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Indian ISPs Told To Block Access To Vimeo

from the massive-overreaction dept

Thu, May 10th 2012 8:26pm — Mike Masnick

A few months ago we wrote about Indian ISPs being told to block (entirely) access to Megaupload (when it still existed) and BTJunkie. It seemed like overkill to block entire sites, but it appears that such censorship is expanding. There are reports in India of ISP-level blocks, ordered by the government, of a ton of sites. Many of these are torrent search engines and cyberlockers... but they also include Vimeo, one of the most popular video sites for filmmakers. This seems like another case of massive overkill by a government that has no idea what it's doing. It's amazing just how many overkill censorship attempts we've seen lately all in the name of copyright holders.

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Filed Under: censorship, india, isp, torrents
Companies: btjunkie, megaupload, vimeo

29 Comments

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Nigel, 10 May 2012 @ 8:45pm

Are these countries trying to turn back time to avoid the future?

Only Superman can do that.
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Alana (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 8:50pm

Squash them all! Puny little insects, who will just burrow underground where the mean nasty foot can't reach them... They'll build tunnels to have outside access, too! Ah yes, this analogy is perfect!
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2012 @ 9:13pm

ah yes, because only mike knows what best for all countries in the world, and of course only Americas idea of "freedom" applies to all countries
and it only for the rights holders, who are th evictims of crime, that they do this, but of course mike can overlook the crimes his fellow pirates do, all in the name of freedom mind you
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Balwinder Singh, 10 May 2012 @ 9:16pm

Well I am from India and can tell with certainity that this ban is NOT compulsary to be implemented by all the ISPs as i never had any problem accessing any of the blocked sites (and the ban is place for the past 5 months)!
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IronM@sk, 10 May 2012 @ 9:26pm

Re:
/slow clap
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2012 @ 9:53pm

Why Vimeo? Dailymotion is much worse for piles and piles of ripped shows. And youtube has the biggest collection of all.

I guess now people in India have to use a proxy to see indie shorts, actors' self-filmed monologues, and fanvids, but they can still watch all the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes they want to.
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Pixelation, 10 May 2012 @ 10:05pm

I think the entertainment industry better beware. The ISP's are about to wrest control away.
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Rabbit, 10 May 2012 @ 10:19pm

You're not seeing the big picture (and those in India probably no pictures at all). But one day, by blocking off the entire internet we can finally get back to promoting the arts and sciences instead of being distracted by these interwebs.

Here here to big content for looking after our progress by moving backwards!
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Narbal, 10 May 2012 @ 11:04pm

False Rumour
These blocks are limited to one ISP (Reliance Broadband - ironic name!). Above mentioned websites worked fine on other ISPs in India
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 12:01am

Re:
How is vimeo even remotely on the same level of notoriety and alleged criminality as The Pirate Bay is?

Are you that dissatisfied with El-P that you've gone beyond trolling his thread and have now spread your shillwings to other topics, regardless of relevance?
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varagix, 11 May 2012 @ 12:01am

Re: False Rumour
If that's true, why just them? Are they government ran or something, and the government is afraid of international backlash or something? Lawsuit gone horribly wrong? It seems weird that only one ISP would be ordered.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 12:46am

Re: Re: False Rumour
Their parent company also runs a movie production house.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 12:56am

that is the biggest problem with having someone in charge of something that they are clueless about themselves but are also easily lead to a particular action by another, all be it selfish, party
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 1:02am

Our courts are run by retards
There's now this:

http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-need-specificity-in-court-orders-on-online-copyright-v iolation-in-india-transparency-from-isps/

Apparently PasteBin(!!) is blocked as well.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 1:53am

All I see is a group of kids, who are angry that they can't get free stuff anymore.
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Beech, 11 May 2012 @ 2:16am

Re:
beautiful post! short, sweet, inflammatory, and i think about 100% wrong.

1) What you see is a bunch of squiggles called "letters" on a webpage, unless you are actually in India watching kids, which is pretty creepy.

2) "angry" isn't the word most would use, "disappointed" is probably a better choice of words for how i feel about it.

3) "that they can't get free stuff anymore" no, the problem is that some people in India can't get free stuff anymore. Everyone here is saddened for THEIR loss. Those who have posted from India apparently have no problem accessing the affected sites

4) "can't get free stuff" if by "stuff" you mean access to completely legitimate websites. the kind that you can access from almost any other country, because there's nothing wrong with them. There's nothing inherently wrong with free. If someone walks up to you on the street and offers you $20 to go get professional psychiatric help, are you going to tell him no because it's FREE!?!?!?! (oh noes!). Of course, it may be different if the $20 is stolen, but on vimeo that is the exception rather than the rule

5) "Can't" as with any form of "blocking" there's already tons of ways around this. so this will stop grandpa from accidentally watching a legal video. The kind of people who are technically proficient enough to pirate in the first place have probably already found another way to "get their free stuff."

So, in conclusion, you comment should be something more like:

"The majority of what I'm reading about here is a bunch of age-diverse webizens empathizing with those in a foreign land who have a slightly more difficult time accessing legal websites, while hardcore piracy continues unabated."
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The WTO Blogger (profile), 11 May 2012 @ 3:17am

Vimeo
Vimeo sucks anyway. Nothing of value was lost.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 4:12am

Re:
Way to miss the point. Unless you can point to somewhere else where filmmakers are also freely hosting their videos, which they own the copyright to.

Oh, and this time there's no Kim Dotcom or Peter Sunde for you to blame notoriety on. Vimeo has been wrongly and irresponsibly blocked.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 11 May 2012 @ 4:31am

Re: Vimeo
Serious?

http://vimeo.com/29950141
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abc gum, 11 May 2012 @ 4:52am

Re: Re:
IDK - maybe a 1 out of 5.

The poster missed several key elements. For example this post correctly identifies the author, but does not call him "Mikey" and there is a blatant lack of key words here.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2012 @ 5:04am

The RIAA is a terrorist organization , there members ad financial supporters must be arrested and charged with terrorism. The are using threats to get governments around the world to do there bidding, they use there power to destroy peoples lives as an example to others who do not bow down to there wishes , they are a terrorist organization and we must destroy them, ban them from our countries and attack them where we can.
If the RIAA threatens you, you have the right to retaliate as you would to any terrorist.

Tell everyone they are supporting terrorism when they buy a dvd or bluray or pay for any entertainment from Hollywood or from any studio/organization financing the RIAA.

Tell everyone that when they share movies/tv shows /music over the Internet they are defeating the terrorists.
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Samuel BG, 11 May 2012 @ 6:29am

This is really disturbing!
Ok on first note. This ban to me has nothing to do with copywright infrigment whatsoever. However copywright infrigment is an excuse being used here to justify the ban.

What i see is a terible precedent being set in front of everyone eyes. If we allows them to shutdown any website for false pretexs, then they might as well shutdown any website for no reason at all.

This to me is the coup of an investor that got very deep pockets and attempted to use govt. to shutdown their competition. General Electric is the undisputed champion in this departement.

Anybody that say this ban is no big deal cause the site in question is not a big loss, those people failed to see what is at stake here.
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 11 May 2012 @ 6:53am

Re:
can't get free stuff anymore

Only a delusional troll would believe that there are not a multitude of workarounds, let alone other sites, where 'free stuff' can still be found...and these workarounds were probably available as soon as the first 'freetardist' got a website block splash page.
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 11 May 2012 @ 6:55am

Re:
GE=NBC=Comcast
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Gerald Robinson (profile), 11 May 2012 @ 6:56am

Really stupid censorship
Bollywood is a huge source of income for India. It was built on sharing sites and many of the producers depend on Vimeo. This looks like the Indian government is penalizing their local industries to suit the US.
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S Ban, 19 May 2012 @ 11:28am

Re: False Rumour
Not so any more. Airtel blocks vimeo.com and other similar websites in question as on Saturday May 19th 2012.
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Jeremy Butcher, 24 May 2012 @ 10:35pm

The solution is to download the Tor Browser Bundle from :

https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/tor-browser-2.2.35-12_en-US.exe

Close your browser.
Unzip this portable file to a suitable location like non System partition ( Drive other than the C:\ Partition) or pendrive.
Run the �Start TOR Browser.exe� file from the �TOR Browser� Folder to launch a secure version of Firefox Portable.
It takes time to open since it directs your request through a Tor network of IP Addresses and exits in another country as a different IP address from your own.
Hence you can access any of your �forbidden� sites to which access has been blocked on the basis of the High Court order.
Other option is UltraSurf but it is slightly suspicious based on net reports.

Legal Disclaimer :
Distributed in public interest for educational purposes only.
Users requested to exercise caution and use it for legitimate purposes only.
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Prashant, 9 Jul 2012 @ 7:49am

VPN
I`m using this when I need to to access blocked sites: http://www.sunvpn.com/
It`s a VPN service, works similar with a proxy, only faster..
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Bellmani, 31 Dec 2013 @ 1:25am

VPN service to open blocked website
"If you want to be able to leave your network devices on vpn permanently you will need a vpn client router.

I got mine from http://www.primovpn.net , they are really easy to setup. I don't know if they will work with Himachi though.

Primovpn routers also let you do dual gateway on one router so you can be local and on vpn at the same time."
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