The German Pirate Party has a new reason to celebrate. Not only do they have a member, soon to be two members, in the European parliament, but now they have a member in the German Bundestag (German Parliament). The Pirate Party website posted about this development on their blog.

We welcome the fact that more can see that the fight for free communication in an open society is the way forward, and not censorship, blocking and monitoring,” says Rick Falk Vinge, party leader for the Swedish Piratpartiet via Google translation, “It is particularly gratifying to an existing MP sees this.”

Both the Finnish and German pirates have reacted very strongly against that child pornography is used as a battering ram to impose censorship and silence political opponents,” says Falk Vinge. “It is shameful, unscrupulous and cynical to use such a horrible event as an excuse for introducing mass surveillance and [censorship].”

Already, protesters marched in the streets of Germany over proposed censorship laws. This happened along side a petition that has over 130,000 signatures denouncing the proposed laws.

The posting on the Pirate Party blog also pointed out that legitimate sites have been put on similar censorship lists in other countries. They point to the Finnish transparency website which was put on the blacklist as one example.

A few months ago, questions were raised over the fact that Australia’s ACMA blacklist contained legal websites. ACMA responded by not only refuting the authenticity of the list, but also threatening to fine anyone who links to banned websites including URLs found on Wikileaks $11,000 per day.

Last year, British censors were blasted for putting Wikipedia on the blacklist.

Clearly, what this latest development shows is just how contentious the German proposed censorship law really is. If it’s enough to cause at least one MP to dump his political allegiance in favour of another political party because of this issue, you know it’s one hot topic.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The timing of the Iranian political turmoil couldn’t have been more peculiar. Many countries around the world have, at the same time, pushed for tougher surveillance or censorship laws. The 18th certainly contained news stories that would more than likely irk thousands of internet savvy users. TOR, in essence is for anyone wanting to protect their identity while on the internet from prying eyes including controlling governments. It begs the question, will the Pirate Party’s newly launched TOR nodes be used by mainly Iranians hoping to exercise free speech or by those fearing their government has thrown basic civil rights out the window in first world countries under the false claim of fighting terrorism?

Canada has already tabled legislation that would make warrantless ISP-level surveillance mandatory. Meanwhile, Germany is currently mulling mandatory DNS blacklist. In Finland, talking about the blacklist contents has seemingly become a criminal activity. Meanwhile, in the United States, sharing music online, regardless of what those songs could really be, could land you a nearly $2 million fine. All that on top of the fresh US allegations where the NSA was accused of improperly wiretapping possibly “millions” of Americans beyond the scope of the current wiretapping laws. Even Britain has opted to try port blocking, ISP blacklisting, protocol blocking and much more purely for the sake of reducing “internet piracy” by “70%”.

Many might look at the Russian police chief’s comment that internet anonymity should be abolished and say how ridiculous and draconian his comments. Yet after looking at todays news, one has to wonder exactly who in power secretly agrees with him on the international stage.

Then, on the day where all of this is going down, we have the Pirate Party that was once seen as the little political party that could to the political party that might to the major force that did after winning a seat in the European parliament – two once the Lisbon treaty is ratified. When news broke that Iranians are questioning the outcome of their own election and the government is using oppressive measures to quell civil dissatisfaction, the Pirate Party chose to launch two TOR nodes and a proxy server, saying that freedom of communication is global. While clearly pointed at Iranian dissidents, one wonders if the anonymous service offered by the political party one politician mistakenly labelled as rapists will eventually be used by people in supposedly free countries.

The world hasn’t gone completely big brother yet, but it certainly is taking steps in that direction where unnecessary surveillance is sold as being “in the publics interest”. Government mandated censorship already has a history of being abused and only a few countries have implemented such laws in question. One can easily look at “the Great Firewall of China” and criticize the Chinese government for using the blacklists as a means to suppress free speech. Similar criticisms can be made for Thailands infamous crimes of spreading mis-information about the king. Yet, here we are today, still living in countries that supposedly would never legislate our freedoms away, yet we have a long list of “western” and “westernized” countries pulling precisely the same stunts that have earned China the scorn from countries like the United States. Websites from political websites all the way down to dental clinics are being targeted by government mandated censors. “Of course these censorship tactics do little more than fight the horrific crimes seen on the internet! That’s what they are meant to do!” supporters would say. Unfortunately, actual practise says otherwise.

Maybe this will all somehow go away in the woodwork. Maybe a certain amount of civil disobedience and uprisings will make politicians think twice on this legislation. It certainly worked in Canada when the Liberal government tabled lawful access legislation before. Still, what if we won’t be so lucky this time around? Failing letter campaigns, petitions, protests and pro-civil rights lobbying, what then? Maybe then, we’ll have to look at the Chinese free speech movement not as a tragic tale of a government gone power mad, but rather as a lesson looking forward into the future. Maybe we can learn from Chinese civil dissidents as we survive government’s “protecting” us from the harms of an evil wild west internet that bring out psychopaths bent on targeting your children and “enemies of copyright”.

Of course, a dreaded future that sees such things happening hasn’t actually fully materialized yet even though governments have repeatedly said that they plan on going down this slippery slope into a butchering of civil rights. The war isn’t over yet. Far from it. In fact, it would have a long way to go before it was over. More people would rely on proxies and anonymous servers located in countries that have yet to consider legislation that would either blacklist websites or simply monitor every single web communication you have made. Plenty of governments could enact such legislation and civil disobedience would still exist. Sound familiar? It should to the file-sharing debate watchers. That whack-a-mole campaign that has frustrated the copyright industry for over a decade now. It’ll be an identical problem for the government hoping to block out or issue surveillance on suspected terrorism – thus highlighting the utter futility, once again, of controlling the internet.

In the mean time, we can all hope we won’t eventually be led to a Chinese-like internet controlled by a non-Chinese government – heaven forbid the US government unveils two cartoon police officers ready to tell us when we’ve connected to an unauthorized website. We can only hope that people who know a thing or two about the internet will prevail in bringing an inkling of sanity to the debates instead of having people like former car salesmen who like to think they know everything about the internet be the only voices in all of this. We can only that the last resort proxies set up by the Pirate Party won’t be necessary to enjoy a free internet tomorrow. We can only hope things will be as they were 3 years ago 10 years from now. We can only hope for better days ahead while governments spread their all-knowing and controlling tentacles deeper and deeper into the wonders that is the internet. We can only hope that resistance that dares to discuss free speech on the internet on sidewalks actually get their message across. We can only hope because this internet thing is great, sure would be a shame if something were to, eh, happen to it!

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

There’s a rather disturbing report from EDRI where a man was posting some of the URLs contained in the Finnish blacklist on a website. While the operator was interrogated by police and threatened to be prosecuted, no charges ever emerged. Still, the website remained on the Finnish mandatory blacklist. So the operator demanded that his website be removed through the Helsinki Administrative Court. The result? He didn’t get anywhere and his website still remains on the blacklist.

An EDRI editor commented, “the most worrying aspect is that while the court admits that the case is in fact about censoring Mr. Nikki’s personal site, it totally walks over the Finnish constitution and the rights enshrined in it in relation to freedom of speech, without even giving any reasoning why it has done so. This is a grave violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

The case seems to highlight another remarkable instance where transparency and accountability is off the agenda when it comes to web censorship. What this case also makes obvious is that in order to maintain freedom of expression, one needs to rely on the support of other countries through, for example, proxies. Why is this so important? Just ask any Iranian political dissident why internet free speech is important.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

When it comes to filtering IP addresses, the general goal for file-sharing users is to, to put it bluntly, ‘block out the bad guys’. These bad guys, naturally, are anti-p2p companies that, among other things, attempt to pollute p2p with fake files or capture an IP address that can result in a legally flimsy lawsuit where a vast majority are forced to settle due to a threat of a long and costly legal battle. There is also others in the blocklist which includes government agencies like the Department of Defense and corporations that work for the government that also monitor p2p networks.

While some in p2p circles look at IP filters as something that won’t protect users from anti-p2p companies, others might argue that it would be better safe than sorry and grab the BlueTack IP filter file. What would happen if you felt that you wanted an IP filter file, but didn’t want to use Bluetack? Who would you turn to? Competition in IP filters isn’t exactly a well known attribute in the IP filtering arena, but that may change very soon.

Nexus23 is currently keeping up-to-date IP filter for p2p users and hopes to be the next big IP filter compiler with its IPfilterX. It’s available for PeerGuardianX, eMule and uTorrent. Nexus23 hopes to, among other things, tackle one of the sore spots in P2P IPfilter blocklists, false positives. KarlX has joined us for an interview to discuss what he has to offer to file-sharers. He notes that he has been working on this since, at least, 2004 and only a few sites, P2PForums, P2PConsortium and ShareHeaven, has supported Nexus23 Corp. since the beginning. IPBlocklist.com later supported Nexus23 Corp. We did an interview with him via IRC:

[DrewWilson] What is Nexus23 Corp? How long has Nexus23 Corp been working on the IPFilterX blacklist?

[KarlX] Nexus23 Corp. is an International Network Corporation, covering non-profit fields and ordinary business economy;
We use computers since 1983, grew up using Commodore machines. We actually arrange a worldwide network which finds solutions for your hardware and software problems or needs, managing your online business with: hosting, housing, website building.
On the other hand Nexus23 Corp. covers many fields, running cyberactivities for: philosophy, ‘underground’ literature, cinema , reports, Cyberculture and Hidden news, IpFilterX for P2P programs, psychedelic arts, history of the Secret Societies, etc.

[KarlX] Before Nexus23 Corp. was founded, I collaborated with Method and later with Bluetack. Later I went on my own with what today is still my crew, so you can say that I’ve been working on ipfilter since 2001-2002, officially since 2004.

[DrewWilson] What motivated you to create something like IPFilterX?

[KarlX] I’ve been motivated because I think that writers like Huxley and Orwell told the truth about our present and future, and of course R.A.Wilson books. I didn’t think it was right, how others coded the ipfilter, they added ranges like Yahoo and Google, etc. They shot in the bunch with no exact target. That’s why I can proudly say that our ipfilter is more accurate than others.

[DrewWilson] Kind of goes into my next question. Many users who use blocklists may think that BlueTack is the only blocklist that is really needed. What makes your blocklist different from blocklists from Bluetack? Additionally, one of the major criticisms about blocklists is the potential for a high number of false positives. How is Nexus23 able to overcome this issue?

[KarlX] Banning more than 1 billion of IPs isn’t useful to P2P networks, Considering, or better pretending that there are 1 billion of machines connected to Internet that are monitoring filesharers. We have to cut down that number as much as we can because banning innocent users is nothing other than removing sources in the network. we move in the direction to push the ipfilter to reach “state of the art”. We are also motivated by what we saw, ipfilter that banned town-city halls that dont even own broadband connections. 3mb or 5mb big ipfilters, ipfilters that claim to be only against antip2p instead they ban city hall ranges, that’s ridiculous. It’s like cutting yourself out of the Internet. ‘Paranoid’ is a good setting but you have to consider the false positives caused by all those ipfilters. A point comes when you lose more from the ipfilter than you earn.

[DrewWilson] Does your IP blocklist offer a sort of level of privacy and why should users use blocklists over something like proxies to ensure anonymity?

[KarlX] It is a standalone list, it blocks the governments involved in this privacy war, the military ranges and the corps that we contend are key members of this struggle for information. Using a program like Tor along with PeerGuardian is a thing to avoid ( http://nexus23.org/warfare/content/view/494/2/ ), so if a user wants keep his privacy ‘high’ on the internet he must understand where he wants to keep it ‘high’ and how to accomplish this task. I generally suggest using PeerGuardian while you are using p2p programs, but that’s a matter of opinion. Ipfilter cant protect you from emails containing trojans, ads, malicious scripts, etc. There are good browser addons, good programs, etc.

[DrewWilson] one of the things that was mentioned in our previous contacts, and indeed it was mentioned here, was that various governments are interested in monitoring P2P networks. Why would the government want to monitor P2P when it’s typically anti-p2p companies doing this activity and why would it be important to block government agencies?

[KarlX] Basically, terrorists could share information in p2p networks, but what some governments won’t admit is that they are interested to see what people download and upload, specifically if they are downloading or uploading files that they consider “interesting”, for example, documentations about 9/11 that offer a different ’story’ to the official scenario. Governments lurk around these to see whether users know about true information that has been leaked and so on. Information is power and someone pretends to control it.

[DrewWilson] Is there some sort of procedure to figure out which IP addresses are ones that need to be blocked or is it a simple matter of doing a basic whois lookup?

[KarlX] The procedure begins with checking to whom an ip belongs, then checking who they are, why they are peers of a specific file and if they fill our target requests, they become banned. I would make a better example of this: a big company or corporation that could have interests in shutting down a determined p2p activity must be identified knowing these interests and where they are related to.

[DrewWilson] what do you see in the future for IPfilter lists compared to what you see now?

[KarlX] I see a great change approaching woth IPV6 but except this change on the protocol the method to ban them will remain the same, maybe it will be harder than now but, hey, there aren’t infinite numbers. We shall get them all eventually.

[DrewWilson] though, full disclosure, I’ve been skeptical about IPfilters especially ever since my research article “MediaDefender leak gives BlueTack users a Reality check” from way back

[KarlX] By the way, having the choice between using an ipfilter or not, I think that users must use it; In p2p programs at least.

[KarlX] Some reply that the p2p enemies could get normal isp ranges to spy. Of course they do, but hey, they pay for how many ranges? the ranges aren’t free of charge.

[DrewWilson] I’ve been curious actually. Do IP addresses get reassigned to normal people?

[KarlX] what you mean?

[DrewWilson] I just thought that if someone stops using the internet at a given location, that it might get reassigned to possibly an anti-p2p company or vic-a-vic

[KarlX] You mean if some company does not use a range anymore, what happens to it?

[DrewWilson] yes

[KarlX] If it’s a mil range hardly will be left, if it’s some anti-p2p company then it is reassigned to other companies or corps or is given to a normal isp for connectivity. We work on this too. RIAA recently changed their host, for example.

IPFilterX is available on the Nexus23 Corp website. We would like to thank KarlX for joining us to do this interview.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Interview_IPFilterX_n_The_New_Anti_P2P_IPBlocklist’;