this post was submitted on 04 May 2024

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Pirate Site Blocking Agency Reveals How and Why Pirates Circumvent Blocking * TorrentFreak (torrentfreak.com)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As the Motion Picture Association's site-blocking drive lands back on home turf, countries that have already implemented their own site-blocking programs are evaluating their effectiveness. A new survey carried out by French anti-piracy agency Arcom reveals how internet users circumvent blocking and their preferred tools. More importantly from a piracy mitigation perspective, the survey reveals why users feel the need to circumvent blocking in the first place.

The original study: https://www.arcom.fr/sites/default/files/2024-04/Arcom-Usage-des-outils-de-securisation-Internet-a-des-fins-acces-illicites-aux-biens-dematerialises-Rapport-etude-qualitative-et-quantitative-avril-2024.pdf

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The MPAA should give themselves a great big pat on the back. They, and the studios they represent have done much to not only enable piracy, but also to increase the sophistication of piracy tactics and -- somewhat by extension -- the quality of the material being pirated. Turns out, fucking over your customers at every possible turn has consequences.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Like the Bible thumpers banning all the escort sites. When the FBI told them not to because it would make catching the traffickers harder, and now it’s harder.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Pirate site blocking agency... Sounds like they should get some DDOS and more.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

The name the website is giving them is weird, it's officially the "Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication", their mission is the same (fighting piracy) so it doesn't really matter but it's still weird to call them by one of their tasks.

Anyway this is an interesting study because of the data, but the reading is obviously biased, they imply that the use of VPNs and what they call "alternative DNS" (yeah guess what, if my ISP blocks websites I'm still going to access them) is suspicious, they do mention security/privacy as one of the usages (it's the two main motivations for the majority of users in their results).

Something interesting : NordVPN is the most used by the panel, I think it's reasonable to explain it by the heavy marketing NordVPN did on french youtube (almost every big youtuber had an ad segment with them), but their results say otherwise, 35% of the panel says it's based on recommendations from closed ones.

I don't know why some in the panel of 3000 people would self report as pirating, it sounds dumb to admit to an infraction to the law.

Edit : Their conclusions are absolutely busted, an example: 26% people using a VPN reported data privacy was their main reason (for 49% it was one of the motivations), next is securing their data against breaches for 23% (44%), piracy fall down as the 6th motivation with 7% (17%) ; their conclusion? "The choice of a VPN is rather simple, to not be tracked and access illegal content" what kind of botched logic is that

On the bright side, Firefox has a 21% market share in France on desktops, yay!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

The name the website is giving them is weird, it's officially the "Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication", their mission is the same (fighting piracy) so it doesn't really matter but it's still weird to call them by one of their tasks.

All of their tasks together would be: "department of censorship" so even more DDOS reason. Fuck em.

Anyway this is an interesting study because of the data, but the reading is obviously biased, they imply that the use of VPNs and what they call "alternative DNS" (yeah guess what, if my ISP blocks websites I'm still going to access them) is suspicious, they do mention security/privacy as one of the usages (it's the two main motivations for the majority of users in their results).

I mean the obvious reason for this is framing they hate people circumventing their censorship. And changing the DNS doesn't even require a vpn lol...

Something interesting : NordVPN is the most used by the panel, I think it's reasonable to explain it by the heavy marketing NordVPN did on french youtube (almost every big youtuber had an ad segment with them), but their results say otherwise, 35% of the panel says it's based on recommendations from closed ones.

Nord heavily advertised all over Europe, this has two reasons firstly, they suck and make too much money, probably selling your data and being a security risk in general and Secondly because they are likely paid by these censorship departments to be exactly that, its a honeypot.

Proton all the way.

I don't know why some in the panel of 3000 people would self report as pirating, it sounds dumb to admit to an infraction to the law.

Depends, if its anonymous I'd do that as well, because i would love to rub it in their faces, even if not anonymous I'd probably do it cause they can't prove it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Lol, people simple forget sites are even blocked because they use VPNs. Friggin' amazing. The only site I know was blocked is SciHub, but it has so many mirrors, all it took was finding one.

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