Wrapped in gaffa

I live in Denmark and unfortunately that’s a country where courts don’t know the laws they judge by. Which means IFPI got through with a nationwide block of the site thepiratebay.org. The Pirate Bay is basically just a huge public torrent tracker, which means many Open Source projects are using it to distribute files (fx. the game Urban Terror) and even the Danish national television were distributing some files through it. I personally used it to distribute the Creative-Commons BBC documentary The Codebreakers for IOSN (a UN Development Programme).

At first I used /etc/hosts and manually entered the IPs, because I didn’t want to use an external DNS service. I don’t trust any outsiders with all my DNS lookups, I want all lookups except the blocked domains to go to my ISP. Unfortunately a static hosts file is just not the same as doing a DNS lookup for this kind of site. Fx. tracker.thepiratebay.org does not point to one single IP, but 8 different IPs. CNAME records like vip.tracker.thepiratebay.org points to tracker.thepiratebay.org. Another problem is when TPB decides to start a new site like trial.thepiratebay.org, then I have to manually add that domain to /etc/hosts after looking it up at TPBs own nameservers.

Today I decided to try a different approach than the static hosts file. I wanted to set up at DNS proxy. I went with pdnsd, which was very easy to set up. All I had to do was to install the packages pdnsd and resolvconf (on Ubuntu 8.04) and add the two entries below to the pdnsd.conf file. The router entry redirects any lookup not pointing at thepiratebay.org and its subdomains to my router. If you’re not using a router you could enter the IPs of your ISPs DNS servers instead of the IP of your router. The tpb entry is simply an entry that looks up any request for thepiratebay.org and its subdomains and nothing else. The servers used are TPBs own name servers.

server {
    label = "router";
    ip = 192.168.1.1;
    exclude = ".thepiratebay.org";
    policy = included;
}
 
server {
    label = "tpb";
    ip = 83.140.176.159
    ,    194.71.107.1
    ,    85.17.40.33
    ,    217.75.120.120
    ;
    include = ".thepiratebay.org";
    policy = excluded;
}

Today I stumpled upon a site called Garfield Minus Garfield. Here is what it says about the Garfield comic strip without Garfield.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

What is even cooler is a blog post on what Jim Davis thinks about this remix art.

Instead of reacting over-zealously and hitting me with a Cease & Desist order, Jim is down to earth enough to admit that there’s a laugh to be had from Garfield Minus Garfield and in fact he even thanks me for putting it together!

Garfield Minus Garfield, 2008-08-01

In response to IFPIs ten inconvenient truths about piracy I have made my own list.

1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric.

1. IFPI, one of the flagships of the copyright movement, makes millions of euros by selling music with DRM twice, because they lobbied a law package called the DMCA (or INFOSOC) which forbid you to copy your music for personal purposes.

2. Allofmp3.com, the well-known Russian website, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.

2. IFPI, the well-known organisation, has refused to recieve money from ROMS for a single artist in their stall whose fees they are paid to collect by its members (Read: Starving artists.. bu-hu). AllOfMP3.com is not illegal in Russia.

3. Organised criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.

3. Organised rights holders use the sale of CDs to raise revenue for advertising, lobbying and suing kids.

4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.

4. Record companies don’t care whether the work they distribute is from a major or independent label – as long as they can rip them off.

5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on “underground” artists and more inclination to invest in “bankers” like American Idol stars.

5. High CEO salaries and useless suits mean less money to the artists “at risk”. The internet will eliminate the need for record companies and greedy CEOs.

6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.

6. ISPs facilitate data traffic between A and B. They do not filter your content. They do not sue you. They guard your privacy. Which is what IFPI would like to take away from you.

7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth – it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.

7. Immaterial rights creates wealth in – rich countries. Who cares about the commercial world? Since when did it care about you or music? Reality is that music is immaterial. Nature and physics does not facilitate a commercial world where you can own or sell immaterial things. I care about the music not about money, does IFPI

8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle or higher income earners.

8. Suing file-sharers is not done by poor record labels and independent artists. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University neglected to tell that poor people in China has better things to do than listen to music, like provide food for their family – maybe?

9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won’t stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.

9. What constitutes wrong? Taking away peoples privacy? Their rights? Their freedom? – Their music?

10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.

10. P2P networks are hotbeds for discovering new music. It is naturally popular music that is file-shared most frequently – that is what the word popular means, right?