Written by Vombatus on 20.01.2012 at 19:12

But I think it's an error. Authorities are getting in a war they can't win, controlling internet is way to dificult unless you adopt restrictive policies that make you look like a dictature (zomg look China, they has no facebook! Naziiiiis!). When people have been use to do whatever they want over the internet during that last two decades, it's too late to change something that has been interiorised as a habit.

In fact, China would be paradise compared to post-SOPA/PIPA/ACTA internet (knock on the wood). Yes, Facebook is filtered in China. So are Uncyclopedia, Livejournal and Youtube. Note that it doesn't imply that all those sites are filtered simultaneously or continuously. Every once in a while some site gets unblocked while another one becomes filtered. It all depends on what's on the news. Youtube was blocked for several months when there were news about a marine conflict between the US and China and about unrest in Tibet. Since everyone knew about it anyway, it was no secret. It shows the government's stupidity, though, because it's completely pointless to filter material that most people have access to anyway.

The biggest Chinese censorship fail was the ban on Google because the government stated that "People use Google in order to look for porn (... and politically sensitive articles...). Unless Google remove all references to porn sites, we shall filter it."
And then they did it... but not just Google search but everything related to Google, including Gmail. Most internet users in the world are Chinese. If most net users lose access to their mailbox (which might contain important mails concerning work and study), there's gonna be an uproar. In a couple of days Google was unblocked and everyone was happy.

The main thing is, if the Chinese filter something, they usually openly tell what and why they filter. Downloading media is not a problem for them (come on... it's China... a film's "original DVD" is out in China before its international release date" and I can say it's justified because foreign films usually don't get much screentime in China unless they're blockbusters and even then cinema tickets are too expensive for an average person to afford.)
Now compare this thing to SOPA/PIPA/ACTA which smells a lot worse... really, you might wanna flee to PRC if the US get away with it (knock on the wood...)

It appears the various protesting on Wednesday was enough to give SOPA the headshot. It's been pulled.

Written by Risto on 21.01.2012 at 01:42

It appears the various protesting on Wednesday was enough to give SOPA the headshot. It's been pulled.

That bill is definitely not dead in my eyes... It's just in ice.

Written by Ernis on 21.01.2012 at 00:13

Written by Vombatus on 20.01.2012 at 19:12

China stuff

Sounds interesting. Actually I said that stupid thing about China coz it's commonly used by anti-censor internet whiners to illustrate such things.

Anyway, I wasn't aware of the situation over there, so I learned something. Only similar case I know would be Turkey, where the government has strict rules over any reference to Atatürk. I remember when they closed Youtube coz some kurdish guys started uploading videos mocking him, and I pissed alot of people that no youtube was available. Don't know if the ban is still up... but the are pretty sensible with that... even the EU demanded them to lift any censorship as one of the conditions to keep the negociations to enter.

Written by Vombatus on 21.01.2012 at 02:05

Sounds interesting. Actually I said that stupid thing about China coz it's commonly used by anti-censor internet whiners to illustrate such things.

Anyway, I wasn't aware of the situation over there, so I learned something. Only similar case I know would be Turkey, where the government has strict rules over any reference to Atatürk. I remember when they closed Youtube coz some kurdish guys started uploading videos mocking him, and I pissed alot of people that no youtube was available. Don't know if the ban is still up... but the are pretty sensible with that... even the EU demanded them to lift any censorship as one of the conditions to keep the negociations to enter.

No, t'wasn't that stupid what you wrote. After all, we get lots of negative news about China via western media whereas it looks a whole lot different if you live in China. Chinese people are very pragmatic and progressive. I am sure that in a few generations also their government will become less conservative and they'll open up a bit more.

Atatürk is the central figure of a personality cult. However, Turkish people are content with him because he was a progressive leader for them and thanks to him, Turkey is in a better situation than many other islamic countries. Luckily, not all personality cults are like the Kim family business in DPRK. In fact, my Chinese teacher showed us a Chinese documentary about N-Korea which criticised and condemned the regime. Therefore it would be false to assume that China approves what happens to the people in DPRK. Of course, China is far from democracy. But they're not even trying to fake democracy unlike the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Anyways, internet censorship was and continues to be an annoying thing. But that's when tunnelling software comes in handy.

I would also like to add that China filters what they want to filter only inside their own borders. If you go to Hong Kong, there's no filtering whatsoever because, although being an administrative region of the Peoples Republic of China, HK has their own respective government and they act completely independently from the "motherland."

Now... if the US have problem with, let's say, Megaupload. Then why not just block the servers located within the borders of the US? Why couldn't the US create a Great Firewall for themselves just like China. If they don't like something, they can ban it.
What gives them the right to dictate their policy on a worldwide scale? A journalist compared this to Iran arresting a Youtube owner (whatever country he might be from) because of anti-islam videos appearing on the site.

Which takes us to... China has their wall of net censorship around their borders. The US seems to be willing to encircle the entire world with that type of a wall.

And the caricature of the day...

Agree on the border thing. It was a clumsy move to shut down everything everywhere. Aparently there is evidence they had ilegal stuff around, and the owners had massive incomes due to it so I understand and think it's almost the right thing to do.

I don't know if there is any jurisdiction regarding this type of website shutdown, since sopa still didn't pass and other organisations like the EU said they did not approuve this.

But they should have limited it to there zone and maybe just close the "ilegal part" of the site... lots of people used it only to share their own archives and others actually PAYED for the content, so no infraction there (even if the content they payed for was ilegal... funny huh?).

Problem is the fault of a few affected everyone... and everyones bitching about it, on one side people that want all their intelectual property shit at any cost and on the other those that think everything in life is free and accuse anything else as "fascism" (/sigh).

On a related note, just saw a couple of videos of the so called Anonymous organisation and it pissed me off. I have some sympathy for anti-censorship, but when I hear the amount of crap their mouth vomit (imperialism, oppressed western societies, using world poverty to justify themselves and whatnot...that's called demagoguery) , think I'd rather keep a neutral position.

Ironic how after all this ado Megaupload gets busted...

Anonymous are always to be taken with a grain of salt, because Anonymous are not an actual group, no matter how much they try to appear to be. Anonymous are an uncoordinated, anarchic swarm of people who do whatever shit they want, but occasionally bind themselves to achieving a certain goal through any means necessary, creating the illusion of coordinated work (more like who can DDoS or SQL inject this shit fastest). Anyone can be Anonymous anytime. The ones who speak out in the name of Anonymous are just a bunch of dicks who confuse people for the lulz, leading the mass media to think Anonymous are some highly structured malicious organization. The others may/may not go with it for lulz value.

Couldn't care less about Megaupload. I've always hated generic free download sites like Rapidshare, MediaFire, Megaupload, etc. with a passion.

Written by vezzy on 21.01.2012 at 22:32
I've always hated generic free download sites like Rapidshare, MediaFire, Megaupload, etc. with a passion.

Why? too mainstream for you?

No, really... I'm just curious.

Written by Vombatus on 21.01.2012 at 17:52

understand and think it's almost the right thing to do.

I don't know if there is any jurisdiction regarding this type of website shutdown, since sopa still didn't pass and other organisations like the EU said they did not approuve this.

Thay can do it only in USA, not even in canada, but how % are hosted in USA 60% well metral-archives is so ...

Written by X-Ray Rod on 21.01.2012 at 22:44
Why? too mainstream for you?

No, really... I'm just curious.

Why should I have to put up with all that bullshit when I can torrent stuff like a boss?

Legal, illegal, I don't care.

Written by vezzy on 22.01.2012 at 16:44

Why should I have to put up with all that bullshit when I can torrent stuff like a boss?

Legal, illegal, I don't care.

Point taken

Written by vezzy on 22.01.2012 at 16:44

Why should I have to put up with all that bullshit when I can torrent stuff like a boss?

Legal, illegal, I don't care.

Torrents have little to no Seeders on really obscure stuff, be it music, films, gay midget animal porn or just old games that people don't play anymore or never played much in the first place.

That's why Megaupload, Mediafire, RapidShare and co. blow Torrents away for anything smaller than 1GB.

Written by Slayer666 on 23.01.2012 at 00:34

Written by vezzy on 22.01.2012 at 16:44

Why should I have to put up with all that bullshit when I can torrent stuff like a boss?

Legal, illegal, I don't care.

Torrents have little to no Seeders on really obscure stuff, be it music, films, gay midget animal porn or just old games that people don't play anymore or never played much in the first place.

That's why Megaupload, Mediafire, RapidShare and co. blow Torrents away for anything smaller than 1GB.

Torents is faster BTW and it is important

Written by Slayer666 on 23.01.2012 at 00:34
Torrents have little to no Seeders on really obscure stuff, be it music, films, gay midget animal porn or just old games that people don't play anymore or never played much in the first place.

That's why Megaupload, Mediafire, RapidShare and co. blow Torrents away for anything smaller than 1GB.

There are specialized torrent sites designed in mind for such obscure stuff, where people do seed.

Also, if it has one seeder, you can still kind of pull through. As long as you tamper with your BitTorrent client settings and install a few... haxxorz.

Written by vezzy on 23.01.2012 at 09:54

There are specialized torrent sites designed in mind for such obscure stuff, where people do seed.

Hm... I don't know any. Care to drop a few names?

I just received this unfortunate news.

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/23/filesonic-file-sharing-service-next-domino-to-fall-after-megaupload-bust/?iid=tl-main-feature

What's next? Mediafire?

Written by Slayer666 on 23.01.2012 at 14:53
Hm... I don't know any. Care to drop a few names?

Psychocydd.co.uk for metal, punk and rock in general, but mostly the former two. Has a shitload of stuff, largest of its kind. Or if you want really obscure, forgotten vinyl and cassette demos, there's the Lockjaw blog.

Written by vezzy on 23.01.2012 at 19:43

Written by Slayer666 on 23.01.2012 at 14:53
Hm... I don't know any. Care to drop a few names?

Psychocydd.co.uk for metal, punk and rock in general, but mostly the former two. Has a shitload of stuff, largest of its kind. Or if you want really obscure, forgotten vinyl and cassette demos, there's the Lockjaw blog.

When it comes to really obscure shit, I also recommend RAF666underground and Asmodian Coven.

But to get back on track, I recently heard that Mediafire purged a large number of copyright-infringing files, mostly prominent files that were downloaded many times. They haven't hit me... yet.

Written by Guest on 24.01.2012 at 05:22

But to get back on track, I recently heard that Mediafire purged a large number of copyright-infringing files, mostly prominent files that were downloaded many times. They haven't hit me... yet.

Just start massively downloding this will get their attention

Hej who wants be my future cell mate

The "pumpkinfucker's" cell mate? Baz, I guess.

Written by Warman on 30.01.2012 at 17:34

The "pumpkinfucker's" cell mate? Baz, I guess.

man they stoll Råsunda from us so .... I supose we can sit in piratebay cell