.ru%2Fopennews%2Fart.shtml%3Fnum%3D41171&edit-text=
======
hal9000xp
I live in Russia (Moscow) and I'm working for leading russian internet
company. I'm very annoyed by current political and economical situation. I was
so upset by events happening last months that I simply stopped reading russian
news at all. And I spent all the time in places like GitHub, Topcoder, English
Wikipedia, Hacker News etc. Yesterday, I've tried to make yet another commit
to my private repository and suddenly I failed to connect to GitHub. After
basic checking of network, I started searching for a news, and I got it.

In a big picture, it's not just russian politicians who tight control over the
free internet. The main problem in russia is not just politicians, it's a vast
majority of russian people who voted for Putin and his party and totally
support current regime.

May be for western people it's hard to believe how can it be possible to
support this crazy regime. I can tell you that even top managers from leading
russian internet company (from my private conversation with them) dreamed
about great russian firewall because in that case, they won't have competitors
like Google. Furthermore even IT guys like Putin regime and don't get worry
about crazy laws passed against the internet. I assure you in that because
many of my colleagues really like Stalin and really like what's happening in
Ukraine. Almost all people in Russia really hate western world. They don't
care about currency exchange rates and inflation, they care only about
imperialism. When Putin made desision about Crimea, and when people totally
supported it, I stopped believe in Russia at all.

Russia is a pure soviet country, with pure 100% soviet mindset, vast majority
of russian people like idea of self-isolation. This is why Russia has no
future as a liberal market-driven country.

And this is why I'm actively looking for a job abroad.

~~~
guycalledfrank
Hi, pal. I live in Moscow too, and I agree with you: what's happening is
really really sad. I use github for everyday work, and suddenly I failed to
connect. I need my job actually, you know? And they just broke it. For what?
For blocking one file, which nobody cared about? Are they serious? This is
fucking insane. And regime is fucking insane. And "replace your t-shirt with a
patriotic one" ads on streets are just too fucking dumb to be true. WTF?! 2013
wasn't too bad, and I had no thoughts about moving to another country, but in
just one year everything gone to shit.

~~~
acqq
How do they ban it actually? In my West (!) European country (I don't know of
any European country that doesn't do some censorship) they just serve court
order to the providers, the providers remove the entries from the DNS but the
banned sites are still reachable using the IP address. They you just need to
fix your etc hosts file.

Try with [https://192.30.252.128](https://192.30.252.128) and accept the
certificate if it has
A0:C4:A7:46:00:ED:A7:2D:C0:BE:CB:9A:8C:B6:07:CA:58:EE:74:5E SHA-1 fingerprint.

(The uploaders can be related to the companies selling VPN access to
Russians.)

~~~
guycalledfrank
In Russia they seem to force all ISPs to ban specific IP addresses. Obviously,
it blocks many stuff, and not just one page. I really HOPE that it'll be
resolved soon, because a few months ago we had similar problems with wordpress
and even youtube (!), but it was fixed in 1-2 days, because, you know,
everyone watches youtube, and blocking half of it makes everyone mad. But
github is not what everyone uses, it's just a thing for coders like me, so I'm
also afraid, they wont give a shit, because only a "minority" of their clients
complained. \--- Can't load suggested IP as well

~~~
vladtaltos
I'm travelling frequently to both Russia and Turkey - to avoid having stupid
spatial location based limitations I've been using privateinternetaccess.com
for more than 6 months now. it's pretty cheap and has gateways all around the
world - I recommend it without any hesitation... I especially like having
access to streaming video for the shows I watch that is limited to country
ip's like the daily show...

~~~
acqq
We're hackers, let's promote using our own servers and service providers,
don't support the VPN sellers who can be behind this particular blockade,
maybe even bribing the censors. See the comments here, ssh is enough.

~~~
vladtaltos
yes of course but that requires to have an always on computer to connect to...

------
codeshaman
Official reason for blocking: the site hosts texts describing methods of
suicide. Because Github uses HTTPS only, it's impossible to block only the
offending pages, so the whole IP range is blocked. Github ignored their
requests to remove the offending content, so the site remains blocked.

I hope Russian citizens get a big fat boost of morality from blocking Github.

Really, it's not the alcoholism, injustice, corruption, poverty and now
economic collapse that causes people to commit suicide in Russia, it's...
Github !!

This just shows how braindead the people holding power in Russia are. Oh, and
these censorship 'laws' have been adopted by people who've stolen billions and
who've built a corrupt police state, which is really scary, because the same
people have their fingers on the red button.

~~~
acqq
Don't worry, practically every European country censors something on the
internet (example: (1)) Some level of absurdity is always present as there are
almost always some methods to get to the data when the person is determined
enough.

1)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom)

I'm writing from one another West European country. Here even teens share the
IP numbers of the video sites banned on the DNS servers of the providers, to
type that in the browser's link bar. The providers were served the court
orders. It's just on the DNS level at the moment.

~~~
pantalaimon
> practically every European country censors something on the internet

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country)
doesn't support that

~~~
DanBC
That page isn't very good.

It says that the UK doesn't censor the Internet yet we know that there are two
levels of censorship in England:

i) the IWF lists - these cover sites that distribute images of child sexual
abuse

ii) court order - these cover sites like the PirateBay.

~~~
undefined0
3 levels.

The third is the opt-out censorship to protect the children from file sharing,
vpn & privacy related info, extreme content (gore), extreme political content
(neo-Nazi, maybe even Britian First related but not confirmed), sex related,
etc.

By censoring file sharing & privacy related content, it does damange the
"path" to becoming a programmer for some people. I know that if these were
filtered by default I'd have never learnt how to program.

------
lambdadmitry
Hello there.

I live in Russia, too (St-Petersburg, to be precise), and I would like to
discuss the issue on a different angle. Russian government is done anyway
(economic situation will finish it in a few years), so why bothering? What is
more important, I believe, is GitHub's attitude here.

You see, GitHub is sending polite-but-firm emails right now, asking users that
hosted the file in question to remove it and hinting that they otherwise will
remove it themselves. I'm deeply worried about this, because GitHub faces a
tough decision: either it will stand to it's ground and stay banned in Russia,
or it will comply, possibly changing TOS to be able to remove content if it's
illegal in some god-forsaken country. Think LGBT-supporting groups and
Nigeria, if not Russia.

In the first case, they will moderately annoy a most active part of Russian
society and loose SOME subscribers — GitHub is for programmers, after all, we
can handle VPNs. It will remind people that something is broken about their
country, serving a good purpose. In the same time, GitHub will prove itself
trustworthy to it's true customers — programmers.

In the second case, the ban will be lifted, but now they have to comply more
and more, as more and more programmers will deliberately post that suicide
satire in their repos. GitHub will probably lose less subscribers in the short
term, but in the same time they will help the devious "divide and conquer"
KGBsque strategy, which is no good. Additionally, GitHub case will become a
poster child of Russian Propaganda Machine Winning, which is no good, either.

So, it's money-vs-face situation, when GitHub is forced to choose between
helping one or another party. I strongly hope that they will choose The Right
Thing To Do™.

~~~
waps
This is the strongest argument against democracy I've ever heard. When it
comes right down to it, fact is that >50% (and more likely >80%) is in favor
of laws against LGBT. At least 50% of the 7 billion humans is in favor of
criminalizing freedom of religion. In favor of censorship is probably >75% as
well, because when push comes to shove, a large majority of muslims, chinese
and russians are in favor of it, as is most of Africa.

The problem I do see is that the "other side", specifically the UN, is not
really any better. Freedom of religion is constantly under attack in the
general assembly, and so is freedom of speech.

Take for example
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_United_Nations)
(TLDR: attempts to introduce blasphemy laws world-wide supported by the UN)
... details a constant campaign against freedom of religion that's entering
it's third decade now of majority support in the general assembly. And this is
but one of many examples. This makes it clear that defending human rights
using either the UN of the ICC is like asking Putin to solve Ukraine's
internal government crises. Whatever the solution is to guarantee freedom,
it's not the UN.

Sad part is, if anything, these groups are growing, not shrinking.

I know it doesn't look like it in the middle of the US, but you should
remember that the US is barely 350 million people. The number of people that
would like their country to attack the US today, no matter how stupid an act
it would be, world wide, is bigger than that. The number of people that would
like to see the US taken down several notches even includes >50% of Europeans,
so you can imagine what it is in the rest of the world (talk about a moronic
position : China will replace the US should that happen, and it is blatantly
obvious that will not be an improvement, not even for Chinese, although most
Chinese I've talked to argue otherwise). In most places it doesn't even have
anything to do with the US, other than that the US culture is leaking into
their countries perhaps. In Europe, it's mostly political jealousy, the US has
all this power, and is not using it "for good" (good can mean climate change,
economic stuff, various wars, and now that 10% of europe or so is muslims
"because it is destroying islam", not that you can ever get a straight answer
of what that means, though references to Gaza seem common). It's not
exclusively the US either. India seems to be as hated as the US sometimes,
except for in Europe. And this is ignoring the wild cards, like how >30% of
Europe constantly votes for the extreme right, more than that even in some
countries (and less in Germany, but it's being repressed, so there's no real
data on the actual number). Japan is re-arming at a speed that if you told me
5 years ago that might happen I would have laughed).

Russia is but one example of a nation that seems to be regressing to the
situation before WWI. Turkey is similar. As we know, most of the middle east
and northern Africa sees a return to the pseudo-roman-empire caliphate of the
7th century as a solution. China pretty much is an empire, including conquered
colonies, and however dictatorial the current government is, from talking to
Chinese people here I believe it would actually win an election, should there
be one. All want an empire, and of course their own empire to win.

None of these attitudes seem rational to me, as people are worse and worse
off, yet that only seems to fan the flames. All of these empires are calling
for war, to some extent. I fear that as time goes on, the amount of sparks
needed to light the powder kegs seems to be going down, and I feel really
queasy about how little energy it took to start the ISIS war in the middle
east, for example. How much sparks would it take to start something similar in
Europe ? (yes there's less muslims there, but it's not like ISIS has even 10%
support in Iraq)

~~~
locopati
How is this an argument against democracy? What is your proposed alternative
that would be superior?

Can a broad statement like 'the strongest argument against democracy' even be
made when democracy takes many forms and has varying degrees of adherence to
the principles behind their expression?

What of countries that had laws against racial intermarriage or same-sex
marriage and have changed those laws because there was a means for people to
instigate change (i.e. democracy)?

~~~
waps
I don't have an alternative. The point is that if we really were fully
democratic world-wide, we'd be locking up or killing gays/lesbians, we'd have
blasphemy laws for every religion and some ideologies enforced world-wide, ...

Assuming you do not consider this a desirable situation, it forms an argument
against democracy itself.

------
BonoboBoner
What next, also StackOverflow blocked? Next headline would be Russian software
development comes to a sudden halt

Edit: downvoted again. My mind is just not made for this hateful community
here.

~~~
Cthulhu_
It probably won't, but it'll evolve in a different direction, and knowledge
from abroad (and from inside Russia) won't be distributed as much as before.

~~~
realusername
Indeed, I believe that is going to happen this way.

But in the same time, it's a strong signal to avoid to do software related
business in Russia. The blocking works both ways. Just look at what happened
in China, they do have their own tools and networks but almost nobody is
outsourcing work to China compared to other countries.

------
znowi
What a nice attack vector. Deliver a "suicidal" payload to a website, report
to Russian authorities and watch it go offline in Russia.

It might as well be SO or any other site with user content.

~~~
vog
It's not that easy. The site will also have to deny to remove the contents.
I'm pretty sure SO would remove such content, simply because it's off-topic
there.

~~~
vaxyzek
I'm sure there is sub-exchange on stackexchange, where it's not an off-topic.
And as soon as stackexchange share the IP with SO it will be blocked all over.
Thanks for the idea.

~~~
vog
Then, there's still the question whether SO will comply or not. Given that
reports of suicide trigger more suicides than without, I wouldn't be surprised
of SO community guidelines which discourage such content, even though it might
otherwise be ontopic in that specific sub-exchange.

------
humanfromearth
Not sure if anybody offered here, but if you're in Russia and looking to leave
and Paris sounds like a good place, maybe I could help out. Currently I'm
doing a lean startup and that means that I don't have a lot of resources, but
I do know a few people who are hiring.

The area is: golang, python and js mostly.

alex @plugaru org

p.s. I speak russian.

------
austerity
Interesting... Google Translate did a very decent job on the article, but the
comments are all kinds of hilarious. Looks like informal speech is much harder
to translate correctly. Although on the second thought it's not surprising.

~~~
acqq
I guess some Russian reader hand corrected the translation of the article.
Otherwise, Google translate is very poor for Russian text. the best example is
the translated sentence from the text that caused the ban:

"Skopostnye train DURING topmozhenii ppohod more about kilometpa" (...)

(The sentence makes advice where the person doing suicide is best to do it,
related to trains. Don't correct it and please don't post it in full here).

~~~
toxik
Why not? It might be inconvenient to read, but it _is_ an article about the
censoring of that exact information. Celebrate freedom by translating it
properly!

~~~
gear54rus
Willing to translate it, but the piece posted here is not comprehensible. Post
a direct link and I'll do it.

Also, original:
[http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=41171](http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=41171)

Edit: it does not look like sth about suicide. Words in order:

High-speed (adj), Train, Customs (on the border), Passage, More, About, (of)
kilometer.

~~~
kasthack
>Words in order: >High-speed (adj), Train, Customs (on the border), Passage,
More, About, (of) kilometer.

Higher-speed rail passes at least kilometer while slowing down.

>it does not look like sth about suicide
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Rail)

~~~
acqq
Thanks for the Wikipedia link, now we know what the basis for the text was.
Obviously the author started from there and added his "funny" options like
"start the third world war."

------
eklavya
Good, let the oppression reach the breaking point sooner and let the people
rise and throw away the tyranny.

If only that was true :(

~~~
cLeEOGPw
More realistically the people will just run away from Russia leaving only
those that are happy with the situation. Users of github are tiny minority in
Russia. Even tinier is the part of those users that care enough to do anything
about it besides leaving.

------
1gor
Github is down for Russian developers because some anti-Putin political
activists are eager to make a point.

It works like this:

\- they push some content deemed illegal in Russia to a github repo (something
like instructions on committing suicide or on growing marijuana).

\- then they themselves post a complain to the Russian internet regulator,
accompanied by the link to illegal content;

\- the ugly bureaucrats machine (which is mostly automatic) bans the whole of
Github.

\- at some point later in the day a human intervenes and unblocks the site, as
happened several times in the past.

However, by that time the media has picked up the story, and many oppressed
Russian developers who don't know how to use a US proxy, have received job
offers.

~~~
Muromec
1\. This is not true. It was actually blocked on purpose with head of federal
agency speaking about it and posting funny picture.

2\. (some) Content in question is work of satire about censorship agency and
ridiculous laws written and hosted on github in Feb 2013

3\. (some) of the links in question are not even posted by Russian citizens or
residents, not even speaking about political activists

~~~
dfkf
[https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md](https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md)

Here you are. Posted by a Russian citizen from a commit labeled "Privet,
Roskomnadzor!" Such a rebel! Demonstrating the world unspeakable horrors of
the Putin's regime.

------
drdaeman
Sincerely hope GitHub won't give up an inch to censorship and handle the
situation with "your government is your problems, not ours" attitude.

With all seriousness - I think the whole situation just can't be solved
otherwise. All this censorship things went generally unnoticed and went along
the "oh, they're blocking evil child molesters' sites, it's alright" line of
thought. To raise the awareness, some high-profile sacrifices are necessary.
Hope they'd also block Wikipedia.

Disclaimer: yep, I'm Russian. Had some issues accessing GitHub. Between
inconvenience and censorship I'd chose the former any day.

~~~
xor-ed-wolf
They are also blocking sites that have references to virtual (drawn or CG)
molesting like danbooru or chan.sankakucomplex nowadays. I.e. this bullshit
stepped into domain of thought police already. And a thought police is a
certain "Nope!" sign whether it is for good (awareness) or not.

------
valgaze
Looks like this happened a couple months ago too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8401784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8401784)

------
kirillplatonov
This is shit. Few weeks ago I looks to the situation with "black list" afar. I
absolutely wasn't involved and don't believe that this "initiative" will
"touch" me someday. Yesterday it happened. Important website that I use
everyday was blocked. And now its seriously. I cant access it. My internet
provider said that it's a law and he can't help me. Now I need to setup VPN
for commit to github. And I already understand that it's temporary solution
and the government can forbid VPN too in future.

I really don't now what to do and how to affect the situation. The most fun
thing - that 85% of persons in this country now think that "it's just some
another porn site was blocked, Putin care us and our children's". Sad reality.

------
spanasik
Yes, it is. We have to use VPN in order to pass the filter.

~~~
tummybug
I often find `ssh -D` to setup a local socks proxy far easier than using VPN
assuming you have a machine you can connect to in a state that hasn't blocked
the sites you are trying to reach.

~~~
icebraining
Checkout sshuttle if you want an easy-to-use "VPN" over SSH.

[https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle](https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle)

------
fedya
I suppose not all ISPs are obliged to comply with the ban (or not willing to;
or maybe it takes time to propagate). I'm from Moscow and have not had a
problem accessing github.com with my local provider either yesterday or today.
However, it is banned on my cell network.

------
x4m
Github works for me, I'm in Yekaterinburg. I don't belive that ban, if realy
exists and enforced, will last long. They, people with that list, do stupid
things from time to time, but it's fixed most of the time.

------
uaygsfdbzf
Wow, a whole thread about Internet censorship and not one mention of the Tor
project and their bridges and obfuscated pluggable transports? Tor is not just
for anonymity but also for censorship avoidance.

[https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/)
[https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html](https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html)
[https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-
transports.html](https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html)

------
jblus
Interesting development. Github was temporarily blocked in China in january
because it was used to host politically sensitive information. However, it was
later unblocked because the site's economic importance is too great to the
Chinese government to warrant a complete block
[https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/github-blocked-
china-...](https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/github-blocked-china-how-it-
happened-how-get-around-it-and-where-it-will-take-us)

~~~
nbkolchin
Since "gitlab.com" have no relation to "gas and oil" business, it has zero
economic importance for russian government.

------
Procedural
Russian here.

Guys, let's face it: we have a Great Firewall of Russia now, like in China.

Everyone who wants to continue to work with Github should install TOR, here's
how to do it for Linux Mint 17:
[http://procedural.tumblr.com/post/104233731883](http://procedural.tumblr.com/post/104233731883)

Also, you can discuss it with me on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8695299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8695299)

------
thomasfl
I am glad I don't have to put up (and put in) with censorship shit like this.
I wonder if Hacker News is also blocked in some countries?

What does it take to get the privilege to get blocked in Russia and China? Is
it enough that someone on HN post things like "Justin Bieber is so cute I wish
I was gay" or "the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is
the amount of press coverage"?

------
nbkolchin
To make "git clone [https://github.com/xxx"](https://github.com/xxx") work,
just add '192.30.252.136 github.com' to /etc/hosts. Only git will work, not
web browser.

------
kethinov
This is sad!

I work with some people from Russia on some stuff on GitHub and this is not
going to help. :(

------
Tisoga
I live in China and many websites has already been blocked here such as
Google, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.

How could you imagine that one person in this planet do not know Google? And
this will be happen in China.

Here, some freedom has already been lost.

------
nablaone
[https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md](https://github.com/stevebest/suicide/blob/master/suicide.md)

sic!

There is something about suicides on github in russian.

~~~
acqq
One more copy of the "want to be funny" text which includes the "start the
third world war" advice. But also "chop your own tongue, die from bleeding."
The guy who posted it maybe isn't involved with the VPN tunnel sellers but it
seems it simply became a meme. People like to do something easy (like just
copying a file) and feel good for "provoking" something. At the moment it's
just a denial of service for the programmers in Russia. Let's see how long it
lasts.

------
jblus
Does anyone know of any other information that's politically sensitive to the
Russian authorities that was posted on Github? It can't be just this on text
on suicide methods, right?

------
tormeh
“I understand why he has to do this—to prove he’s a man. He’s afraid of his
own weakness. Russia has nothing, no successful politics or economy. All they
have is this.”

-Angela Merkel

------
Macha
Good thing git is decentralized...

Oh. People won't deal with changes from outside GH pull requests? Damn.

~~~
drdaeman
Hah, I've actually some discussions in spirit of "oh, we really need some
distributed, peer-to-peer GitHub."

I literally facepalm'd.

(And, no, that wasn't about the issue tracker.)

------
vanilla_user
repost to reddit -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2o90sp/russia_ba...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2o90sp/russia_banned_github/)

------
grandalf
It's really interesting to read the comments of Russian HN readers.

------
Lapsa
Damn Microsoft. If only they had made NTFS Object Idenitifers easier.

------
pluma
Why are there text files describing methods of suicide on GitHub anyway? From
what I can tell they show up in seemingly unrelated repos. Are these just
bandwagoning in protest or am I missing something?

~~~
pluma
I have no idea why my question was downvoted. GitHub is a social site built
around a software for version control, primarily for code. GitHub also has a
history of removing content that uses GitHub for other purposes (e.g.
GamerGate raid/doxing coordination).

The reason I'm confused is that most of the examples I was able to find that
match the claim are text files in otherwise unrelated repositories. It _is_
odd to find a text file describing ways to off yourself in a source code
repository that has nothing else to do with suicide.

Also, unless it's a more complex document (e.g. an e-book), sites like GitHub
Gists or Pastebin would seem to be more likely choices than GitHub proper.

------
ende
In Soviet Russia, repository commits you.

------
ommunist
Holy shmoly! Is wordpress.org the next?

~~~
gear54rus
These two can't be compared. I wouldn't mind much them blocking wordpress.org
(I rarely visit it and when I do, I can circumvent).

GitHub, or, for the matter SO, will be a big hit.

~~~
sergiosgc
Note the domain. Wordpress.org, not wordpress.com.

~~~
gear54rus
I understand perfectly, I'm just saying not as many people depend on Wordpress
as on GH or SO.

Personally, I don't recall last time I had to deal with it.

------
hit8run
Very sad thing. I feel for you.

------
phpeek
git commit suicide

------
butwhy
That's surprising to hear. I thought in Russia, Github blocks you.

------
yc1010
Has an official reason even been given? or is it just a case of "this site is
blocked, suck it up, Mother Russia ftw"

~~~
sjogress
According to the article, Github was blocked due to "the placement of text
describing the methods of suicide".

