Torrent Sites End Up on Aussie Blacklist
Written by enigmax on March 19, 2009There are claims today that the Australian government’s top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked onto the Internet. There are a number of strange entries on the list that leaked to Wikileaks, including a couple of torrent sites. However, Australian Minister Stephen Conroy claims the list is not the country’s official blacklist.
It was almost inevitable. Today there are claims that the ACMA-maintained website blacklist has leaked onto the Internet. Following on from the publishing of the official blacklists of Thailand, Denmark and Norway, Wikileaks is said to be publishing the Aussie list today, but at the time of writing the site is unobtainable. Of course, this is the Internet and already the list is available from dozens of other sources.
The blacklist contains around 2,400 entries and presuming that the URLs are descriptive of the material they link to, the list appears to be dominated by pornography, with a couple of legal YouTube-like adult sites making the list. Of course there are also a worrying number of sites appearing to deal with images of child abuse and no-one could seriously complain about their inclusion – but that was never really an issue.
What bothers people more are the significant number of sites on the list that don’t seemed to be linked to this type of abuse. In addition to religious sites (both pro and anti), various Wikipedia pages, euthanasia sites and a travel agent, a dentist’s website even made the list.
Other inclusions include several poker sites and UK-based betting site, Betfair.com, which was banned in Western Australia during January 2007. The company appealed saying the ban was unconstitutional and in March 2008 it was overruled. However, Betfair.com remains on the list.
Speaking of the leak, Australia’s Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the list is not the official ACMA blacklist. He says that while the published list has around 2,400 blocked URLs, the official ACMA blacklist contains roughly 1,050.
“There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist,” he said. “However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist,” he said.
Censorship of any type can lead to claims of undemocratic behavior and as discussion over these blacklists grew during recent months, there were concerns that many torrent sites would end up being blocked as the ’system’ short-cutted ineffective copyright law, but it appears that this has not come about on a significant scale.
However, two BitTorrent sites – the now-defunct TorrentSpy.com and TorrentFive.com – both appear on the leaked list but it’s impossible right now to say if they appear on the ‘real’ ACMA list. There is no indication why these sites are marked to be blocked, but presumably at some point someone objected to some content indexed. Neither site operated a tracker so banning the sites’ URLs would not achieve much, since the content would be already available elsewhere – the sites in question offered an index, much like Google.
TorrentFreak itself is no stranger to being included on various blocklists, even though the site operates completely legally. We have no proof why companies, schools and other organizations would add us to their blocklists, but suspect that it’s purely because we have ‘torrent’ in our URL. And here lies the problem.
The worry remains that without overview and without those that maintain these blacklists being held to account, many other legal sites could have their domains blocked too. It’s just a shame that the only way people can find out if they are blocked is if individuals leak these lists for all to see – then of course the lists become a magnet for those drawn to illegal, sickening content. It really is a double-edged sword.
Hopefully no more torrent sites will be added to these blacklists – the censorship of criminal material they conduct themselves is more than sufficient and the torrent community is as keen as everyone else to keep their sites safe for all.
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62 Responses
The sites on the list include redtube as well.Die filters.
wankers. why should they control any aspect of the internet. who watches them?
“the lists become a magnet for those drawn to illegal, sickening content. It really is a double-edged sword.”
True. But they shouldn’t have blocked those either, because blocking doesn’t really work most of the time. They should investigate those child-abuse websites, and go after its authors. Otherwise, their authors will just get a different IP, a different URL and done.
Censorship is not the solution. Legal action against people responsible for child pornography is.
Block Betfair,,
They do not and will not… i’d ignor such list’s as there full of speculation.
ummm, the site is perfectly accessible for me
“i’d ignor such list’s as there full of speculation.”
Where is full of speculation?
@5 yeah they’re back now
Whilst I certainly don’t agree with this proposed list and filtering of URL on it and find the reasons for it’s existence to be laughable, the fact is that in it’s present implementation it’s purely URL based filtering.
Which means that bypassing it is an extremely trivial matter – a simple web proxy will do it.
Actually I highly doubt that this is a genuine list – or perhaps it is but has had unsanctioned additions made to it. The reason for this is that in order for a URL to be put onto the list it must be reported by some party to ACMA, who then view the content that the URL leads to and apply the same criteria as is used in Australia to classify film, TV and printed media and if it infringes then the URL is added. So I fail to see how a dentist’s website could be added.
“They should investigate those child-abuse websites, and go after its authors”
The problem with this approach is that the Australian government has no way to implement bans (or indeed investigations) on websites hosted in other countries (in which the majority are based).
Of more concern to me is that the apparent number of sites (according to Mr “nanny-nation” Conroy) on the blocklist has actually decreased in the months since its initial announcement. Now if the concept is to reduce the number of child-porn sites surely the number would increase?
thats bad.. :(
when are you ozzie boys due a general election?
We here in the UK are _STILL_ waiting for one…
“The problem with this approach is that the Australian government has no way to implement bans (or indeed investigations) on websites hosted in other countries (in which the majority are based).”
Well actually that’s not quite true as Australian authorities will inform Interpol or the relevant authorities regarding the details and in conjunction will investigate users that they have jurisdiction over. And the whole point of this filter is to ban sites so I’m unsure what you mean by saying they have no way to ban sites.
The child exploitation arguement is a ruse (appealing to people horror ast such practices and relying on the attitude of “anything to stop it as it’s so awful”) as people who traffic in such material either don’t use the web or the *very* few sites that do make damn sure they make themselves bulletproof by using unscrupulous hosts and using gateways to access the material (eg. ranchi) or they get removed by LEA. Ranchi, depite the best efforts of LEA has been operating for the better part of 11 years – however, actually finding this purile site isn’t as easy as typing the name into Google.
Bottom line is the child exploitation argument is an excuse and I’m sure Conroy know this but is willing to sell the filter using the idea.
An awful lot of poker sites on that list. Someone’s got a gambling problem.
@11: “when are you ozzie boys due a general election?
We here in the UK are _STILL_ waiting for one…”
Not for a few years at least… bottom line is this filter, unless something changes dramatically, won’t effect the wau many people vote as they consider other issues much more important than a few thousand sites they probably would never visit anyhow being blocked.
“We have no proof why companies, schools and other organizations would add us to their blocklists, but suspect that it’s purely because we have ‘torrent’ in our URL. And here lies the problem.”
Well those organisations probably don’t wish users of their network to be reading about torrent-related subjects or using Bittorrent on their networks … seems elementary to me.
Oh yeah, block a site just cos of it’s name. Seems like elementary stupidity to me.
torrent*.*
Right on hypnotoad….
God nub cakes can you say something intelligent just once, please man just ONCE!!!
Like tell us how the iinet case is going at least.
2010 FTW
Many Australians are tired of hypocrites and “wowsers”.
This is why there is an Australian Sex Party.
“Tired of ‘hypocrites’ and ‘wowsers’ (an Australian slang term for an obtrusively puritanical person)?”” – asks Breaking Free, continuing
The Sex Party hopes to save their nation from such people. The woman you see in this video is the party’s convenor, Fiona Patten, the head of the Eros Association, the national adult retail and entertainment lobby group.
What has triggered this new party line? Patten says the trigger has been the Australian government’s decision to place a mandatory filter on the Internet.
found on p2pnet site.
Most schools (middle and high) will have incredibly generalized blacklists. My high school blocked anything ending in .php and anything matching *proxy* as well as several file formats so you couldn’t download things either. They blocked most emails as well.
You practically had to get a teacher to sign in for you if you wanted to do research since so many things were blocked. The ironic part was that they missed 9/10ths of the ads, and because the lists were so over the top nobody cared if you set a bunch off.
Generally it’s not deliberate interference for a specific site, but some idiot who doesn’t know how to create the blacklists properly and as a result generates false positives. (Hell, they blocked BBC for a week.)
The general guideline is better to block it than to have someone do something dangerous and to their credit most schools with draconian rules like that have no problems with viruses, no matter how retarded the people using the computers are.
Draconian censorship is already here: a wikileaks page is ALREADY blocked in Australia. To worry about possible future censorship is pointless, because it is already here.
Also, I think that blocking any website is contrary its own purpose: if it is to stop child abuse websites, then blocking them will not do anything, and if it is to apprehend people who visit them, then blocking them will also not do anything to catch them, and is even worse because there are no proper court procedures for this block-list.
Well, Wikileaks itself is not being blocked, but Australia websites are banned from linking to some specific pages on Wikileaks, and face a hefty fine for linking to them.
yay for proxies people
“God nub cakes can you say something intelligent just once, please man just ONCE!!!”
What exactly did I say that was unintelligent?
“Like tell us how the iinet case is going at least.”
Google is your friend.
This filter doesn’t block anything. Simple proxy will do
@ 18
NubCakes is trying but, as you know, he isn’t getting paid to trying not to look like idiot (unfortunately it usually turns out like that very often),he is getting paid for trolling us. Trolling is hard work, you can even say an art and NubCakes is trying to to his best. Unfortunately successful trolling needs skills that NubCakes don’t have yet … but as you see he is trying very hard.
“Where’s this list?”
readable version can be found at scribd.com. do a little search there and it will show right up ;)
“TorrentFreak itself is no stranger to being included on various blocklists, even though the site operates completely legally. We have no proof why companies, schools and other organizations would add us to their blocklists, but suspect that it’s purely because we have ‘torrent’ in our URL. And here lies the problem.”
At my school TorrentFreak is banned because it’s apparently a porn site… There is a button I can click which reports sites that are filtered under incorrect categories to I clicked it about two weeks ago and still it’s blocked as a porn site.
Bastards.
All censorship does is brings the world a step closer to being run like China.
wikileaks was down earlier, feel free to check it below if your having problems with its. There’s been a few popular things on it today :P
http://isitup.org/check/wikileaks.org
sounds like a job for anonymous!!!
BTW http://88.80.13.160/ is the IP access for Wikileaks which sometimes works then the normal site is down.
So they claim that the published list isn’t the real list. Ok, prove it!
Just before you read the rest of my post, I am an ameteur techie who’s experience is the family router, the High School compuring course I am doing and general bits and bobs I pick up.
Would it be possible, or is it planned in IPv6 (I am unsure) to rebuild large sections of the web to work as a blacknet? Relying on every connection being encrypted as a standard to every other connection?
If I understand, under current UK law the ISP would just record the data anyway – not their problem that its encrypted and we get Waqui Jaqui throwing a fit with her database finaly working!… with Anonymised and encrypted traffic.
Not talking about TOR, thats too small scale, but is there a project working on creating something like this for mass deployment?
overturned.
The word is overturned.
Not overruled.
We could suddenly develop a whole lot of URL/Mirror farms off Australia’s shores. It is illegal to link to a banned site *within* OZ, but what about offshore link stations? Mirrors utilizing pics with the names of the banned websites incorporated within, and the Censor cops would have to open-eyeball each pic to determine just where each pic leads.
my uni blocks me even searching “torrent”. luckily they are apparently unaware of the existence of proxies.
@11
Is that anything to do with the fact that we are only almost 4 years into a maximum 5 year term? He can call an election whenever he wants, but won’t since Mr. Cameron is guaranteed to get in.
Or is it because you believe that Mr. Brown is unelected (he was elected as MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and as party leader by members of the Labour Party, and finally was asked by the Queen to form a government)
What the heck is the matter with those aussies? You know they like it FREE like the rest of us!
RT
http://www.online-privacy.pro.tc
Apparently this site censors information too given how comments just magically disappear.
I think the list is fake. The reason being is that a lot of the entries on the list make no sense whatsoever.
Who blocks ONE SINGLE video on youporn?
Yeah, they’re bureocrats and all, but come on, this strains belief.
It’s not fair to TorrentFreak, but it makes perfect sense, since the vast majority of sites with the word “torrent” in the name are .. .. torrent sites.
Similarly, P2P blocklists end up punishing a lot of innocent sites (and even seedboxes) simply due to the misfortune of having a having a similar IP address to a known abuser.
“Apparently this site censors information too given how comments just magically disappear.”
So who said TF was a forum where free speech applied anyway? They pay for the hosting so they can delete any and all comments if they wish.
Surprisingly, for a supposed “troll” – seems some users here can’t descriminate in their own mind their suspicions from reality (where they can’t know either way) – none of my comments have ever been deleted to my knowledge.
Not that many of those users even know what the true definition of troll actually is… schill would be a better word for what they’re thinking but oh well, newbs huh?
Incase you’re curious I wouldn’t visit them sites. I tried one near the top and it was pics of aborted foetuses :(. You’ll probably get flagged by your gov. as a paedo/terrorist as well. Especially if you live in UK ;)
List is bs, will def effect how i vote, conroy is a idiot.
List is not allowed on aussie hosts (even as .txt, i asked).
Even without wikileaks you can find it at tinyurl.com/acma08
Well those organisations probably don’t wish users of their network to be reading about torrent-related subjects or using Bittorrent on their networks … seems elementary to me.
See that, thats the unintelligent comment nub cakes, seems elementary to you but to rest of us its common sense.
As far as the iinet case goes you should be able to tell us as your helping with the prosecution.
Slaves shall f__king server
2010 FTW
And as surmised earlier above this is not an official list.
I’m defending this scheme whatsoever – indeed, I’ve written letters to Stephen Conroy (telco minister), Mike Rann (Premier of SA) and Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister of Australia) and attended the December protests in my state – but putting dentists and tuckshops onto the list seemed a little ludicrous and pointless even for a government hell bent on censorship.
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/014
Now, will TF add a postscript to this article? The minister may well be telling lies regarding this being a fake of course.
Atleast they aren’t going to do what they do with government schools, and force a whitelist onto us. When I was at school there was many times where I couldn’t access sites as they appeared under the catagory “Uncatagorised,” which every site is set to by default, even though I was researching for an assignment. Atleast I could access Spurceforget.net so I downloaded Tor there, to put on my USB drive
God “Now if only….” can you say something intelligent just once, please man just ONCE!!!
Instead of trying to be a combo of internet tough guy and intelligent sheeple. Too retardo to know the difference betwen ‘common sense’ & ‘elementary’. Go back to jerking off your Daddy so he doesn’t smash you in the head some more after he rapes yu.
Australia=China.
Did you forget to put your name in at 48 nubcakes???
Such a f__king loser
Its common sense that makes nobs like you look so empty headed cause you dont have any.
Cant believe you were dumb enough to think i dont know the difference between common sense etc, actually i can believe it.
Roped into that one hey simpleton.
Wrote letters to conroy….
hahahaha
They seek to control the population by controlling what they hear. But in order to do that they must destroy the internet. Making a great fire wall of australia is a good start. Do not believe them. The supporters of this bill seek to destroy the very foundation of human rights.
Their is no need for an onhoust democratic government to censor the web and they know it.
Remember knowledge is power. Without the knowledge we wouldn’t act.
Well, blocklist for school & university internet, i can understand. To cut cost in this troubling economic crisis. BUT blocklist for home internet … THAT is OVER RATED. I will go back to 56kB connection if they enforce this to homes.
Betfair wasn’t blocked in 2007 because of any AMCA ban. It was blocked because of interstate trading restrictions imposed by the WA STATE Goverment as a matter of protectionism, which were overuled by the High Court as a breach of interstate trade.
Not as exciting as political banning I know.
Tell your friends . . .
“Not talking about TOR, thats too small scale, but is there a project working on creating something like this for mass deployment?”
What? Are you an idiot? Tor is small because not that many people are using it. Just adopt the technology and it will grow. There is nothing keeping it small to call for something else for ‘mass deployment’.
“Mirrors utilizing pics with the names of the banned websites incorporated within, and the Censor cops would have to open-eyeball each pic to determine just where each pic leads.”
As opposed to looking at the hypertext links? LOL. I love it when technologically illiterate people say something really stupid.
“Incase you’re curious I wouldn’t visit them sites. I tried one near the top and it was pics of aborted foetuses :(.”
So? Seems like you are exactly the kind of a pussy that the nanny nation needs to ‘protect’.
@ NubCakes
seems some users here can’t descriminate.
I believe the word you’re looking for is discriminate, smartass.
If or when you’re able to master basic English language, then maybe we’ll talk. Until then I’m not feeling too hopeful of learning much from you. :(
@46 Nubcakes
“but putting dentists and tuckshops onto the list seemed a little ludicrous and pointless even for a government hell bent on censorship”
Rather than blindly accepting Conroy’s comments (he’s a pollie FFS, of course he’s lying), why don’t you spend a few minutes checking for yourself? It would’ve been quicker for you to Google the facts than it was for you to write such claptrap.
The dentist’s site was hacked by Russian CP merchants, it was removed and he subsequently shifted his site to a more secure host.
Because he did not and could not know he was on the SECRET blacklist he had no way of having his site removed once it was OK. OK?
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/technology/qld-dentist-furious-over-blacklist/2009/03/19/1237054974422.html
I don’t mind the filters but i hear that there could be a 30% speed drop because of the filter :(
Internet in Aus is already overpriced but now its gonna be slowed too …
@57
up to 80%
Lots of schools would block this site to stop people spending time on torrentfreak when they should be working.
Australia is run by wankers who can’t keep their country of in control. They resort to secret blacklist of websites to show the world of their short willies.
anyone who calls anyone ‘a noob’ with feeling is a tosser who will nevar get a gf. EEEEEAAAASSSSYYYYY
all the illegal sites must be stored on a server somewhere. Why don’t the cops just shut them down.
tk, isn’t it a bit ironic you’re calling them wankers? ;-)
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