Slashdot Log In
China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Nov 08, 2008 10:01 PM
from the state-is-still-not-your-friend dept.
from the state-is-still-not-your-friend dept.
frogger writes "China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently, however, several reports came in from China indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
So, what have they found? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just wondering, does Baidu have government connections?
All Chinese companies have government connections. Well, they do if they want to have the slightest chance of being successful. That's what operating in a fascist-capitalist state means.
Parent
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Funny)
Not flaming, but can I have a source for such practices, or are you speaking purely anecdotally? I find it very interesting. I've spent a considerable amount of time in Germany (as an American) and never experienced this.
Parent
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's much easier that way. Certainly the NSA has been known to monitor communications between Airbus and its customers in order to give Boeing a competitive advantage; a $6bn contract with the Saudis was lost when American spies found out about some backhanders Airbus had been paying to officials there. They've also been known to forward technical details of European inventions to American firms in order to get the patent first. There's quite a history [europa.eu] of Americans using state spying agencies for industrial espionage, and so it's natural that they assume that everybody else is doing the same to them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew US-Americans have an irrational hate for the French, but this really takes the cake...
Wow, ignorant of Americans much? I could almost mistake your comment as some kind of irrational, or at least uninformed, dislike of Americans. But I'm pretty sure you're just talking out of your hat, so I don't need to take it the wrong way.
I would recommend that you do a little research on the history of military/industrial espionage between the United States and France. It's actually very interesting, and after spending some time informing yourself, you might find the GP's comment less xenophobic. Fran
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hahahahahahaha
China is communist in nothing but name. You really need to go there and check it out. China is a place for the rich, and the business men. The peasants have barely any rights at all, although this is changing, albiet, slowly.
You can see, from one of China's own newspapers, that social welfare only meets 5% of demand [peopledaily.com.cn]. And even that is probably pushing it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I have gone there and have friends there. you and your co-poster are mistaking corruption for capitalism.
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:5, Informative)
How long did you go for? 2 weeks? A month? You can't see a country in just that time.
You will have to support your claims for it being communist... Because I've never seen anything to support that. Corruption in China, though not good, is much better than a lot of other countries, including India, and great pains are being made to reduce it.
I never said that corruption was a capitalist thing - it's not a communist thing either. In fact, I don't know of any political ideology that supports corruption.
The capitalist sentiment in China is very strong, especially in places like Shanghai. In Beijing, although the Mao Zedong 'religion' is thriving, things are not much different. The rich drive around in their BMW's while the poor try to carve out their lives in the slums, which were conveniently fenced off for the Olympics.
I haven't met many people in China who were dumb enough to believe that it is anything other than Capitalist, not in the cities anyway. It is usually just uninformed foreigners who would deign to believe anything other than the blatantly obvious truth - which China goes through no lengths to hide.
A lot of people in China still believe it is Communist, but that is mainly because they don't know what Communism is. They haven't read Karl Marx, or any other important Communist literature, and I wouldn't believe you have either.
Communism requires Socialism. Almost none of that is present in China. Free education? Ha! For a poor person, they can never expect to get into a good school, unless they are absolutely BRILLIANT at their studies, while the rich mofos just pay a bit of cash, and so the best schools are filled with stupid, ignorant, rich kids. University is no better, except, the truly rich parents usually send their kids to study overseas, where results vary.
No - China is a place for the rich, even more so than the US of A. True Communism has no place for the rich, but China does.
One major tell-tale sign of the inherent capitalism is the fact that most Chinese students studying overseas are studying business. If you have access to a nearby University, a quick survey will show you what the majority of them study. At my University (Victoria University), there were hundreds of Chinese studying Bachelors of Commerce, while there were barely any studying anything else, a few, but not many. Why? Because their parents know, that to succeed in China, one has to do business.
Parent
Science? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps no Chinese study science in Canada (or wherever Victoria University is), but at Purdue (Indiana, USA), you'd have to be blind to miss the Chinese studying in all fields of science. There's nearly as many Chinese students as there are black students, and lots of Chinese professors, too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If China isn't capitalistic, no place on earth is. Money is everything in China, you can bribe and do almost anything things with money.
For example, with money, you can dig up all the earth around a household you don't like, force people to work in hazard environments, dump toxic waste to your neighbour, and have people cut off their arms and legs, etc... just because you have money!
Pure capitalism to its finest.
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Informative)
Now should I want to take it further and go LLC or incorporate or what have you there will be many thousands spent on lawyers, taxes, bribes etc.
You really think an LLC or corporation requires thousands in fees, taxes and bribes? Have you ever heard of legalzoom.com or bizfilings.com? They'll get either one of those business entities established for you for under $500. No lawyers need be involved. Now, if you're in a state that punishes small businesses like California you pay a huge $800 per year fee for your corporation or LLC regardless of whether you make a single cent or not, but in most states there are no such mandatory fees.
Parent
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Interesting)
You haven't really answered the question. Technically every successful business in the US has "government connections" too. You can't even start a small business without paying a bunch of fees and buying a bunch of permits.
You're being pedantic. I took the GP to mean: does this major Chinese corporation have government contacts that demonstrate blatant favoratism? The answer (as with most Chinese businesses relative to foreign competition) is "yes".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They are communist - maybe not true USSR communism
Russia isn't a true Communist state any more than the United States. They're totalitarians, pure and simple. Of course, the United States isn't a democracy either. That's mostly because when implemented on a truly large scale, neither Communism nor Democracy actually work. Both ideals assume that the human animal is something entirely different than what it really is, and both fail because of it.
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Informative)
A little of each. Baidu is a publicly traded corp on NASDAQ and it also operates in Japan, though this is definitely a case of government connections.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
In before the lame jo
CARRIER LOST
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hijacked? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
DRTFA, but I'm guessing that they are doing this at the DNS level. So yeah, they're not getting the use of their domain name within China back unless the PRC says so. If that is the case, I would call that a hijack.
Re: (Score:2)
To a non technical end user a browser hijack and a DNS redirect is essentially the same result.
Re:Hijacked? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
..the DNS resolution is being hijacked to .."
They're hijacking the DNS, to redirect from the sites. "China hijacks site" deliberately leads people to believe that they've taken it over..
Has never worked for me.. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that I've never been able to access piratebay from China. Even now, I don't even get redirected to Baidu. Nothing comes up in the browser at all. The "to"s below are timeouts *s that slashdot said I had too many junk characters ;)
tracert -d thepiratebay.org
Tracing route to thepiratebay.org [83.140.65.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 1 ms 3 ms 192.168.1.1
2 to to to Request timed out.
3 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms 221.224.243.169
4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 222.92.175.74
5 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 202.97.27.110
6 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms 202.97.39.165
7 9 ms 9 ms 14 ms 202.97.44.58
8 to to to Request timed out.
9 to to to Request timed out.
10 to to to Request timed out.
11 to ^C
Bad Article (Score:3, Informative)
In Beijing right now
The pirate bay hasn't worked from here for at least a year. Mininova and ISO hunt are still accessable. This would be roughly the tenth bogus article about China in the past few months. Why does slashdot bother posting rubish without checking their facts?
Flame bait
I am happy to see that the sheer number of bogus articles posted weekly about China has declined post olympics, Shock Horror!
similar was happening in 2007 (Score:2, Informative)
this was simply solved by putting the D/L url into my overseas proxy and from there the torrent client worked normally.
Attention Yankee Dogs! (Score:2, Funny)
All your Bittorrent Base are belong to us!
You are on your way to Communism, take your time.
You have no choice, but to join us, hahahahahaahah!
We own your national debt, USA, 100 Trillion Dollars, now pay up or we won't give you back your BT sites. Your search engines Google and Yahoo and then megacorprations like Microsoft and IBM are next, muahahahaahahh!
Your Karate is no match for our Kung-Fu!
Attention Commie Bastards! (Score:2)
Thank for helping us destroy those commie institutions.
You are on your way to a Capitalist Democracy, take your time.
You have no choice, but to join us, hahahahahahah!
Thanks for all the money which we used to buy all your plastic crap to make all our children happy. We have no intention of ever giving it back. Your financial institutions, China Contruction Bank, and Hangseng then mega-government institutions like the People's Liberation Army and the PRC itself are next, muahahahahahahh!
Your Shaolin
Has anyone noticed? (Score:2)
Baidu is an anagram for I bad U
Translated to English vernacular, this roughly translates to I fuck you. Chinese is notoriously difficult to translate on the computer, so I hear.
Baidu has a nasty habit of being at the center of redirection issues. I wonder. Just wondering, mind you. Just how hard would it be to release a bit of a bot that spammed those bit torrent sites from inside the great firewall?
Yes, I understand the ramifications of such an activity, but I'm laughing so hard I can't stop thinking of ho
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We are not amused. (Score:2)
Che "Che Guavara" Guavara
Chief Council
Association of Socialists Defending Life, Freedom, Justice, Knowledge, Alcohol, and Saxophones
(We really like jazz)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except OpenDNS does the exact same thing, to their own "whoops" page.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently you can opt out of that if you have an account. Not sure on the details as I've never used it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Since when has the U.S. directed thepiratebay.org (or suprnova, or mininova, or demonoid, etc.) to google.com?
They send you to jail instead?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't remember any recent file sharing cases ending in jail time.
Wow... really? Let me refresh your memory. [usdoj.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Since when has the U.S. directed thepiratebay.org (or suprnova, or mininova, or demonoid, etc.) to google.com?
They send you to jail instead?
No, I think China has us beat there as well.
Re:Censorship? (Score:5, Informative)
How about when a Judge in KY orders the domain names of companies to be transferred to the State of Kentucky. I don't mean just redirection the DNS lookup, but changing the ownership?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml [techdirt.com]
Or when a judge in CA blocked wikileaks?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080218/115934282.shtml [techdirt.com]
Parent
Re:Censorship? (Score:4, Informative)
Since when has the U.S. directed thepiratebay.org (or suprnova, or mininova, or demonoid, etc.) to google.com?
Last I checked, they hijack the DNS and redirect to a Dept of Justice page or FBI warning.
remember isonews? elitetorrents? etc..
Parent
Re:Censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some ISPs are hijacking DNS, granted not to torrenting sites. Closest thing I can think
In America, the line between business and government is very fuzzy, especially with Big Content, Big Corn, and Haliburton.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Point out that it's censorship in the US and prepare to be modded troll.
Are we talking of the same slashdot? Never mind, the US has probably filtered /. for you guys. Figures. (Now watch this not get modded troll ;D)
Re:This is all Barack Obama's doin'! (Score:4, Informative)
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but anyway...
Surely even the most dim-witted super-conservative would realise that even under Obama, USA is still the most conservative nation outside of the middle east and Austria. Therefore, calling Obama socialist (as a pejorative) is calling the rest of the world socialists (or worse). Given the vast number of western countries that are "socialist" and have been for some time, (and are still going strong sans economic crisis) the next logical conclusion is "Well, maybe "socialism" works?" (not that what Obama is advocating is actual socialism by any accepted definition of the word).
Sorry for the offtopic.
No, the real question is this: what does one mean by "works"? Europe's brand of socialism wouldn't work for the U.S. for a variety of reasons, and our style of capitalism would probably be a disaster over there. There is one thing that a "working" socialism generally requires: an effective and trustworthy bureaucracy (Germany is a good example of this, I think.) The U.S. has an ever-expanding, ever more powerful bureacracy that has its own agenda, which coincides less and less with the needs of the people.
Parent
Re:Funny.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that would be really funny, how the Chinese government would come in the middle of the night, take them, their family, and likely anyone else that knew or cared about them, and drop them in a hole somewhere, never to be heard from again. Yeah, that's fucking hilarious.
Parent
Re:Funny.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you lived in Nazi Germany, you'd never hear of disappearances either.
Yes, you would, you would just pretend not to notice. You cannot make millions of people, mostly from urban areas, disappear without anyone noticing.
Parent