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Quad9 blocks pirate site globally after Sony demanded €10k fine (torrentfreak.com)
138 points by gslin on July 26, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 65 comments



To be clear, Canna doesn't host any of the pirated music, they just post links to file sharing sites that do. So this case is about DNS resolving the address of a site that links to other sites that host pirated content.

By that logic, Quad9 should block Google, Facebook, Bing, reddit, twitter, and honestly every social media site because they link to download sites where pirated content is available.


The sites listed all pay US politicians, judges, and regulators for political favors and leniency, Canna does not.


I don't think the district court of Hamburg cares much about which US politicians these websites pay off.


You will be surprised. The "district court of Hamburg" it's very famous in DE when it comes to, among others, copyright.


It is important to read the article before commenting on it.


Quad9 is European and European courts have ruled against them in a similar case earlier.


Username checks out


Europe does something but America is to blame.

:eyeroll:


Europe does nothing without consulting the mothership.


So Quad9 should block all Sony domains as they are infringing EU law and make licenced works in some countries accessible to some other where it isn't available through VP


> The DNS resolver stressed that it doesn’t condone piracy but believes that enforcing blocking measures through third-party intermediaries, that don’t host any content, is a step too far.

I agree, its like asking members of the public to become road traffic cops because they happen to be walking or driving on the road when an offence takes place, highly efficient by virtue of members of the public being present to witness said offence but it sets a dangerous precedence of people taking the law into their own hands.

What Sony wants (and everyone else) is the ability to protect our work and data. Thats the holy grail and there isnt really any way to do this at the moment apart from doing our own hardware, like a betamax player that could also play vhs.


Thanks Sony, I had no idea this site existed until now


Went to check out the site (Canna.to) and it wouldn't load. Then I wondered what Upstream DNS I was using on my pi-hole... sure enough, Quad9.

Then I went to load the site on my phone, and it tried to open 98 popups...


> ... it tried to open 98 popups...

You need to install the uBlock Origin extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... (and if you know some web development, the uMatrix extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ ). Best used with Firefox or Palemoon browser. I have it on my browser and saw zero pop-ups.


I have brave with uBlock and other than a "site is insecure" warning it loaded just fine, no pop ups. Those still exist?


it _tried_ to open. it did not succeed.


Their "unfiltered" DNS (9.9.9.10) still resolves the domain:

$ dig canna.to @9.9.9.9

[...]

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 52168

[...]

$ dig canna.to @9.9.9.10

[...]

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 20506

[...]

;; ANSWER SECTION:

canna.to. 300 IN A 46.148.26.194

[...]


No popups on me on the desktop FF, but I have strict security enabled. No uBlock bullshit.


operator probably realized the traffic surge and decided to monetize tru ranking up ads


I tried to make use of a new site to know about but I can't even figure out why anyone would use this instead of just grabbing songs off of youtube with youtube-dl or Newpipe. This feels like music piracy circa right before Napster.


Just saw "Est 1999" on the top of the page. Guess they get a pass for old site design.


Quintessential Streisand Effect.


I assume Sony was just trying to hit this site with the Slashdot effect by taking this action as an indirect DDOS.


Thanks, I've now joined their Telegram channel. Always nice to have a resource for current music. Thank you again Sony.


Given how much music is available via streaming services, for little money (or none if you can deal with adverts) i'd have thought the impact of a pirate music site would be very limited.

I wonder what the impact of this site is on Sony, or whether what is really going on is some sort of personal vendetta, as legal action is usually a sign that things have got personal.


Even without impact on them I believe there is still value in non-streaming.

I've discovered multiple CDs disappearing from Spotify. The FLACs that are sitting on my NAS aren't subject to some finite licensing deal.


Yep, exactly. I really hate this world we've built, where everything is rented. I'm just going to get everything from Bandcamp from now on.


> I wonder what the impact of this site is on Sony

There is zero impact for Sony Music [0]

> whether what is really going on is some sort of personal vendetta

No, they just want what there would be no way to obtain music except going through Sony Music.

Yet, there are people who defends them *shrug* [1]

[0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/04/28/sony-music-earni...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36875710


Some streaming services have a problem with incomplete albums.

Apple Music, for example, sometimes has one track visible while the others are grayed out due to regional licensing issues. Quite frustrating.


There’s plenty of content that Apple Music is missing. Just yesterday I wanted to listen to an album they don’t have, but I do on my personal server.

Streaming isn’t a perfect alternative to ownership (or piracy, in this case).


They might be trying to set precedence in law. Next time, it gets harder for other DNS providers (Google, CloudFlare, but also ISPs) to deny such blocks.


Legal departments at big orgs like this tend to just throw everything at the wall until something sticks, as a matter of course


Tangentially related, I hate pirate websites that don't make any effort and don't include any samples of music they pirate. At least Israbox usually has links to album preview or a YT sample so you can decide whether it's worth downloading. I found that in this way you can discover interesting artists outside of your bubble (YT's algorithm used to work well in the past for this but now it's crap) and then buy their recordings.


> At least Israbox usually has links to album preview or a YT sample so you can decide whether it's worth downloading

This will turn a lot of people off. The sound quality on YT is absymal.


I like Quad9 because it has ECS support, so unlike CF/Google, I don't get sent to some wild endpoint half way across the world.

But I think it is time to move on.


They filed an appeal and are doing only the minimum required to stay out of prison. I don't think you'll find a much more liberal DNS service.


It would be nice if there was a large DNS service that was outside of US jurisdiction though.


Quad9 is largely outside of US jurisdiction, the operator is Swiss and the lawsuit in question is in Germany. The US isn't the only country with problematic jurisprudence on intellectual property.


They make music in Europe too and I imagine those people are just as unhappy with music piracy.


I heard the City of Atlantis is working on their own DNS provider.


How profitable could it be if its already starting out underwater? [ba-dum-CHING]


You'll have to find an endpoint halfway across the world to find a dns within a laissez-faire jurisdiction



> ECS ... CF

It seems CEO/Founder of CF says that they do not support ECS[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702


Yes, that is why the section you're arguging with starts "because" and ends "unlike"


Aah! I had misread. I thought OP said Quad9 didn't support ECS.


I really hope their appeal succeeds as otherwise we're going to get a lot of copyright holders getting control over DNS services.



All this for an Evanescence album - does anyone even remember that band exists...?


I mostly remember that one specific album cover that everyone seemed to use as their AIM and MSN Messenger profile photo back in the day.


The intolerance paradox enters the chat.

Is it too radical to suggest that all DNS providers block all of a company's websites whenever they lobby for things like this? Kind of like a blacklist of free speech offenders.


The DNS records for that domain are hijacked on two German ISPs' resolvers I tested, yikes. Google and Cloudflare resolvers resolve it just fine however.

  canna.to.  0 IN CNAME notice.cuii.info.
  notice.cuii.info. 34953 IN A 167.233.14.14


Wait until Sony finds out about Youtube.


Most times these companies have automatic copyright triggers on YouTube and YouTube will most of the time keep the video up, not punish the uploader, but move a portion of the proceeds to the company as payment of use. It’s happened to me a number of times when I use to make gameplay videos with non licensed music.


Sony gets a whole lot more than $10k from youtube


[flagged]


So what are they? Aliens? Robots? A front for the dolphins? Sentient paperwork?


Sony is a company, a corporation, a conglomerate, a machine to generate wealth for shareholders, whatever you wanna call it. Not a human. Decisions humans make on behalf of the company still lead to company != human.


Sony Group Corporation is a kabushiki gaisha under Japanese law, which translates roughly to “stock corporation”, which is a legal entity representing its owners (individuals and institutional investors, but if you follow the trails of paperwork all the way to the end, it’s all individuals) in the marketplace. The arrangement is complex, but it is very much all people. Loads of them, as employees, management, executive management, owners and beneficiaries.

Your point is taken that the entity is not literally human—sentient paperwork is a joke but it’s actually not too far off—but your statement is still dehumanizing to actual people. The actions people take acting as representatives of the company are still human actions with human incentives behind them. I was hoping you would take the hint rather than the full explanation.


> if you follow the trails of paperwork all the way to the end, it’s all individuals

And if you follow the textbooks all the way, you and I are just electron, proton, neutron, same in the stars and in piles of garbage. The intent behind the corporation/individual matters as much, and otherwise it's just as meaningless to say as a response to GP.


OP’s original statement was that got to me was as follows:

> They're not human, it doesn't matter.

What this and your textbook example share in common is a lack of respect for the human factor. Sony Group Corporation may not be literally human, but to say “they’re not human” is to dehumanize the people the Sony Group Corporation represents because that’s what the actual function of a corporation is: to act as a legal front representing people. I don’t care who anybody boycotts, but I think at a minimum, we can you know, not dehumanize people even if you dislike them.


A company? Not entirely sure what you are getting at. You think Sony is a human?


Companies are made up of humans is what he's getting at.


"Made up of humans" absolutely is not equivalent to "human" any more than you, yourself, are a single-celled organism.

The sum of the whole does not equal one of its parts.

In fact, it is quite dehumanising to consider a mob's intelligence, agency, and will to be reflective of any individual therein.


Yep!


I can't really say I feel bad about pirating content from media empires.




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