Hundreds of Sites Blocked By Canadian ISP 302
An anonymous reader writes "Last week Slashdot reported on the blockage
of a union website by Telus, a leading Canadian ISP. Since
that story, the company has restored access but the fallout
continues. The move may lead to new
ISP regulations in Canada and a study
by the OpenNet Initiative has found that by blocking the union
site, Telus also blocked an additional 766 websites including a breast
cancer fundraising site." From the article: "While there are a number of different ways to block access to Web
sites, the method Telus chose to block the Voices for Change site --
blocking its IP address -- produced massive collateral filtering.
Filtering by IP address is efficient since ISPs can quickly and
effectively block access to the target site using their existing routing
technology. Many ISPs already block certain IP addresses to combat
spam and viruses. Large networks, like Telus, have mechanisms in
place to block IP addresses almost instantaneously, simply by
updating their routers with a "block list" of addresses.
However, it is common for many different, unrelated Web sites to
share the same IP address."
If they want to do that its fine (Score:3, Insightful)
but expect to be sued for providing access to childporn, illegal software, coprighted material, terrorist training manuals, political sites, communists, bomb making equipment
slippery slope egh ? see you in the next RIAA lawsuit !!
Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
From The OpenNet Initiative PDF:Clearly, Telus violated the Canadian Telecommunications Act by their heavy-handed disconnection of www.voices-for-change.com. This alone should be grounds for revocation of their license, but the incidental blocking of an additional 766 unrelated websites is even more reprehensible than their intended censorship.
Public Outcry (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Force them to let everything through, but this means they can't block virus speading sites, etc
b) Only allow them to block what the regulators seem fit. Which puts what you see and can't see into the hands of beurocrats. This would cover all ISPs in Canada so you can't switch to one that does block stuff you want it to (Porn if you have little kids, etc.)
I personally prefer to let people hurt them in the wallet when they pull crap like this. Corporations take more notice when something hurts them in the wallet.
Re:Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrisy in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Collateral damage happens, like it or not.
No, it doesn't. Collateral damage happens when the sysadmin is question is lazy and/or ignorant. It would have been easy to block access to only www.voices-for-change.com, and no others, but instead they chose to block the entire IP address. Either they wanted to pass the blockage off as an accidental outage (and failed) or the sysadmin just couldn't be bothered to do the extra work, and just blocked an entire IP in the router. Either way, it's despicable.
Re:Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not lazy; only choice (Score:2, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that the virtual hosting got nailed by it but if their decision (a bad one, the PR in Canada right now is horrible) was to block it, that was the only way to implement it.
Re:If they want to do that its fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Public Outcry (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, the old government needs to get involved where the peopl have already solved the problem argument. The Canadian government doesn't need to do anything here. If Telus did violate a law on the books then the ONLY thing government should do is prosecute them, and that should come from the judicial part of the government, not the legislative part (I'm not sure exactly how Canada has all of this structured, hence the generic terms). Point is... congress and Co. are a bunch of kharma trolling whores that love to run in after a problem has already been solved, write soem hideous red-tape legislation, and take credit for solving the problem all the while mugging for the camera so they can get reelected during their next terms.
I personally prefer to let people hurt them in the wallet when they pull crap like this. Corporations take more notice when something hurts them in the wallet.
Maybe I misread you... because it seems like this solution should be option c)... meaning keep the government out of it. I would agree with this option.
Re:Hypocrisy in action. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrisy in action. (Score:4, Insightful)
QOS Regulations Yes! (Score:2, Insightful)
The behaviour of Telus is outrageous and is probably a VERY SMALL tip on a MASSIVE iceberg.
As more and more services fight for consumer's internet pipe they should have protection against bad service and questionable tactics.
Re:Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:1, Insightful)
The most I'd grant an ISP is anti-spoofing and blocking of bogon prefixes, although I'm not even sure about those. Any policy above that level is beyond technical considerations and must not be the IPS's concern.
Don't cry for telus employees (Score:3, Insightful)
PS: The website was blocked after Telus found that their striking workers where taking pictures of employees who were crossing the picket line for the purpose of later harrasing those said employees. In my opinion both parties are equally at fault for the nice mess they cooked up.
Re:If they want to do that its fine (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like the hacker/cracker thing that comes up on Slashdot all the time. You know, that's great that you guys don't like that hacker is associated with taking down systems. Doesn't change the the public usage of the term "hacker" has become synomymous with it. Same with pirate. Make the cute statements like "Arr" or "Prepare to be boarded", but realize that wide public usage defines words, not the ineffectual semantical hair-splitting of some Slashdot poster.
Re:Don't cry for telus employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:2, Insightful)
Back when Telus was British Columbia Telephone and Alberta General Telephone, the unions were separate and everybody got along fine-ish.
Now Telus(the merged result with new management) is trying to squeeze efficiency out of their existing infrastructure and lay off workers etc...
It's a union busting tactic to see if they can break the TWU (telecommunications Workers Union).
They don't give a damn about censorship. They just want the union gone. Period.
Re:If they want to do that its fine (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Illegal, reckles, and dangerous. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If they want to do that its fine (Score:1, Insightful)
Ignoring the useless "Canada is in America" thing... Technically, officially, legally, and in any other lly you want to look at it, RIAA has no part in Canada. There's already a CRIA which is the equivalent of RIAA but a separate entity.
Somebody mod this guy down to hell so he stops making such pointless ignorant remarks.
Telus banning access to Voices-for-change (Score:2, Insightful)
The voices for change website was publicly posting pictures of telus employees, management and Union employees that crossed the picket lines, putting their saftey at risk. If you have not noticed, the union in BC can be pretty militant, so yes Telus Banned access to the website until they were able to get a court order to have the website admin remove the pictures, once Telus had this court order, they returned access to the website.
so some can argue that they did it `so that the word of the union cant get out`, but Telus does actually care about their employees, so they shut it down for that reason, for the saftey of their employees, until they were able to take legal action that came to the same result.
OT: Geography lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
America has three subcontinents: North -, South -, and Central America.
North and South America aren't separated by sea, only by an ARTIFICIAL cannal in Panama.
Eurasia has subcontinents: Europe and Asia.
Asia is not considered a subcontinent as a matter of fact, being "the central and eastern part of the continent of Eurasia, defined by subtracting the European peninsula from Eurasia", according to wikipedia; it's further subdivided in various regions: North Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Southwest Asia.
Back to America, WP says: "The Americas refers collectively to North, Central and South America. The term is a relatively recent and less ambiguous alternative to the name America, which may refer to either the Americas or the USA. The former usage is now often considered archaic in English, but still in use in other languages, where the Americas is often considered to form a single continent. The use of the term America for the United States of America in English and colloquially in other languages is seen by some as politically incorrect (it may be seen as cultural imperialism). Strictly speaking, it is also illogical (for example, it would place South America outside America). Although the context usually makes clear which 'America' is meant, this led to the emergence of the term Americas to take away the ambiguity (in English), if not the illogicality."
Because I consider myself an inhabitant of America, even if I am not a citizen of the US, in Portuguese, I refer to the continent as "América" and to the country as "Estados Unidos" (and its citizens as "Estado-unidenses") and, in English, the continent as America, the country as "the United States" or "USofA", and the citizens "US citizens" if formal and "USofAns" if informal.
You can say all you want that "it won't change a few hundred years of established usage in the English language", but IMHO you are really talking about en_US, not about the other kinds of English. I believe British People refer to the country as "the United States", also.
Feel free to ignore me.
MODERATORS: *Please*, feel free to ignore me.
Re:DNS (Score:2, Insightful)
But maybe there is another angle here: the staff on strike may have been able to point out the (purely technical) foolishness of blocking an IP address, while the current replacement staff knows only little.
Stephan
Re:I WANT A LAWSUIT (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all beside the point.
Access to that which is legal must be made available. It is not Telus' role to act as judge and jury.
There is simply no other practical option.
As an aside:
Telus did not stop access to the site. It simply made it damn difficult for me, having paid them to provide me access to all that is legal on the internet, to view some 700-odd websites for a week.
They broke the contract I believe I have with them (and as a very, very earlier subscriber, I rather suspect the contract I signed did not contain weaselwords about that which they think they should stop me from seeing).
I am pissed, and I want them slapped for it. I phoned the Executive Offices and chewed the ass out of someone there, I phoned the Telus PR guy, I phoned a few other Telus numbers, I emailed the CRTC, I emailed executive directors, and I finally got around to cancelling some services I've not found worthwhile. And if there's a C.A. lawsuit, I'm in like Flynn.
There needs to be such a severe backlash from this stupid, stupid move on their part that no ISP in the Western world dares be so stupid again.