An article about MSN Messenger blocking links to sites like Youtube.com and probably several others. The user sending the link would receive the message “The following message could not be delivered to all recipients”. The outcry was heard loud and wide with stories appearing on Slashdot, Digg and probably a million other websites who were simply reiterating what one blog started.

The Internet loves conspiracy theories and some sites especially when they can fight against the root of all evil Microsoft. What I want to say is that no one but Microsoft (hopefully) knows the reason why those links have not been send to the recipient. It could be that they decided to filter some urls that belong to their competition, it could be a glitch, an error after server upgrades or a improperly configured spam filter.

The issue seems to have been fixed and everything returned back to normal. I have no means of testing if this is really true but from the multitude of comments on those popular news aggregator websites it seems that it is.

I’m still posting the workaround in case they are still blocked for some users. Stripping the url of the http:// prefix is all that needs to be done to be able to send the link.

I do not mean to be saying that webmasters should not report about the issue until they know what is going on but if they get hold of such a story they should not draw conclusions so easily.

Update: An Microsoft representative posted an article that explains what happened.

Peer Guardian already has many IP addresses blocked that are used by the MPAA to spread fake torrents and to record IP addresses of the peers that download the torrents. Blocklist distinguishes the following categories: ads, bogon, edu,game,gov, p2p,phishing, spam and spy. The most important category for most users will be p2p of course and a installed Peer Guardian client will make sure that your client will not connect to the fake torrent clients and IPs. (if they are in the range that is blocked)

You do not need to configure your file sharing application to work with Peer Guardian, everything is done automatically. You can add sites that you definitely need to the allow list to make sure that they will never be blocked by Peer Guardian.

Update:

The Peer Guardian website is currently returning a 404 not found error. It is unclear at this point in time if this is due to technical difficulties or because the project has been canceled. We have uploaded the latest working version of Peer Guardian 2, PeerGuardian 2.0 RC1 Test 2, to our servers.

The blocklist website that is used to manage the blocked IP addresses is not reachable as well currently. This highly suggests that the PeerGuardian 2 project is dead. Still, if you want to download the latest version you can do so by clicking on the following link: Peer Guardian 2 (206)

An alternative is Peer Block

According to the Pro Piracy Lobby website the provider experienced some heavy fire from disgruntled customers and privacy & free speech groups. It seems that the pressure on the provider was this intense that they decided to retract their decision and apologize to their customers.

Together with our new chairman of the board, the management agrees that limiting Internet access is not within the framework of our business, says Fredrik Winbladh, President of Perspektiv Bredband.

It is of great importance the we as a telecom and Internet operator, a so called common carrier, focus on delivering information. We can’t risk our position being questioned given the previous statement. The management and the company learned a lot from the debate that took place and we will use this experience to keep developing according to our vision of becoming the prime broadband choice of the Öresund region (Southern Sweden), says new Chairman Mikael Paulsson.

Two interesting statements. It seems that this episode clearly shows that companies will listen to their customers if only enough raise their voice.

It describes methods to censor websites like blocking url’s via the DNS server that for instance the German government likes to use which can be easily countered by using the IP or an DNS server that does not block the website. So, for every action (censorship) you find the corresponding reaction (bypass). Excellent read for everyone whose country, company or institution has decided to block certain information.

Kinds of censorship described:

• Blocked URL’s via the DNS-server
• Forced proxy server / transparent proxy
• Keyword filter
• Blocked ports
• Software on the client (child protection e.t.c)
• Censorware on the server (inside of networks)
• Whitelist
• IP blocking on the routers

Ways to bypass Censorship:

• Using a different ISP
• Using a not censoring DNS-server
• Using a non censoring proxy server
• Using a Web-2-phone service
• Using a webproxy
• Get Webpages via eMail
• Using steganography
• Using a special proxy like peer-2-peer program
• Special Services

Everything is explained in detail and links are provided where necessary. I have decided to pick out some of the more common methods to censor and bypass information in the coming days – stay tuned.

I can not recall a court ruling about the legality which should mean that the website itself is legal unless the case would be examined in court. Blocking a perfectly legal website is censorship in my opinion. Where is the difference to countries like China who block websites that express different kind of views about China ? The only difference I see is that this kind of censorship has purely economic reasons while the one in China is politically motivated.

Many European countries have their share of censorship which is not known to many of it’s citizens. Germany and France ban Nazi websites and sites that deny the holocaust and other countries most likely have their share of websites that simply get blocked.
Censorship does not get better if a democratic country uses it to suppress websites because of political or economic reasons. It simply does not feel right.

Why don’t they sue allofmp3 in Russia if they think the service is illegal ? Maybe because they do know that a Russian court would rule that it is a legal service ?

The best thing the big media companies could do would be to offer a similar service on the internet. That would of course mean that high pricing items would come to an end. Suppose they fear that more than to piss of a few more customers criminals.