Homebrew Transparency Portal Reveals Needlessly Blocked ‘Pirate’ Sites

As the wave of pirate site blocking spreads globally, some European countries show weakness in their execution. In Germany, for instance, the local blocklist included domains that no longer linked to pirated content, violating the blocking agreement. Tellingly, this only came to the forefront after a 17-year-old developer put together an unofficial transparency portal.

graffitiCopyright holders and anti-piracy groups repeatedly argue that pirate site blocking is an effective and proportional measure.

This message is highlighted more frequently now that the U.S. is seriously considering blocking measures again.

Effective and Proportional?
On the effectiveness-side, blocking proponents are helped by academic research, which concluded that blocking measures can be effective. The proportionality argument is easily made too. Most people would agree that sites structurally hosting or linking to infringing content, without any other purpose, have little right to remain available.

The arguments above make sense, but they only tell one side of the story. They assume that site blocking is implemented with precision and accuracy. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Italian ISPs, for example, were mistakenly required to block countless innocent websites linked to shared Cloudflare IP-addresses. That was neither effective nor proportional. It was an outright disaster.

Even seemingly harmless errors raise questions. Earlier this month, we reported on a new court order in France that targeted 98 domain names connected to the pirate site Z-Library. Only nine of those domains were still active.

Why would a presumably meticulous court, order ISPs to block domains that no longer point to copyright-infringing material? Is that effective?

Transparency Reveals German Errors
In Germany, site blocking issues have emerged too. While the country is generally known for its ‘pünktlichkeit‘, that characteristic doesn’t automatically translate to its site blocking efforts.

Similar to other countries, Germany doesn’t make its list of blocked domain names public. The blocking ‘clearing house’, CUII, publishes blocking orders, but the requesting rightsholders and targeted domains are redacted.

To counter this ‘secrecy’, a 17-year-old student called Damian, along with some friends, launched a site where they collect and publish information on all blocked domains. With some technical tricks, they essentially created their own regularly updated transparency portal; CUIIListe.

Aside from the scope of the German blocklist, which included 122 unique domains when tallied in August, it also revealed that many of the blocked domains were no longer active. Rather than facilitating access to pirate sites, the domains had expired, pointed to parked pages, redirected to non-infringing content, or were listed for sale.

Violating the Blocking “Code of Conduct”
These persistent blockades are a problem. Aside from the lack of effectiveness, they directly violate the “code of conduct” which rightsholders and Internet providers signed as part of their voluntary blocking agreement.

Specifically, Section 9 of the code of conduct, titled “Monitoring of blocked sites/lifting of blocks,” outlines the process for removing blocks when they are no longer necessary.

“Copyright holders who initiated the blocking are required to monitor the blocked websites to ensure they still meet the criteria for blocking. If the conditions are no longer met, they must inform the Clearing House, which then notifies the ISPs to lift the block,” it reads.

Article 9 (original)

article 9
Somewhere in this process, something went wrong. Many of the domains that no longer linked or hosted pirated material remained blocked for weeks, or even months. And without the homebrew transparency portal, they would likely still be blocked today.

Errors Are Quietly Corrected
Earlier this month, German news site Netzpolitik highlighted these ‘oversights’. At the time, CUII chairman Jan Bernd Nordemann confirmed that non-infringing domains should be unblocked.

CUII said that it previously instructed Internet providers to unblock several domain names but, apparently, dozens of domains needlessly remained blocked.

Damian tells TorrentFreak that when he went over the list a few weeks ago, 41 out of a total of 122 domain names were mistakenly blocked, as these no longer linked to pirated material. Only after this news was made public were most of the errors quietly corrected.

“CUII never mentioned our site, but they are definitely aware of it though,” Damian says, suggesting that the timing of the removals is hardly a coincidence.

Thus far, 39 of the 41 ‘non-infringing’ domain names have been unblocked by CUII. For reasons unknown, newalbumreleases.unblocked.co (listed for sale since June) and harleyquinnwidget.net (hasn’t resolved since March) remain blocked.

Blocking Unblocking Tips
Rightsholders are obliged to monitor blocked domains and report to CUII if domains can be unblocked. Members of the public are allowed to flag domains too, but when a site is blocked, it’s hard to see that it’s no longer infringing.

Damian knows his way around blockades, however, and previously informed CUII that the serien.sx blockade should be lifted. That domain previously pointed to a pirate site, but it’s now redirecting to a site that informs the public how they can circumvent blocking measures.

While these unblocking instructions are sensitive, they don’t fall under the code of conduct.

serien.domains (translated)

serien bypass
CUII never replied to the 17-year-old developer. However, they did reply to the Netzpolitik journalist who later inquired about the same domains, informing them that serien.sx was unblocked after ‘someone’ brought the matter to their attention.

In conclusion, the German situation demonstrates that transparency is crucial when it comes to domain blocking. It can even be argued that it’s an essential prerequisite to ensure that blocking measures are both effective and proportional.