India blocks GitHub, after lobbying done by copyright trolls

Moonrise2473@feddit.it to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 470 points –
torrentfreak.com

Who cares if nobody can work, the important is that those illegal streams are blocked

112

When is it supposed to kick in? Because it sure hasn't been done yet.

Edit: Blatant misinformation

While the underlying court order was reversed many months ago, some Indians continue to have trouble accessing parts of the website.

the main problems of those blocking orders, worldwide, not only in india, is that while blocks are immediate and done with no supervision directly in the hands of the copyright trolls, unblocks are slow and need 100+ approvals

It's exactly how reporting shithead users online is like.

You report a stupid asshole, takes a long ass time to be dealt with.

They report you - record time.

You can get someone banned on reddit easily if they say certain phrases. I banned a lot of conservative shitheels before they banned me, so I made another account.

Reddit's admins are super touchy on violence. If someone says a thing on Reddit that sounds like they want to do violence to a person, even if it's not a real person or they're obviously joking, just report threatening violence for a free ban.

I'm at odds about the whole violence thing. People should be allowed to express how they feel, even if it means that they express the most grotesque way in how they'd like to handle someone they don't like. One cannot always assume someone will have the means and resources necessary to carry out the perfect murder on someone.

If we are to glorify the concept of anonymity, why are we so afraid of these kinds of expressions? You won't know who I am, you won't know where I am and you won't know much about me unless I give out details or hints to either of those things. I've long stopped making death threats to people online years ago because it sounded absolutely ridiculous, knowing that I'll never be able to reach the person whom I hate. Much less, even go through with the threat at all.

That doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to express how nice it'd be if I held someone's head down while riding an escalator as the feed of the steps gradually grates the skin off their face.

I think this is really just a symptom of how social media of all walks on the internet don't really do enough in the way of security and privacy so that these things are simply just that - expressions.

If only there existed a button to make that person completly disapear from you life entirly. Maybe we can call this button a block button. Hmm in reality i realy like that because it means that other people get to decide if they see an opinion i dont like. Best if we give me ultimate control to make anyone online i disagree with disapear that way ill never have to be offended ever again.

😆 you report mean people on the Internet.

Uh, that's what the report button is for. Let me tell you something, you sound like the kind of person who go around calling people "soft" or "snowflake". You believe there should not be any cyber bullying laws. You believe everyone should just shut up and take it. But I bet you, you're the biggest snowflake of them all because as soon as someone dishes out what you give to others online, you'll be squealing to the moderators before you know it.

Don't lie to yourself, I see trashy people like you pull this kind of act all of the time. You're nothing special.

I'm lying to myself. Yes that's it. I'm so trashy. Mhm. I'm a huge snowflake, you got it bud. 😂

Its been like this for a long time. I still find it difficult to access raw.github. the reversal is not proper as far as I can say.

Edit: checked now, still can't.

Based on the other comments, they blocked the raw url.

But the headline 'India blocks github" is incorrect at all levels

Remember when India blocked the official website for VLC?

Its still blocked including newgrounds.com. I have to use VPN to play Geometry Dash because sound of custom level are hosted on newground.

Here a List of site which I can't access without VPN

  • VLC Website
  • Raw Github URL
  • Newground
  • t.me : Telegram Links (but I can access telegram.dog and telegram.me)
  • ApkPure

Which ISP are you on? Most of them are working for me

I use Mobile Data. DNS over https can unblock some website.

If you are on firefox i suggest turning on DNSoverHTTPS, it works after a few reloads{newgrounds will still not work though :( }

At what point can we all just acknowledge that copyright law has become a public nuisance in its current form

Copyright, Patent Laws, holding back human progress for a century.

I've always thought that China's complete disregard for IP is one of their greatest strengths tbh

Probably never, since it benefits large corporations

The ONE thing I might have in common with the hexbear people is thinking China has the right ideas when it comes to copyright. Copyright and trademarks only serve to hinder innovation.

The fediverse can't reach source forges fast enough...

Git really should be married with bittorrent for large files. At the moment it's GFS which requires large central storage, which doesn't really fit with git. Should be maglinks.

Or IPFS. The issue in this context is that bittorrent would treat each version as a unique collection of files and you can't combine seeding of redundant files. IPFS has much better means to handle updates.

Git LFS exists, not sure how it works technically, but it's what the AI people use for AI model VCS.

So does using maglinks, it exists in git-annex. It's just the torrent client is super crap. Great idea, poorly implemented.

VPN time for indians

Oh fun fact, Govt also issued an order stating that VPN providers who won't log information of users, can't function in India.

That statement just screams "I don't understand how the internet works"

They understand exactly how it works. If you're a VPN provider in india, you either keep logs, or you go to jail.

Oh, so they're aware the stated actions would have no impact on VPN accessibility beyond potentially restricting India endpoints?

Either that or they're planning to play server whack-a-mole with overseas private companies whom themselves have no control over access from India

Edit: or it's just a non-statement to misdirect

Bet they love Tor then....

Though maybe faster to have a VPS somewhere else. Maybe do a VPN from there.

They aren't going to block ssh.

Hey do you know of a good ssh client? I'd like to spoof SNI using one but I don't know how it is done with ssh/ssl

Not sure exactly what you are after, but would stunnel4 do? You can use it to hide SSH with SSL and then use SNI so that a specific website name is SSH and others something else. You can probably do it with Apache or NGINX to if there is real websites too.

Client wise, just normal ssh, but with a custom config for that host with:

ProxyCommand openssl s_client -connect %h:%p

Edit: NGINX : http://nginx.org/en/docs/stream/ngx_stream_ssl_preread_module.html

Edit: Apache : https://trofi.github.io/posts/295-ssh-over-https.html

umm, I got confused. Let tell you exactly about the use case. so on a site like this " https://sshocean.com/ssh-ssl " I create an account, and I get something like this: where do I insert this payload (what client for windows or Ubuntu)? and how do I insert the desired SNI that I want to be in front of my ISP? I know of http injector with whom the trick works on android, I mean ssh/ssl stunnel.

In your .ssh/config you want something like:

Host my-ssh-ssl Hostname us01.ssh0.net User sshocean-p1r4t2br Password myparrot2 Port 443 ProxyCommand ~/.ssh/https-tunnel.sh %h %p

Then you have a ~/.ssh/https-tunnel.sh something like:

#!/usr/bin/env bash { printf "GET /HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:$1\r\nUpgrade:websocket\r\n"; cat } | openssl s_client -connect $1:$2 -servername $1

That last bit, -servername is the SNI bit, if you need it. BUT I think that payload might be for port 2083. I think 443 might be just the OpenSSL connect directly.

then I initiate this using stunnel from terminal ?(Ubuntu OS)

No, stunnel is go othere end. If you doing only the client end, you.don't need it.

The main Github.com domain was still accessible but raw.githubusercontent.com, where code is typically stored, was blocked.

Some days, like today, I regret commenting TorrentFreak out of my RSS feed reader.

It's kind of funny, but it's also kind of scary that not having access to Github would probably significantly impact a lot of companies and services. It would definitely impact me.

Oh well. We can always move to Sourcehut, right?

It is block? I think it was my Internet issue. Fuck. I hate this type of bullshit. But I can download some file from raw url?

The TorrentFreak article might have more information; I skimmed it. I don't live in India, so I don't know. Apparently, only the raw.githubusercontent.com domain was blocked, so Indian users should have still been able to access the main github.com domain. It's the direct link to the files that was apparently blocked. But cloning repositories probably wasn't affected?

Yep, I can clone repo w/o any problem

I read that Linux usage is much higher in India (I think ~13% vs 5% in the US, though the statistics are probably outdated). I am totally ignorant when it comes to India, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm wondering if the rise of Linux users has something to do with the government trying to limit access to Github.

Indian here.

Most government organisations in India have shifted to using linux (primarily ubuntu) because they didn't want to pay hefty license fees to microsoft and to buy new PCs, since almost all of their computers either ran Windows 7 or XP.

Could you provide sources for this? I still see government computers running old windows.

https://www.opensourceforu.com/2011/11/indian-supreme-court-opts-for-ubuntu-10-04/

Indian Courts have been using Ubuntu for over a decade.

https://news.itsfoss.com/indian-govt-linux-windows/

The Indian armed forces are evaluating the shift to an Ubuntu-based distro that is developed locally this august.

I know that the first one hasn't held up. I know a few people in the high court circles who have no idea what Linux is and exclusively use AND are asked to use windows specific software.

The second link looks promising. Thanks for sharing!

To use Linux at the military just makes sense. I used to write software for a military contractor and the SW was only deployed on hardened RedHat. I thought to myself that this is a rare case of the military being smarter than the private sector :D

The other way round. Government is pro Ubuntu/Linux.

Guess Gitlab is about to get a shot in the arm from india.

nahh we would rather use vpn. i have been using vpn for github ever since they have blocked raw github user content.

So... What's the purpose of the ban then?
Is this but just totally stupid and implemented completely useless, because people in power can't grasp what they are deciding on?

That is why IP/DNS blocks should only be deployed to protect the end-user. Never to enforce some kind of law...

I would block even more services from Microsoft, why not. Go to other git sources.

Good news. Hopefully this will help to finally break the de facto monopoly of Microsoft's GitHub and bring the distributed aspect of Git - away from gatekeeper platforms - back into the foreground.

Based

..but this will realistically just spawn some new mirrors and proxies because the vast amount of projects hosted there definitely won't ever move away.

Anyway, I am doing my part! (With my irrelevant profile)

the vast amount of projects hosted there definitely won’t ever move away.

That's what they said about Sourceforge though.

Github probably won't shoot themselves their userbase in the dick quite as spectacularly as Sourceforge did, though.

To be fair there are still oodles of projects there. I end up on source forge regular basis.

One of the reasons might be that the number of SVN hosting facilities has decreased over the past two decades.

Sourceforge 🤮

Oh, come on. It wasn't that bad! At least it granted (and still grants) the freedom of choosing which VCS shall make your day harder than necessary.

I guess. I haven't lived through its golden age as a developer, but, seeing it now, anything would be better than Sourceforge IMO, so I would understand why people would move away even just for practical reasons

😆

looks like shit

Yeah well no shit, it's a meme from an old 80s movie that has probably seen multiple levels of compression. Yet somehow it still got my point across, despite your keen observation.

i know what it is ive seen it 999999 times its unfunny and it makes no point

Lol what have you got against images in posts/comments? 😆 Take your silly hangups back to lemmy world

I wonder why people favor codeberg so much over things like gitlab. It has an ugly UI from ancient GitHub…

Codeberg is supposedly located in the EU while not requiring self-hosting, maybe that's why.

Codeberg is a free/nonprofit hosted instance of Forgeo. Forgeo is a fork of Gitea created by Codeberg about a year ago when the governance of Gitea changed suddenly.

You can selfhost either Forgeo or Gitea.

There are other hosted instances of forgeo and gitea also available.

Gitlab is a hosted instance if gitlab.

You can also self host gitlab.

I assume there are other hosted instances of gitlab tho i cant think of any off the top of my head.

Is there a reason I shouldn't use gitea locally?

Uh well idk you personally so hard to say.

For me i like the remotely hosted ones.

Lots of other people run gitea locally.

What's the point of a local git server? If you're after that why not just use a regular Git repo?

Easier ci/cd integration and viewing diffs from my phone on the toilet. Nothing I can't do with regular git, it would just take more effort.

Makes sense, though GitLab very much doesn't require self-hosting

I know, but most people are lazy these days (and self-hosting stuff in the EU has become a legal battle against every week's new rules).

I don’t think you understand what I mean. It has its “main instance” which most people use. It’s just open source so you have the option of self hosting.

I was on GitLab for a time (and still keep the account for following stuff and maybe contributions), but felt it wasn't as free and community focused as I would have liked to, so I decided to move away and went to Gitea (the hosted instance), shortly after I discovered Codeberg which aligns with my ideals even more, so I went to try it and it stuck.
The UI isn't that bad in my opinion and it's more responsive than GitLab's, so I appreciate it.
Not to say that it's the perfect platform of course, at least not yet, I miss GitLab for the easy actions/CI and deployment of pages, but I'm hoping that Forgejo actions will land soon enough and make things better.

Note: recently I found out a userstyle that tries to modernize the UI by following a Material You-like interface called Gitea Modern, don't know if it's still holding up since it's been archived

Really gitlab went down the niche client path and no longer is a non Microsoft alternative? Sadge, at least I know about codeberg now.

No no, don't get me wrong, it very much still is, it's really great for what it is, but for my own purposes it's a bit too much maybe, and I never thought to come back also because I was, and still am, anticipating federation on Gitea/Forgejo, I didn't expect that GitLab would add that in as well, so now that'll be a moot point when the relevant merge requests do land

It’s not bad per se, but it leaves a lot to be desired and I think it’s about as responsive as GitLab.