{"id":9343,"date":"2017-09-18T08:59:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T16:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/18\/news-3116\/"},"modified":"2017-09-18T08:59:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T16:59:39","slug":"news-3116","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/18\/news-3116\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirate Bay Founder Is Offering Anonymous Hosting to Fight Government Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/video-images.vice.com\/articles\/59bff3785f493054030bde27\/lede\/1505752102966-15208602841_9f7d2067ec_o.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai| Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2017 16:29:21 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The north-eastern Spanish region of Catalonia is celebrating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/sep\/16\/catalonia-collision-course-with-spain-independence-vote\" target=\"_blank\">an unofficial referendum<\/a> for its independence on October 1, and the Spanish government is doing anything in its power to stop it\u2014including censoring the internet.<\/p>\n<p> The Spanish government has seized the official domains of the referendum: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.referendum.cat\/\" target=\"_blank\">referendum.cat<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/ref1oct.cat\/\" target=\"_blank\">ref1oct.cat<\/a>, and activists say it&#8217;s also using other techniques like manipulating the Domain Name System\u2014the phonebook of the internet\u2014to prevent people from accessing referendum-related sites. Meanwhile, Pirate Bay co-founder and long-time anti-censorship activist Peter Sunde is offering to keep information about the referendum online. <\/p>\n<div style=\"max-width: 550px;\" data-iframely-id=\"lMwGpBp\" class=\"article__embed article__embed--iframely\">\n<div style=\"left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;\" data-iframely-smart-iframe=\"true\"><iframe  src= width=\"100%\" height=\"420\" frameborder=\"0\" ><\/iframe> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sunde, <a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/qkjpbd\/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-i-have-given-up\">who is not associated with Pirate Bay anymore<\/a>, is offering independence activists anonymous hosting and domain names through his new service <a href=\"https:\/\/njal.la\/contact\/\" target=\"_blank\">Njalla<\/a>. By using the service, Sunde hopes, the Spanish government won&#8217;t be able to shut them down.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If they have to shut down, at least get[ting] hosting outside the claws of the censors and being anonymous in publishing would be helpful for being able to talk freely,&#8221; Sunde told Motherboard in an online chat. &#8220;In a democracy it must be ok to say you want to leave the democracy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sunde declined to name the sites who have contacted him to set up anonymous hosting, but he did say that they&#8217;re already booting up several machines for activists. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The whole point of having a cooperation to have uncensored hosting for people who really need it,&#8221; he added. &#8220;No GoDaddy-style where you get hung out to dry if there&#8217;s a problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"max-width: 2884px;\" data-iframely-id=\"N27ree0\" class=\"article__embed article__embed--iframely\">\n<div style=\"left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.172%;\" data-iframely-smart-iframe=\"true\"><iframe  src= width=\"100%\" height=\"420\" frameborder=\"0\" ><\/iframe> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Even the Catalan government&#8217;s president, Carles Puigdemont, suggested users to circumvent censorship using proxies in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KRLS\/status\/909126641145798656\" target=\"_blank\">a tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A group of Catalan activists are tracking the Spanish government&#8217;s online censorship efforts on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/censura1oct\" target=\"_blank\"> Twitter<\/a>, as well as <a href=\"https:\/\/censura1oct.github.io\/jekyll\/update\/2017\/09\/16\/metodes.html\" target=\"_blank\">on Github<\/a>. Other than seizing domains, the activists accuse the central government of using Internet Service Providers such as Vodafone or Telefonica Movistar to block the sites with techniques such like <a href=\"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/resource-center\/definitions\/dns\" target=\"_blank\">DNS spoofing<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Vodafone said in an email that the company, as well as the rest of telecom operators in Spain, &#8220;received an order from a judge to block access to certain web pages.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All Vodafone does is comply with the law,&#8221; the spokesperson told Motherboard.<\/p>\n<p>A Telefonica spokesperson also said the company has received a judicial order, and it complied with it &#8220;as it couldn&#8217;t be otherwise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hence, there no censorship on our part,&#8221; the spokesperson said in an email. <\/p>\n<p>The local newspaper in Catalonia, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ara.cat\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ara.cat<\/a>, is also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ara.cat\/politica\/Actuacions-judicials-policials-administratives-referendum_0_1871812939.html\" target=\"_blank\">tracking Government censorship efforts<\/a> offline, like removing posters about the referendum, or asking newspapers not to run ads for it. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear how effective these censorship efforts really are. As every internet user knows, censorship usually sparks the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Streisand_effect\" target=\"_blank\">Streisand effect<\/a>, which states that censoring information only ends up drawing more attention to it. A pro-independent Twitter account <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ref1oct\/status\/909362958249156608\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> that the alternative referendum domain\u2014ref1oct.ue\u2014has received more than 700,000 visits.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For every door shut,&#8221; the account tweeted, &#8220;there&#8217;s one that opens.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><b> <i> Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day <\/i><\/b><a href=\"http:\/\/motherboard.club\/\" target=\"_blank\"><b> <i> by signing up for our newsletter.<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/gy5qpj\/pirate-bay-founder-is-offering-anonymous-hosting-to-fight-government-censorship\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_us\/rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/video-images.vice.com\/articles\/59bff3785f493054030bde27\/lede\/1505752102966-15208602841_9f7d2067ec_o.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai| Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2017 16:29:21 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Peter Sunde is giving Catalan independence activists free, anonymous hosting and domain names to avoid Spanish government censorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10643,13328,10378],"tags":[170,6947,14855,9607,14858,32,14857,14856,172,9581],"class_list":["post-9343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-independent","category-motherboard","category-security","tag-catalonia","tag-censorship","tag-hosting","tag-independence","tag-internet-censorship","tag-news","tag-peter-sunde","tag-referendum","tag-spain","tag-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}