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Cogent became an internet police.. Is now blocking TPB and other torrent sites
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Cogent became an internet police.. Is now blocking TPB and other torrent sites

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Comments

  • Those bastards blocking Trailer Park Boys!? That's pretty greezy!

  • Forget about ISP blockages.. If the backbone providers start censoring websites, there's no way around that lol

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    stefeman said: Kinda interesting lol

    Main result of this article is to alert me to a couple torrent sites I wasn't aware of.

  • Thats not a good thing. We have a DNS block of PirateBay and several other sites here in Norway, all major ISPs has to block such sites. But when backbone providers starts...what then? If more start to do the same, VPN solutions can be affected also.

    And under what jurisdiction do they block sites like that? I can understand that the government here in Norway make Norwegian ISPs to block the sites, but they can't tell a ISP from another country to block the sites for Norwegian users.

    Thanked by 2WSS klikli
  • raindog308 said: Main result of this article is to alert me to a couple torrent sites I wasn't aware of.

    LOL, same here. Always when they write about stuff like that, they mention a list of torrentsites. And if they get blocked, they have to be OK? Right?

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    I wouldn't call it policing, much rather executing court order.

    Thanked by 1Hxxx
  • Clouvider said:

    I wouldn't call it policing, much rather executing court order.

    I don't see anything in that article about a court order.

  • cociucociu Member
    edited February 2017

    interesting and in the same time sucks .... finnaly i am glad to not pact with cogent , eaven is spamming my cellular ..

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • MicrolinuxMicrolinux Member
    edited February 2017

    @willie said:

    Clouvider said:

    I wouldn't call it policing, much rather executing court order.

    I don't see anything in that article about a court order.

    That could be by design. They made some carefully worded comments.

    Few ISPs have any interest in ephemeral black-holing, it's nearly always because they were ordered to or they are "motivated" for legal reasons.

  • @Microlinux said:

    @willie said:

    Clouvider said:

    I wouldn't call it policing, much rather executing court order.

    I don't see anything in that article about a court order.

    That could be by design. They made some carefully worded comments.

    Few ISPs have any interest in ephemeral black-holing, it's nearly always because they were ordered to or they are "motivated" for legal reasons.

    Oh my Lord! We are splitting hairs over if it's a court order or not, as if courts are infallible uncorrupt institutions serving the Law and Justice, for byte's sake!

    Furthermore, if there is an actual court order, it is another illustration how media companies are lubing up their way through establishment.

    Thanked by 1deadbeef
  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    I'm not seeing this at all. While TPB doesn't ping, a curl of the site dumps back things just fine.

    Maybe Cogent was dealing with a really huge flood and had to null the IP for a bit?

    Francisco

  • GamerTech24GamerTech24 Member
    edited February 2017

    @Francisco said:
    I'm not seeing this at all. While TPB doesn't ping, a curl of the site dumps back things just fine.

    Maybe Cogent was dealing with a really huge flood and had to null the IP for a bit?

    Francisco

    Cogent didn't give a reply that hinted anything back to TorrentFreak, I think it was just nulled due to other reasons as well.

    Most ISPs like Telstra/BigPond are still doing DNS blocks which is easily overridden so I don't think anyone has anything to worry about unless they live in Turkey where even things like Twitter and Minecraft.net are blocked.

    Thanked by 1Francisco
  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider
    edited February 2017

    Well they are a private company they can make the decision to do that without anyone's permission or any special order themselves.

    Lets face it, no one is buying their connectivity for torrenting specifically and maybe someone higher up decided they don't want the traffic any more, they have deffinatley made stranger decisions in the past at Cogent :)

    But most likely just a coincidental null I guess.

  • @Yura said:
    Oh my Lord! We are splitting hairs over if it's a court order or not, as if courts are infallible uncorrupt institutions serving the Law and Justice, for byte's sake!

    Well, yeah . . . we're talking about the cause, not the effects.

    Furthermore, if there is an actual court order, it is another illustration how media companies are lubing up their way through establishment.

    I think that's already been well-established.

  • Yawn

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited February 2017

    if backbone providers that control a huge part of international traffic, start to ban themselves what they want to, we are entering to a very dangerous route in web's evolving.
    Torrenting could be just a start - they can stop anything, even a whole country if it does not fulfill the wishes of other more powerful countries.
    Free speech etc.? Could be a victim also, in the future...

    Thanked by 1Maounique
  • AnthonySmith said:

    Well they are a private company they can make the decision to do that without anyone's permission or any special order themselves.

    I don't think they can, if they have common carrier status in the US. It would be like the phone company deciding not to route your calls to the wrong kind of people. That's why I wanted to know if there was an actual court order.

    Thanked by 1Janevski
  • Blocking is not a solution.

    "Nice try" said Tor.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited February 2017

    willie said: I don't see anything in that article about a court order.

    I'd assume they have not added burden to their own teams out of the blue because suddenly they want to purge the world of all evil, starting with Copyright (really? There are more important things to block, and ones that are even better PR wise).
    Cogent refused to comment - not denied a court order - which in my book implies that there is likely gag order or their policy simply states they don't comment on such matters.

    There can also be a number of other technical reasons. Cogent is fairly known for not liking DDoS on their infra.

  • Cogent refused to comment - not denied a court order - which in my book implies likely gag order.

    That would usually not happen if it were from a civil action. I wonder if the movie industry has now got the "national security" apparatus in its pocket as well as the legislature.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @willie said:

    Cogent refused to comment - not denied a court order - which in my book implies likely gag order.

    That would usually not happen if it were from a civil action. I wonder if the movie industry has now got the "national security" apparatus in its pocket as well as the legislature.

    I don't understand what's the point in speculating on this ? No one has any reliable information. Reasons can be legal or technical.

    Now is the best, and the flaming part, if TPB or their upstream feels it's a technical issue they should raise it with the Cogent's NOC and resolve the problem, and if they feel damaged, they should seek a court order stopping Cogent from blocking this traffic, if there's indeed a block against them. This is how it works in normal world. But then of course TPB could have their own reasons to embitter public against Cogent/Governments/World as the legal option is, let's face it, not viable for them for obvious reasons.

    Heaving said that, I don't see the same on V6 via Cogent LG which suggest a technical reason could have caused this null for the V4 IP, perhaps a DDoS attack that Cogent decided they won't be happy to carry, or an issue within Cloudflare or maybe even Cloudflare requesting an RTBH. It could also be completely unrelated to TPB and caused by another site hosted on the same IPv4 address.

    traceroute to 2400:cb00:21:1024::8d65:6a56 (2400:cb00:21:1024::8d65:6a56), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets 1 2001:978:1:31d::1 (2001:978:1:31d::1) 1.415 ms 1.402 ms 2 te0-0-1-0.agr11.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (2001:550:0:1000::9a19:4a9) 0.938 ms te0-0-1-0.agr12.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (2001:550:0:1000::9a19:4ad) 0.931 ms 3 te0-0-0-3.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (2001:550:0:1000::9a36:2761) 0.850 ms te0-19-0-3.ccr42.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com (2001:550:0:1000::9a36:2719) 0.837 ms 4 be2871.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (2001:550:0:1000::9a36:3aba) 1.036 ms 1.041 ms 5 2001:978:2:21::76:2 (2001:978:2:21::76:2) 0.560 ms 0.568 ms 6 2400:cb00:21:1024::8d65:6a56 (2400:cb00:21:1024::8d65:6a56) 0.476 ms 0.481 ms

    If you're really so interested in getting the truth, ask Cloudflare, maybe they will share the history of this issue with you.

  • Clouvider said: I don't understand what's the point in speculating on this ? No one has any reliable information.

    Because it's an issue of concern to a lot of us (not just torrenters) and it's useful to exchange thoughts to put together the info that we can.

    Reasons can be legal or technical.

    Legal reason #1: some kind of civil copyright complaint leading to a court order => this wouldn't be secret and even if Cogent didn't make a public announcement, TPB would likely dig up and publish the details.

    Legal reason #2: some kind of criminal or national security investigation => this could conceivably be kept secret, so maybe that's what we're dealing with here.

    Technical reason: if it's been this long I'd expect some kind of announcement, even just a tweet or something

    Business reason: Cogent decides it doesn't like TPB so it pulls the plug by its own decision. This is scary and I'm dubious of the idea that it's legal, but IANAL.

    Other - ???

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
  • It might be that Cogent just didn't have a v4 route for one or more prefixes? As in perhaps a peering or routing related issue that wasn't intentionally a block, filter, or censorship attempt per se.

  • @jtk said:
    It might be that Cogent just didn't have a v4 route for one or more prefixes? As in perhaps a peering or routing related issue that wasn't intentionally a block, filter, or censorship attempt per se.

    Just take a look at the list of unreachable providers on torrentfreak. It's scary.

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited February 2017

    Why does everyone assume here Cogent is US based?

    Cogent is a Bermuda company under commonwealth law, and one of few Tier1 not incorporated inside the US.

    A US court order is not valid for Cogent.

    ethancedrik said: Cogent didn't give a reply that hinted anything back to TorrentFreak, I think it was just nulled due to other reasons as well.

    Cogent never comments on such things, Cogent barely even comments on press releases. This does not mean shit.

    MrKaruppu said: "Nice try" said Tor.

    Nice try, said your local ISP that censors all IPs used as entry/bridge... bam, no more Tor. This works in Iran, live, right in this second.

  • MrKaruppuMrKaruppu Member
    edited February 2017

    William said: Nice try, said your local ISP that censors all IPs used as entry/bridge.

    Entry/Guard nodes ban. - Okay!

    Bridge ban? Tell me how.

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited February 2017

    MrKaruppu said: Okay! Bridge ban? Tell me how.

    The IR gov requests bridges like normal users via the email/website, then blocks the IPs.

    Unknown ones are banned by DPI or just by trial and error (build tor connection -> works -> central IP ban on ITC, as it is confirmed as bridge).

  • @William said:

    MrKaruppu said: Okay! Bridge ban? Tell me how.

    The IR go requests bridges as normal users via the email/website, then blocks the IPs. Unknown ones are banned by DPI or just by trial and error (build tor connection -> works -> central IP ban on ITC).

    That doesn't seem viable or true. Bridges can be run by anyone at any place and no harm to the person running a bridge node comparing with running an exit.
    If they really intend to block bridges, they should block the internet rather than going through that
    task. However, any source to back up your claim?

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited February 2017

    MrKaruppu said: However, any source to back up your claim?

    My server in Tehran, my years in Tor, my convictions for it...

    MrKaruppu said: Bridges can be run by anyone at any place and no harm to the person running a bridge node comparing with running an exit

    they block ACCESS to this bridges, who runs this bridge or what it does is NOT of any interest to the Iranian government.

    Anyone/Anywhere is also not correct by fact - you need an external port at least, excluding any CGNAT ISP.

    MrKaruppu said: If they really intend to block bridges, they should block the internet rather than going through that task

    This is the plan - Iran is since years building a local intranet (similar to North Korea) which, according to the highest religious leader, will ultimately end with internet decoupling outside of gov.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37212456

  • Isn't that an CloudFlare IP on the screenshot?

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
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