Ask HN: The ISP has a competing product so has decided to block my domain | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: The ISP has a competing product so has decided to block my domain

60 pointsqerim36 comments

The ISP in my hometown (Albania + Kosovo) has decided to block my whole domain to my free legal streaming website because they also happen to offer IPTV services. I only found out after trying to access my site from Albania today, it just comes up with a “bad URL” request. The streams I serve on my site are public freely available TV channels, combined into a single page.

Since EU laws do not apply to neither of these countries, is there any course of action I can take to prevent this sort of monopoly going on?

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Looks like this is the authority of regulation in Albania

https://akep.al

Usually a telecom operator agrees to some specifications as part of winning the bid for the license. And usually those specifications include obligation to be neutral when transmitting data.

Try to find that spec, find the right section, and complain formally to the authority of regulation.

Thank you for this. I will definitely contact them. Just common sense says an ISP should not be banning competitor domains.

Actually I will reach out to the ISP 1st to absolutely confirm the reason for the blockage. If I get no response then I’ll contact the above authority.

Man, I really hope this works out for you and the answer you get from the regulatory authority isn't just "sucks to be you."

Publicly freely available doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s legal for you to embed them in your website without some licensing agreement. (I’m assuming your site isn’t just a list of external links.) Just as a heads up.

I re-transcode them via my server for better quality and speed. Most of the TV channels themselves have reached out to me and asked me to re-stream their channel because it costs a lot. I have always complied with all takedown DCMA requests rapidly, not many, when they do come through.

takedown DCMA requests are US law. Very different rules might apply, much more restrictive/punitive in a lot of countries. Also, you mentioning that it is about different countries is also an odd thing: TV services usually have distribution rights for third-party material only for some countries. And last but not least, "TV channels" in a lot of countries will make broadcasting laws apply. You will need to cover for a lot of legal questions. Maybe you do already, but frankly it does not really sound like it from your answer...

Well it gets weird. Some of the TV channels here are registered here, but they hire lawyers from states to deal with “competitors” outside the country. So i get the odd DCMA request from a US lawyer for a company registered in Albania/Kosovo. I’m not even sure how that works, but I have complied with them.

do the channels you have permission from have rights to stream to the territories in question?

I am not 100% sure on this. It’s gotten really muddled up because these new ISP companies have spun up and started to create “package IPTV” deals. Although they also illegally provide other countries TV services (Sky Sports, BT Sports, etc) through their package. Instead of sending me a takedown request, they seem to have resulted to just banning competitors. It just does not seem right for an ISP company to have this kill-switch privilege.

Speak with a lawyer. There might be nothing, there might be something.

I’ll explore this option. I also know that Vodafone is a big network carrier here, so I’ll check if they rent out their service to these ISP companies. If they do, then it’ll be easier for me to communicate with Vodafone.

Are you sure the ISP blocked this on their own because you are competing, or did a rightsholder file a lawsuit and require the ISP to block this domain? Rightsholders are not required to send a DMCA takedown notice before filing a lawsuit

I’ll ask the ISP for the exact reason for blocking although I am certain it’s due to them profiting from selling IpTV services themselves.

Can you ask someone who is their customer to do a naive call to their tech support, and complain that they are getting an error when trying to access the website?

Is the ISP blocking the domain, or is its DNS server returning nxdomain for it? I've seen ISPs provide modems which use the ISP's DNS as a default (via DHCP) unless configured otherwise. Try running `dig mydomain.com @1.1.1.1` to check if that returns the right IP.

Not sure what you can do if they're just serving whatever they want from their own DNS other than telling users how to specify another one. Maybe dnssec is relevant?

Unfortunately I am here only with a phone. Although I have tried it on multiple friends phones whom live here on mobile and broadband wifi connection, same result. Also installed a trace route app and it just defaults to 0.0.0.0

My domain and same sever IP have been up for over 5 years

Can you market outside of the country, where the ISP doesn’t have reach? Surely the product you have is valuable if the ISP feels threatened by it.

Funnily, external countries are my main audience and provide the best source of income due to Ads being more valuable. However, I just feel let down by my own country for allowing a cheap DNS block trick like this.

Depending on how you built it, could you migrate it to a platform like AWS or Azure where the IPs you use are mixed up with other services?

They blocked the whole domain

You can’t move your domain to another registrar?

The ISP just points the domain.com to nothing. So changing registrar makes no difference here unfortunately.

The ISP is probably blackholing the DNS on their end, and customers who use their DNS by default (everyone) get an nxdomain.

Isn't that a clear case of tortious interference?

Well, how experienced are you in Albanian law to come to the conclusion that it's a "clear case"?

Houses are build here 1st, then planning permission is requested. Things do not really abide by law very much. It’s slowly getting better, but lots of work to be done.

Are you hosting the service through their ISP, or some other hosting provider?

Nope not using ISP for hosting, the server is in Germany.

Buy other domain names and point them to your server.

And they block that domain again. Domain has been up for over 5 years so it’s something my users know.

Get a vanity IP address like 75.74.73.72. Make up signs telling people in your town to switch their DNS to Cloudfare or Google.

Unfortunately the people are not very clued up on things like this at all.

Similarly, you could proxy your service through another hostname?

Wouldn't the ISP just block that hostname, too?

potentially, but it's probably easier to keep getting new hostnames than it is to keep blocking them (see piratebay)

And there goes 99% of the potential customers.

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