Exposing the Clearingstelle Urheberrecht Im Internet (CUII) | Hacker News Reader

Exposing the Clearingstelle Urheberrecht Im Internet (CUII)

damcraft.de

151 pointspabs330 comments

>One would assume that such a powerful entity operates transparently and adheres to strict monitoring practices, as outlined in their own Code of Conduct (Section 8)3. Unfortunately, that's far from the case.

I had a laugh at this. The opposite is true, I assume that anyone responsible for policing themselves will behave in a malicious and/or incompetent manner.

> One would assume that such a powerful entity operates transparently and adheres to strict monitoring practices, as outlined in their own Code of Conduct (Section 8)3. Unfortunately, that's far from the case.

That sounds an aweful lot like how DMCA takedowns works in the states.

and blocklists for Austria too:

https://netzsperre.liwest.at/

https://blog.magenta.at/internet/sicherheit/netzsperre/

The CUII blocks seem to only be applied at the DNS level, so if you just use a different DNS server from the ISP default, you’re fine.

Circumvention is easy, that is true. It still leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth that you can’t use any default German ISP DNS server without seemingly random blocking orders.

It doesn't matter how easy it is to bypass. It's about this situation of violation of freedom and transparency not being acceptable in the first place.

But the main service of my ISP is the internet access, the DNS is basically a free addition that isn’t really relevant to the thing I contract them for.

Its like renting a server at Hetzner and their wiki on how to install some program has an error. It’s not ideal but the main point of the service isn’t impacted.

That's a very naive take imho. As far as I am aware your default DNS server on widnows is obtained via DHCP, meaning for most people it is chosen by the hardware provided by your ISP. Most people would include working DNS resolution to their "I bought internet access from you", even though they might not know about DNS and you are tecnically right. But I bet even judges would see it that way.

Yea, arguing that DNS resolution is not part of your internet service is like the utility arguing that water isn’t included as part of your hookup, the real service is the pipes and you can source alternate water to fill it

Even the router isn’t really your ISPs job, I bring my own and don’t care. Of course some users are just going to do the easy thing and get Router and config from the ISP. But that’s less bad than DPI for example.

Keep in mind that their target demographic isn't hackers, it's the average Joe who probably doesn't know what DNS is.

Not to excuse anything, but there’s a significant segment of reasonably computer-savvy users between “hackers” and the average Joe, who do know well enough what DNS is, just like they know what VPNs are and their use for streaming and the like.

When are operating systems going to start resolving names themselves instead of relying on ISP caches?

Why do you continue to argue down the naive path?

I'm using the router provided by ISP as part of the contract for service. As long as they don't withhold administrator credentials, no problem.

Only because most people don't set their DNS server manually. When most OSes and/or browsers start ignoring the default DNS settings ISPs will devise another system which does impact the main point of the service.

What is DNS? What is level? What isp dns level domain block, what? I'm just a random grandma using the internet, and the site doesn't work for me?!

DNS level blocking efficiently blocks content for 99% of the users, and that last 1% (or even less), can't be blocked at all (tor, vpns, etc.), so they don't matter.

>I'm just a random grandma using the internet

To be fair if you're a grandma in Germany you likely visit your favorite weather site and yahoo or whatever, as you can see from the leaked list of blocked ips it's basically illegal gambling and streaming sites.

I get the theoretical argument but in practice pretty much anyone who is likely to run into dns blocked sites is also the kind of person who knows how to at least Google how to get past them

My dad (grandpa-aged) uses a local torrent site, heavily moderated though (viruses, etc. get quickly removed), and he uses that because it's in our native language (his english is bad) and movies come with subtitles in the torrent. If it gets blocked, there's no way he'll figure out DNS by himself.

Yea that is repeatedly the case that certain websites stop working here in Germany because the ISP blocked them and one has to quick change DNS to 1.1.1.1 for example.

We need a clever way to proof the sustained financial loss in cases someone was blocked wrongfully.

In theory one could sue for compensation, but the burden of proof rests with the claimant.

Once there is a relevant danger of facing charges for mistakes the process will improve greatly, at the moment the incentives are misaligned.

The list is at https://cuiiliste.de/domains

It's smaller than I expected, 281 entries, yes, but half of those are variations of kinox.to, which was synonymous with pirate streaming for a while. Of course, sci hub is on it as well.

Overall, it's kind of pathetic. I guess it works against the most casual and undetermined of pirates. Maybe that's all they want.

I don't care about the blocking, as has been commented here it's trivial to circumvent. Actually I think the work of the cuii is beneficial, now I have a nice up to date list of streaming platforms to pick from. :)

That's how governments bypass the legal system: they create private entities that do the dirty work, and when the government wants to illegally censor somebody they use those private entities. Works for speech, finance, ..

In this case at least the pressure (defending intellectual property) seems to be coming from private entities, right?

Sure, abuse by the government is the exception, private enforcement with little oversight has to be normalized before.

Exactly. In fact the government has regulated these private entities to make sure the process has some transparency because of net neutrality.

The initiative is entirely private. ISPs and copyright holders are collaborating to save legal costs.

Boohoo government censorship is totally inappropriate here ;)

Remember, only government issued boots are bad. Corporate owned boots are made of much higher quality so it almost feels like a massage when they are pressed against your neck

Pray tell who would be creating the legal cost if the isp weren't collaborating? Copyright holders just have the inherent ability to impose costs on other people, no government support required?

I see, a fellow Mike Benz respecter.

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