Telstra has become the very first Australian ISP to block The Pirate Bay, a move designed to crack down on piracy in the country. However, the blocking method chosen by the ISP is the most basic option permitted under the Federal Court's order. As a result, it's been defeated in seconds.
Following a case brought by rightsholders including Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, more than fifty Internet service providers in Australia are now required to start barring subscriber access to selected ‘pirate’ sites.
In a ruling last week, the Federal Court decided that by the end of the year, The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie will all have to be rendered inaccessible to subscribers in Australia. The same also applies to dozens of proxy and mirror sites.
With just under two weeks before the deadline expires, ISP Telstra has decided to move quickly. During the past few hours the service provider began its blocking regime, starting with The Pirate Bay. As ordered by the Federal Court, visitors to the site are now being met by a landing page which explains why they can no longer access it.
As previously reported, the order from the Court allows ISPs to choose how to implement the blockade, including DNS blocking, IP address blocking (or IP re-routing), URL blocking, or “any alternative technical means” approved by a rightsholder.
It appears that Telstra has chosen to implement a DNS block, the weakest option available. As a result, it is defeated in a matter of seconds with a just a few clicks and not a penny spent. Many users are already choosing to configure their computers to use Google’s DNS instead of Telstra’s, which simply means adding a few digits to a setting in Windows.
Others are using OpenDNS since there is a belief that the Cisco-owned company logs less data than Google does. However, since accessing The Pirate Bay itself isn’t a crime, any data held in this circumstance is likely to hold little value.
Of course, those concerned about privacy can still turn to VPNs, which are already proving of greater interest to Australians since news of the court order landed last week. It’s also worth noting that while a simple DNS tweak defeat’s Telstra’s blocking efforts, other ISPs may choose a more secure option for which DNS won’t provide a solution. In that case a VPN is the only all-round secure option.
Nevertheless, as it stands today a head-shaking situation prevails. For years, rightsholders have lobbied for site-blocking in Australia. They even managed to have the law changed to allow it to happen. They then went to court and dragged themselves and ISPs through thousands of hours of legal work, culminating in the Federal Court itself ordering a blockade.
And Internet users got round it all in less time than it took to read this article.
Source: TorrentFreak