Back in October, Walled Culture wrote about the grandly-named “Piracy Shield”. This is Italy’s new Internet blocking system, which assumes people are guilty until innocent, and gives the copyright industry a disproportionate power to control what is available online, no court orders required. Piracy Shield went live in December, and has just issued its first …
I’ve been using quad 9 dns for years and torrenting without issues.
These laws are made just to make happy the people getting rich with calcio streamings and alike. IPTV and stuff is enforced, for the rest it’s just business as usual
I’m sure your aware but for people who aren’t… Only changing your DNS doesn’t hide your traffic, only your DNS query. They can’t see you are resolving 1337x.to but they CAN see you access 104.31.16.118. This is why a VPN is important as it stops your ISP from seeing all of your traffic.
Yep, good to note for other people. I’m aware but here torrenting is kinda allowed. If you do it for yourself and without any profit motive you can just keep going without any kind of issue
The dns change is just to not have to use proxies to access stuff like libgen and piratebay in my case :)
Or not. “All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders”. A VPN provider can’t legally sell their services in Italy unless they comply. The best part is: since the govt is blocking websites they can also block providers who doesn’t play according to their rules :)
I’m not an Italian citizen and I don’t live there.
Their laws do not apply to me. An Italian citizen or resident can go online and buy vpn service from me. There is not law im subjected to that says I can’t sell vpn services to Italians.
An Italian citizen or resident can go online and buy vpn service from me. There is not law im subjected to that says I can’t sell vpn services to Italians.
This isn’t true. If you don’t comply with the other law regarding the website blocks then the Italian govt will politely ask you to. If your business happens to be on another EU member state they might even try to get your local authorities involved in the asking. Either way, if you don’t comply or they can’t reach you (cause you’re ouside the EU) they’ll proceed to block your website / domains in Italy and no more business for you.
You may face criminal charges if you’re from another EU country. Or if your business is very large the Italian government gets really interested they may be able to ask other govts for help.
I am both but my other comment is kinda getting ignored lol
I don’t even need a vpn to pirate, it’s business as usual.
All this stuff is just for IPTVs that stream soccer matches because Calcio is the king sport here.
The site posted by OP is kinda useless journalism lol. AirVPN quit just for a reason: they are an Italian company. Mullvad, Proton, Quad9… Business as usual.
Sure but you’d basically be scamming them as the VPN service wouldn’t work because even if you sent them the VPN installer and login it wouldn’t connect.
Someone will figure out a way to get around it. People can get a VPN through the great firewall of China, they will get through whatever Italy does as well.
Damn thats an incredible degree of overreach and looks like it gives established companies the power to take down any rising competitions websites without oversight.
Fucking sports. Sky and DAZN have such a stranglehold on sports. You wanna watch sportball? Pay up.
Professional sports and the companies that own the leagues are a total racket. Makes me hate that it’s such a large part of global culture. Support your local minor leagues!
People should be well aware of expatriates and how to become one as well as having emergency funds for it if their country has signs of turning dystopian
I know it may feel hard leaving your home country for some but would you rather stay and be forced to participate under dystopian laws or leave for a better country
Im going from Brazil to Portugal (not related to politics, only saying), I’m going with the help of my company and still would need around 30x the Brazilian minimum wage for the entire trip. Only to get a house to leave would be 18 to 21x. All of this to still be far away from your family and all of this to sometimes be treated as an alien.
It’s not easy to gain entry to another “better” country for most people. You tend to need money, connections, or specialist skills. When people say “well, then I’ll just move to another country” they may be unaware of this.
I learned that I’m essentially trapped in my country without massive amounts of money or a rare skill set. I have neither. I’ll just have to ride the fascist wave out if they succeed.
Its literally a violation of the EU human rights agreement…
Is it? In Portugal there have been a similar law for years and nobody cares apparently. It isn’t as wide as the Italian one, it just says ISPs are required to block access to websites a govt. entity lists.
Also no company will comply with that shitshows ridiculous orders.
Are you sure? Think about it… “All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders”. A VPN provider can’t legally sell their services in Italy unless they comply. The best part is: since the govt is blocking websites they can also block providers who doesn’t play according to their rules :)
It doesn’t go as far as this bs does and this law allows copyright holders to skip the government for that. Blocking something on isp level is one thing but this seems to be targeting private DNS and even VPN services, also it is a Reversal of the burden of proof.
Are you sure? Think about it… “AIl VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders”. A VPN provider can’t legally sell their services in Italy unless they comply. The best part is: since the govt is blocking websites they can also block providers who doesn’t play according to their rules :)
Ever heard about Proton? You can get their services by mailing them money and going through TOR if necessary and you can easily build your own DNS server with a raspberry PI
You can block as much as you want, as long as the internet itself is there you can always use TOR its literally known for working even in China and North Korea. Custom DNS are also a thing and as soon as you connect to a DNS outside of Italy they can do whatever they want, blocking that is basically impossible unless they do the China.
1.1.1.1 for example is cloudflare, they barely block anything.
There is also the google DNS or NextDNS wich is custom. ISP blocks can be easily circumvented by another DNS, wich everyone should have by default because fuck em ISP bitches collecting and selling your data.
Another circumventing is VPNs, you can’t block them, its impossible i work in IT and I’ve yet to encounter a network that is able to block a VPN to outside. And there are free ones, fuck Nordvpn, they are unsecure as hell anyway and just chase money. If you want a VPN that does the trick, use Proton, they work in China (i tested that personally)
Please remember that Italy is a super insignificant market and barely anyone will comply with their BS.
Just because something is “technically” possible doesn’t mean its scalability and costs are a actually considerable option. And i don’t think any ISP would even consider paying for that, they just say its impossible and thats it, otherwise they let the state pay for it, wich would probably result in the same, that its not going to happen.
Btw, I’ve never seen something like that, my VPN worked even in China, and that must mean something…
Just because something is “technically” possible doesn’t mean its scalability and costs are a actually considerable option.
Any mid-range / price firewall solution is capable of effectively blocking most VPN solutions. Both OVPN and Wireguard VPN traffic is trivial to identify as such and block. Here’s an example and another.
Btw, I’ve never seen something like that, my VPN worked even in China, and that must mean something…
China’s great firewall works a little bit differently. They aren’t actively blocking certain kinds of traffic by default because that would mean a large DPI effort they don’t want to undertake. Also if you google a bit about it you’ll find that people’s experiences are mostly “my VPN worked fine for a day/week/month and then it was blocked”. It seems they’ve some IPs and domains blocked and the rest is some kind of machine learning that applies rules as it sees fit, this guy here has a good analysis of it.
As said, I’ve never seen a network that even tried to block any kind of VPN, and i have seen numerous networks… I kinda built them even. Good, i don’t think anyone outside of a clownshow authoritarian circlejerk would even try to do that.
There is however a problem you forgot. VPNs are very very necessary when you work with sensitive data in BtoB, wanna do remote checkup of a server? You better use a fucking VPN or you aint getting in. Wanna help someone over TeamViewer? Thats not much different from a VPN…
And there is still TOR…
China’s great firewall works a little bit differently. They aren’t actively blocking certain kinds of traffic by default because that would mean a large DPI effort they don’t want to undertake. Also if you google a bit about it you’ll find that people’s experiences are mostly “my VPN worked fine for a day/week/month and then it was blocked”. It seems they’ve some IPs and domains blocked and the rest is some kind of machine learning that applies rules as it sees fit, this guy here has a good analysis of it.
As said, I’ve never seen a network that even tried to block any kind of VPN, and i have seen numerous networks… I kinda built them even. Good, i don’t think anyone outside of a clownshow authoritarian circlejerk would even try to do that.
All the serious companies (financial sector) I worked for so far did it, because as I linked is really easy with any cheap firewall solution.
clownshow authoritarian circlejerk
Well… a bank could be considerar that indeed, but you know, security concerns and all.
VPNs are very very necessary when you work with sensitive data in BtoB, wanna do remote checkup of a server? You better use a fucking VPN or you aint getting in.
So what? A company can use a firewall to block VPNs when the target IP isn’t on some whitelist, or the source computer isn’t authorized to use VPNs. On those high security setups at banks and whatnot client machines inside the company network won’t need to touch a VPN to do a “remote checkup of a server” at some cloud provider as the network will be configured to internally route the traffic from all computers / users (backed by SSO/AD credential) to access those resources via a special VPN setup on some router / server.
Wanna help someone over TeamViewer? Thats not much different from a VPN…
Fortinet and WatchGuard can both distinguish a VPN from TeamViewer. They can actually do much more than that, even TeamViewer from RDP or VNC is just a couple of clicks on their UIs.
Isn’t the Portuguese one just saying they block stuff on isp level when the government orders them (or rather a court does) (btw i edited my first reply)
Kind of, the law doesn’t actually say that it only applies to ISPs… technically speaking the Portuguese law could be applicable and enforced with a VPN provider is a court decided to do so. The legislation is kind of written in a vague way that may apply to more than just ISPs. So far they only pressured ISPs to block websites.
Yeah thats the same game in Germany, but the processes are so fucking long that getting something blocked takes time, our ISPs fight almost every time and when something gets blocked its at max an hour until they have a new domain that isn’t blocked.
The wording is vague but Noone dares to try and court a VPN service over that bs or tries to fight google or cloudflare.
The only actual option to get something out of the internet is to find the server and shut it down.
but the processes are so fucking long that getting something blocked takes time, our ISPs fight almost every time (…) The only actual option to get something out of the internet is to find the server and shut it down.
Not the case at all around here (Portugal), the blocks are quick and ISPs don’t even complain, they simply comply. What the law says is that there’s a govt entity called IGAC that is allowed to ask ISPs to block a website (domain name) as long as the website is flagged as containing / hosting piracy or other form of copyright infringement. The only requirement is that IGAC has to notify the website owner asking to remove the content prior blocking. After 48 if the website is still hosting said content then IGAC will ask the ISPs to block it.
Since this is all DNS based one can, obviously, set their DNS servers as Google or Cloudflare and bypass the block. Now the problem is that this is all fun and games until someone in the govt decides to go against Cloudflare and other DNS providers, the law would allow them to easily do it the way its written.
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⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
I bet VPN providers in privacy respecting countries are seeing a large increase in subscribers from Italy now.
I’ve been using quad 9 dns for years and torrenting without issues.
These laws are made just to make happy the people getting rich with calcio streamings and alike. IPTV and stuff is enforced, for the rest it’s just business as usual
I’m sure your aware but for people who aren’t… Only changing your DNS doesn’t hide your traffic, only your DNS query. They can’t see you are resolving 1337x.to but they CAN see you access 104.31.16.118. This is why a VPN is important as it stops your ISP from seeing all of your traffic.
DNS as a protocol is in general clear text. Your provider can see what you query regardless.
That’s why dns-over-https is so important
Root servers don’t support that. Nothing would stop governments from telling all ISPs in the country to block all DNS servers that don’t comply.
Edit: Missed a word.
Yep, good to note for other people. I’m aware but here torrenting is kinda allowed. If you do it for yourself and without any profit motive you can just keep going without any kind of issue
The dns change is just to not have to use proxies to access stuff like libgen and piratebay in my case :)
Or not. “All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders”. A VPN provider can’t legally sell their services in Italy unless they comply. The best part is: since the govt is blocking websites they can also block providers who doesn’t play according to their rules :)
I’m not an Italian citizen and I don’t live there.
Their laws do not apply to me. An Italian citizen or resident can go online and buy vpn service from me. There is not law im subjected to that says I can’t sell vpn services to Italians.
This isn’t true. If you don’t comply with the other law regarding the website blocks then the Italian govt will politely ask you to. If your business happens to be on another EU member state they might even try to get your local authorities involved in the asking. Either way, if you don’t comply or they can’t reach you (cause you’re ouside the EU) they’ll proceed to block your website / domains in Italy and no more business for you.
Being blocked in Italy would be my worst case scenario.
You may face criminal charges if you’re from another EU country. Or if your business is very large the Italian government gets really interested they may be able to ask other govts for help.
I am both but my other comment is kinda getting ignored lol
I don’t even need a vpn to pirate, it’s business as usual.
All this stuff is just for IPTVs that stream soccer matches because Calcio is the king sport here.
The site posted by OP is kinda useless journalism lol. AirVPN quit just for a reason: they are an Italian company. Mullvad, Proton, Quad9… Business as usual.
Sure but you’d basically be scamming them as the VPN service wouldn’t work because even if you sent them the VPN installer and login it wouldn’t connect.
Why wouldn’t it connect?
Unless they block my specific IP address then? It will work. And if they block my ip address, then I can just get a new one pretty easily.
FTA: “The list of IP addresses and domain names to be blocked is drawn up by private bodies authorised by AGCOM”
Edit: You’re correct, you could run a VPN on your own server and sell access, as this would only block known VPN services.
Could you buy another VPN through a VPN?
You can buy Proton by mailing them money and going through TOR, so basically yes.
Putting performance aside, you can but still raises some legal and billing questions.
Not with mullvad it won’t
This is a definite no for moving to italy. They should also be kicked out of the EU for this.
They should be kicked for constantly electing Faschists…
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I mean, that would kick out more than just Italy.
Hungary as well… Oh no what a loss… Anyway…
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You just have to self-declare you don’t live in Italy.
Someone will figure out a way to get around it. People can get a VPN through the great firewall of China, they will get through whatever Italy does as well.
For just a bit more than a VPN subscription, you can rent a VPS and route your traffic through it. Basically, be your own VPN.
Maybe this law will spur innovation and skills in sysadmin, like how people who grew up before smart phones actually had to learn how computers work.
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shocked that a country that elected a fascist with ties to mussolini would do something like this
That was always the plan!
Damn thats an incredible degree of overreach and looks like it gives established companies the power to take down any rising competitions websites without oversight.
Fucking sports. Sky and DAZN have such a stranglehold on sports. You wanna watch sportball? Pay up.
Professional sports and the companies that own the leagues are a total racket. Makes me hate that it’s such a large part of global culture. Support your local minor leagues!
Solution: No sportsball.
It should be cockblocked right at the begining, otherwise it’d be introduced to other EU countries too.
People should be well aware of expatriates and how to become one as well as having emergency funds for it if their country has signs of turning dystopian
I know it may feel hard leaving your home country for some but would you rather stay and be forced to participate under dystopian laws or leave for a better country
My guy, I’m just trying to pay the bills. I do not have the excess income to fill a go bag.
Im going from Brazil to Portugal (not related to politics, only saying), I’m going with the help of my company and still would need around 30x the Brazilian minimum wage for the entire trip. Only to get a house to leave would be 18 to 21x. All of this to still be far away from your family and all of this to sometimes be treated as an alien.
It’s not easy to gain entry to another “better” country for most people. You tend to need money, connections, or specialist skills. When people say “well, then I’ll just move to another country” they may be unaware of this.
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I learned that I’m essentially trapped in my country without massive amounts of money or a rare skill set. I have neither. I’ll just have to ride the fascist wave out if they succeed.
Man, we need mesh networks yesterday. I don’t care if it’s slow, I just want them to get out of my face.
Piracy Shield aka The Great Firewall of Italy.
look italy. just stick to what you know
pizza
pasta
mafia
and so on
Entertainment industry is literally a mafia so this is on brand.
I mean to be fair they did invent fascism so this law isn’t a stretch.
It runs in the family and Italy is all about family
That’s a funny waybto spell “sexual assault”.
Piracy Shield is indeed brought to us by (soccer) mafia
Its literally a violation of the EU human rights agreement…
Also no company will comply with that shitshows ridiculous orders.
Is it? In Portugal there have been a similar law for years and nobody cares apparently. It isn’t as wide as the Italian one, it just says ISPs are required to block access to websites a govt. entity lists.
Are you sure? Think about it… “All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders”. A VPN provider can’t legally sell their services in Italy unless they comply. The best part is: since the govt is blocking websites they can also block providers who doesn’t play according to their rules :)
It doesn’t go as far as this bs does and this law allows copyright holders to skip the government for that. Blocking something on isp level is one thing but this seems to be targeting private DNS and even VPN services, also it is a Reversal of the burden of proof.
Ever heard about Proton? You can get their services by mailing them money and going through TOR if necessary and you can easily build your own DNS server with a raspberry PI
You can block as much as you want, as long as the internet itself is there you can always use TOR its literally known for working even in China and North Korea. Custom DNS are also a thing and as soon as you connect to a DNS outside of Italy they can do whatever they want, blocking that is basically impossible unless they do the China.
1.1.1.1 for example is cloudflare, they barely block anything. There is also the google DNS or NextDNS wich is custom. ISP blocks can be easily circumvented by another DNS, wich everyone should have by default because fuck em ISP bitches collecting and selling your data.
Another circumventing is VPNs, you can’t block them, its impossible i work in IT and I’ve yet to encounter a network that is able to block a VPN to outside. And there are free ones, fuck Nordvpn, they are unsecure as hell anyway and just chase money. If you want a VPN that does the trick, use Proton, they work in China (i tested that personally)
Please remember that Italy is a super insignificant market and barely anyone will comply with their BS.
VPNs are extremely easy to detect and block. You need to do deep packet inspection but it can be done if they’re willing to pay for it.
This is what it’s going to come down to, whether ISPs will be willing to eat the costs for all the blocking.
Just because something is “technically” possible doesn’t mean its scalability and costs are a actually considerable option. And i don’t think any ISP would even consider paying for that, they just say its impossible and thats it, otherwise they let the state pay for it, wich would probably result in the same, that its not going to happen.
Btw, I’ve never seen something like that, my VPN worked even in China, and that must mean something…
Any mid-range / price firewall solution is capable of effectively blocking most VPN solutions. Both OVPN and Wireguard VPN traffic is trivial to identify as such and block. Here’s an example and another.
China’s great firewall works a little bit differently. They aren’t actively blocking certain kinds of traffic by default because that would mean a large DPI effort they don’t want to undertake. Also if you google a bit about it you’ll find that people’s experiences are mostly “my VPN worked fine for a day/week/month and then it was blocked”. It seems they’ve some IPs and domains blocked and the rest is some kind of machine learning that applies rules as it sees fit, this guy here has a good analysis of it.
As said, I’ve never seen a network that even tried to block any kind of VPN, and i have seen numerous networks… I kinda built them even. Good, i don’t think anyone outside of a clownshow authoritarian circlejerk would even try to do that.
There is however a problem you forgot. VPNs are very very necessary when you work with sensitive data in BtoB, wanna do remote checkup of a server? You better use a fucking VPN or you aint getting in. Wanna help someone over TeamViewer? Thats not much different from a VPN…
And there is still TOR…
Interesting. Well it was some years ago.
All the serious companies (financial sector) I worked for so far did it, because as I linked is really easy with any cheap firewall solution.
Well… a bank could be considerar that indeed, but you know, security concerns and all.
So what? A company can use a firewall to block VPNs when the target IP isn’t on some whitelist, or the source computer isn’t authorized to use VPNs. On those high security setups at banks and whatnot client machines inside the company network won’t need to touch a VPN to do a “remote checkup of a server” at some cloud provider as the network will be configured to internally route the traffic from all computers / users (backed by SSO/AD credential) to access those resources via a special VPN setup on some router / server.
Fortinet and WatchGuard can both distinguish a VPN from TeamViewer. They can actually do much more than that, even TeamViewer from RDP or VNC is just a couple of clicks on their UIs.
I agree with you, but still the portuguese law is equally a violation of the EU human rights agreement.
Isn’t the Portuguese one just saying they block stuff on isp level when the government orders them (or rather a court does) (btw i edited my first reply)
Kind of, the law doesn’t actually say that it only applies to ISPs… technically speaking the Portuguese law could be applicable and enforced with a VPN provider is a court decided to do so. The legislation is kind of written in a vague way that may apply to more than just ISPs. So far they only pressured ISPs to block websites.
Yeah thats the same game in Germany, but the processes are so fucking long that getting something blocked takes time, our ISPs fight almost every time and when something gets blocked its at max an hour until they have a new domain that isn’t blocked.
The wording is vague but Noone dares to try and court a VPN service over that bs or tries to fight google or cloudflare.
The only actual option to get something out of the internet is to find the server and shut it down.
Not the case at all around here (Portugal), the blocks are quick and ISPs don’t even complain, they simply comply. What the law says is that there’s a govt entity called IGAC that is allowed to ask ISPs to block a website (domain name) as long as the website is flagged as containing / hosting piracy or other form of copyright infringement. The only requirement is that IGAC has to notify the website owner asking to remove the content prior blocking. After 48 if the website is still hosting said content then IGAC will ask the ISPs to block it.
Since this is all DNS based one can, obviously, set their DNS servers as Google or Cloudflare and bypass the block. Now the problem is that this is all fun and games until someone in the govt decides to go against Cloudflare and other DNS providers, the law would allow them to easily do it the way its written.
The article itself says Google is already complying. Come on man
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half the shit hungary does is a violation of the eu human rights agreement and nothing happens to them…