Indian ISPs Told To Block Access To Vimeo

from the massive-overreaction dept

A few months ago we wrote about Indian ISPs being told to block (entirely) access to Megaupload (when it still existed) and BTJunkie. It seemed like overkill to block entire sites, but it appears that such censorship is expanding. There are reports in India of ISP-level blocks, ordered by the government, of a ton of sites. Many of these are torrent search engines and cyberlockers… but they also include Vimeo, one of the most popular video sites for filmmakers. This seems like another case of massive overkill by a government that has no idea what it’s doing. It’s amazing just how many overkill censorship attempts we’ve seen lately all in the name of copyright holders.

Filed Under: , , ,
Companies: btjunkie, megaupload, vimeo

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Comments on “Indian ISPs Told To Block Access To Vimeo”

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29 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

ah yes, because only mike knows what best for all countries in the world, and of course only Americas idea of “freedom” applies to all countries
and it only for the rights holders, who are th evictims of crime, that they do this, but of course mike can overlook the crimes his fellow pirates do, all in the name of freedom mind you

Anonymous Coward says:

Why Vimeo? Dailymotion is much worse for piles and piles of ripped shows. And youtube has the biggest collection of all.

I guess now people in India have to use a proxy to see indie shorts, actors’ self-filmed monologues, and fanvids, but they can still watch all the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes they want to.

Beech (profile) says:

Re: Re:

beautiful post! short, sweet, inflammatory, and i think about 100% wrong.

1) What you see is a bunch of squiggles called “letters” on a webpage, unless you are actually in India watching kids, which is pretty creepy.

2) “angry” isn’t the word most would use, “disappointed” is probably a better choice of words for how i feel about it.

3) “that they can’t get free stuff anymore” no, the problem is that some people in India can’t get free stuff anymore. Everyone here is saddened for THEIR loss. Those who have posted from India apparently have no problem accessing the affected sites

4) “can’t get free stuff” if by “stuff” you mean access to completely legitimate websites. the kind that you can access from almost any other country, because there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with free. If someone walks up to you on the street and offers you $20 to go get professional psychiatric help, are you going to tell him no because it’s FREE!?!?!?! (oh noes!). Of course, it may be different if the $20 is stolen, but on vimeo that is the exception rather than the rule

5) “Can’t” as with any form of “blocking” there’s already tons of ways around this. so this will stop grandpa from accidentally watching a legal video. The kind of people who are technically proficient enough to pirate in the first place have probably already found another way to “get their free stuff.”

So, in conclusion, you comment should be something more like:

“The majority of what I’m reading about here is a bunch of age-diverse webizens empathizing with those in a foreign land who have a slightly more difficult time accessing legal websites, while hardcore piracy continues unabated.”

Anonymous Coward says:

The RIAA is a terrorist organization , there members ad financial supporters must be arrested and charged with terrorism. The are using threats to get governments around the world to do there bidding, they use there power to destroy peoples lives as an example to others who do not bow down to there wishes , they are a terrorist organization and we must destroy them, ban them from our countries and attack them where we can.
If the RIAA threatens you, you have the right to retaliate as you would to any terrorist.

Tell everyone they are supporting terrorism when they buy a dvd or bluray or pay for any entertainment from Hollywood or from any studio/organization financing the RIAA.

Tell everyone that when they share movies/tv shows /music over the Internet they are defeating the terrorists.

Samuel BG (user link) says:

This is really disturbing!

Ok on first note. This ban to me has nothing to do with copywright infrigment whatsoever. However copywright infrigment is an excuse being used here to justify the ban.

What i see is a terible precedent being set in front of everyone eyes. If we allows them to shutdown any website for false pretexs, then they might as well shutdown any website for no reason at all.

This to me is the coup of an investor that got very deep pockets and attempted to use govt. to shutdown their competition. General Electric is the undisputed champion in this departement.

Anybody that say this ban is no big deal cause the site in question is not a big loss, those people failed to see what is at stake here.

Jeremy Butcher says:

The solution is to download the Tor Browser Bundle from :

https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/tor-browser-2.2.35-12_en-US.exe

Close your browser.
Unzip this portable file to a suitable location like non System partition ( Drive other than the C: Partition) or pendrive.
Run the ?Start TOR Browser.exe? file from the ?TOR Browser? Folder to launch a secure version of Firefox Portable.
It takes time to open since it directs your request through a Tor network of IP Addresses and exits in another country as a different IP address from your own.
Hence you can access any of your ?forbidden? sites to which access has been blocked on the basis of the High Court order.
Other option is UltraSurf but it is slightly suspicious based on net reports.

Legal Disclaimer :
Distributed in public interest for educational purposes only.
Users requested to exercise caution and use it for legitimate purposes only.

Bellmani says:

VPN service to open blocked website

“If you want to be able to leave your network devices on vpn permanently you will need a vpn client router.

I got mine from http://www.primovpn.net , they are really easy to setup. I don’t know if they will work with Himachi though.

Primovpn routers also let you do dual gateway on one router so you can be local and on vpn at the same time.”

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