China Hijacks Popular BitTorrent Sites 174
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."
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.
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
But that's Germany, and it's France with the history of strong industrial espionnage (both in terms of capabilities and in terms of actually doing it).
Re: (Score:2)
. I've spent a considerable amount of time in Germany (as an American) and never experienced this.
Yes, and if they're any good at it you wouldn't.
Re: (Score:2)
(similar to how in France, while on business trips, you assume you are being bugged and information will go to your local competition).
I'm afraid the you are suffering from paranoia, or you are confusing France with Russia, maybe. Do you want to buy a tinfoil hat?
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Excepting the 1994 Airbus case, where US intelligence publicized that Airbus had provided bribes in their bid to win the contract; basically uncovering an illegal operation.
So they just happened to be listening in?
I remember watching a program about this and there was a similar case with the players reversed (ie French intelligence busted Boeing bribing some south American govt. - tho I could have remembered it wrong)
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:So, what have they found? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Won't you have to pay fees to each state you want to do business in, on top of that?
Re: (Score:2)
You really think an LLC or corporation requires thousands in fees, taxes and bribes?
It does if nobody wants to do business with a business that shares a building with a home.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you a successful land developer? a bank/insurance? a large defense/war contractor? a large Katrina c
Re: (Score:2)
and by the way, it works for other stuff too, things such as; wills, power of attorney, contracts (yeah, you think they actually review them
Works great, until the conditions of the wills/PoA/contracts, etc are challenged. If you're not in a situation where that's likely to happen, then $12.00 will suffice. If it's a serious concern, you'll want to use the lawyer.
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".
Re: (Score:1)
Last time I checked the Peoples Republic of China was a communist / mixed economy country not capitalist.
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.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes there are also many Chinese students studying Science, which is a much better endeavour (IMHO). They are outnumbered however. China certainly needs more Science graduates. Also, it does heavily depend on the University. Victoria (Wellington, NZ) is not a science University, it is more renown for politics, literature and arts.
And - seeing as you have the opportunity, why not go say "hi" to some of the Chinese/black students - you'll learn a lot from them. You certainly won't agree on a lot of issues thou
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Capitalism, as in free, unregulated markets with healthy competition? or just the stupid red herring notion of "Capitalism = get as much money as you can, while stomping on anyone who gets in the way"?
Perhaps it's you who needs to read some Adam Smith before calling China "Capitalist".
Re: (Score:2)
If that's what you mean by capitalism, there isn't a capitalist country on the face of the earth, and hasn't been for a very long time. I can't swear that there wasn't one in the 17-1800's, but if so they weren't in the histories I read. Perhaps Luxembourg?
Adam Smith made an abstract of certain feature of the existing system, and ignored lots of other features. He didn't describe a complete system. Nobody has yet been able to do that, so why expect it of him?
Given that, modern China is at least as Capit
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism, as in free, unregulated markets with healthy competition?
That doesn't exist anywhere on the planet, so if that's your definition then you may as well come out and say that Capitalism and Communism don't exist at all. Which would actually be pretty accurate. We keep using these words, when they have very little relevance to the world we live in.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, either we take them to mean what they originally meant, in which case China is no more capitalist than it is communist (perhaps even less so, since at least small-scale socialism isn't illegal, IIRC), or we take them as the real-world degenerations of them have been, in which case China is definitely communist, being much closer to what the USSR once was, than to what the US is today (allegedly the modern paragons of both philosophies).
Basically my point is: you have to stretch definitions *WAY* too t
Re: (Score:2)
You dropped out the thread because you lost your argument you pussy. Instead of just admitting you were wrong you had to be a dick about it.
You can go join MindlessAutomata [slashdot.org] in the crazy stupid room (down the hall, on the left).
Re: (Score:2)
Unless they see for themselves how it is... (Score:2)
They won't understand if you put things like that, because most of us have our own ideas about what China is like based on the news we see in our own newspapers. Most of us have never been and will never go to China, so I doubt people will understand how the Chinese see their country.
That said, I recently found a site called chinaSMACK [chinasmack.com] which has helped me better understand how things are over there. Apparently, someone has enough spare time to translate random, popular blog posts and the comments on them
Re: (Score:2)
You can see, from one of China's own newspapers, that social welfare only meets 5% of demand. And even that is probably pushing it.
That sounds about like full fledged communism to me...
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: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think that fits any reasonable definition of capitalism, unless there's actually a market in the amputation of other people's arms and legs. Capitalism is an economic system. That's just corruption.
Re: (Score:2)
You're buying into the illusion if that's what you think. Look at their economic behaviour instead of their founding principles (which was over half a century ago, i should add) and you'll see the GP is correct, or at least more correct than you.
_AC
"Fascist-capitalism" was about the best I could come up with to describe China's government/economic system. Maybe you have something better. It's not purely fascist, but it's hardly capitalist either, nor is it Communist in any sense of the word.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's been being asserted is that China is a country with a Socialist, or Communist, religion, but not practice. Do you have any *evidence* that is otherwise? Several people have cited personal knowledge. You don't list the grounds for your statement.
My tendency is to believe that you are just quoting someone else, who may well be quoting someone else (etc.). There is clear evidence that your assertions would have been reasonable while Mao was in charge (though I tend to think of him more as an Emperor
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.
Re: (Score:2)
In before the lame jo
CARRIER LOST
Re: (Score:1)
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)
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..
Re:Hijacked? Either way, they can say, (Score:1)
"We Baid You, Fare Well"
Re: (Score:2)
Oh noes! China is gonna brick the intarwebs!
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.
Hijacked is such a strong word... (Score:1, Interesting)
... but I think corruption, hostility, and theft are stronger words. I've heard time and time again that it's in "Chinese culture to copy" and that copyright and patent law is foreign to not only the country, but their ethics.
While we certainly don't lead a prime example of IP law, I believe China is simply trying to cheat their way to becoming a super power. When their actions do not coincide with what they claim, it is clear they cannot and SHOULD NOT be trusted.
If it's in Chinese Culture to copy, why tak
Re: (Score:1)
Well, what can you expect in a pure capitalistic country with little to no regulation? Social good be damned, as long as some rich folks can enjoy luxury without ever working.
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That wasn't a troll, someone's sense of humor is dysfunctional o_O
You own 100 Trillion US national debt !!!
Too bad for you :-P They aren't gonna pay it, they got nukes :-p
Nope. It works now. (Score:1)
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
Cue the portal sites in 3..2..1.. (Score:2)
I remember there being a story about a site simply loading up wikipedia within its own little border.
Cue offshore domains which do exactly this in 3..2..1.
Isohunt HUH? (Score:2)
I've been able to access it just fine literally minutes ago. I keep my scripting off though, because a couple of months ago, a tainted ad server tossed a trojan into my stytem. It's been purged, and since I remembered to turn scripting off, it hasn't happened since.
They aren't blocked? (Score:2)
Well they aren't redirected in the hotel I am staying at in Beijing, The Beijing Friendship Hotel. I am here for the OpenOffice.org OOoCon 2008 meeting. At least I can access isohunt and mininova here without trouble but thepiratebay is showing page load error.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah I should have read the article, it claims they were redirected for a couple days but aren't any more... Of course slashdot seemed to imply the censoring was ongoing.
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)
You can indeed -- it's quite simple, you just uncheck some options and then you can take advantage of OpenDNS' fast and reliable servers without helping them pay the bills.
One gotcha for home users is that the settings are tied to your IP address, so if you have a dynamic IP then you need to run an additional bit of software to let them know every time your address changes. Some people might not like that.
Re: (Score:2)
No idea really, I'd guess it's being blocked at some point. Checked your local firewall / router settings etc? It's possible your upstream provider might be filtering out DNS requests to resolvers which aren't theirs, but that seems unlikely. You're not behind a corporate firewall or anything like that?
Could also be worth trying some other resolvers that accept requests from the public. 130.95.128.2 is one that I know of (dns.uwa.edu.au).
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)
I don't remember any recent file sharing cases ending in jail time.
Wow... really? Let me refresh your memory. [usdoj.gov]
The only case on that page that appears to be remotely relevant is the EliteTorrents one. But in that case, the person who went to jail was the administrator of the P2P site. Can you show us any cases where someone has been jailed for merely using P2P?
Because it looks to me like the US doesn't jail people for visiting TPB, whatever you might like to think.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Well not if you don't live in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths [wikipedia.org]
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]
Re: (Score:2)
you didn't think we had free speech did you?
Silly comrade.
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..
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
What about when Wikileaks was black holed because they hosted the Palin email leak?
Isn't that the single biggest example of censorship in the US internet history?
Is the US government supposed to black hole websites instead of using the court system?
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: (Score:2)
What you don't seem to understand is two basic mechanisms of Slashdot, so let me give you a refresher:
1. It takes one guy to mod you a troll and it takes either a careful meta moderation or another guy with mod points to think what you say has value in order to change that. Considering what you've said so far, I figure you adding something interesting to a conversation to be a rare event.
2. It only takes a few people to tag an article, which is why we often get tags that make no sense.
I'd like to also poin
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
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, ma
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, do you have any evidence, beyond hearsay, that this actually happens?
I hear about this kind of shit all the time (mostly in comments on Slashdot), but here I am in China, and I've never heard of anything like this happening.
Frankly, I think it's mostly hyperbolic bullshit. And it's increasing. Is it time for another red scare?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you lived in Nazi Germany, you'd never hear of disappearances either. It's not like the secret police operate in public view, with due process and arrest records, etc. They might be coming for you now...
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I still keep holding on to the hope that there is actual intelligence out here in the wilds, but I'm continually disappointed. Guess that makes me a masochist..
Re: (Score:2)
I hate dittos, but...
Ditto.