Nart Villeneuve

After reading this great post on the ONI blog, did a bit of testing myself. As Youtomb discovered There is a tag available through the YouTube API the indicates the country (or countries in some cases) to which YouTube will restrict access to the video. These videos are not (necessarily) blocked by the country itself, but by Youtube.

<media :restriction type=”country” relationship=”deny”>
TH
</media>

I’ve updated blockpage.com and started a new album for geolocation blockpages. In this case there is a pink line near the top which states “This video is not available in your country.”

As ONI and Youtomb note, there a variety of videos that have this tag. I’ve been able to confirm that the same behavior reported from Thailand occurs when flagged video as accessed from Germany and France. One of the videos about Thailand is marked:

“PL TH DE FR”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU9iT3vEdWo”

I checked it from Thailand, Germany and France all experienced the same blocking behaviour. Here’s what I’ve found blocked so far based on the info in the ONI blog:

“TH”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1USDXkaJFM”
“TH”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RX2cIDa4E”
“PL TH DE FR”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU9iT3vEdWo”
“TH”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVbUx4TPkVs”
“TH”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70m1ncXQjXA”
“TH”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dFjO4ZJNDE”
“PF TF YT GP DE RE FR GF MQ PM PL”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt2Zsr9bwlE”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Roy0BFaUtc”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffw4-OMmchY”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzz9rZwFENA”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1oBcPtH5aU”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liwgfyc1Im4″
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeXZY4eVLlo”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnIuu73X8es”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlDqPtHV-E”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPg1yvj7thA”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0D_oGgAGmI”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53QwPeImmAA”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThGzqBYrh0″
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FnwTj0OuFE”
“CN”,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdEULgZYxK8″

I’ve been unable to check out China because China is currently blocking all of Youtube. In short the 3 YouTube IP’s are blocked and “www.youtube.com” has been added as a “keyword”.

Although the detailed reference guide for the API does not contain information about the blocking tag, another section of the API has some information about the restrictions:

The restriction parameter identifies the IP address that should be used to filter videos that can only be played in specific countries. By default, the API filters out videos that cannot be played in the country from which you send API requests. This restriction is based on your client application’s IP address.

To request videos playable from a specific computer, include the restriction parameter in your request and set the parameter value to the IP address of the computer where the videos will be played – e.g. restriction=255.255.255.255.

To request videos that are playable in a specific country, include the restriction parameter in your request and set the parameter value to the ISO 3166 two-letter country code of the country where the videos will be played – e.g. restriction=DE.

After reading this great enumeration of various efforts to block accidental access to images of child sexual abuse I updated updated blockpage.com to include the blockpages from Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark.

This document notes many of the unintended consequences of filtering, especially overblocking, and it challenges the wisdom of making the blocking look like an error, as opposed to presenting the user with a blockpage:

Providing such a notice seems far more likely to achieve the intended objective of discouraging access to material that is illegal to possess, and raising public awareness of the fact that such a law exists, than merely providing a ‘page not found’ notice.

In the context of Sweden it also discusses threats to block the bit torrent tracker Pirate Bay by adding it to the child pornography blocklist. Mission creep is always present.

I’ve updated blockpage.com with the blockpage that users in Denmark see when they try to access Pirate Bay.

Filtering for the reason of copyright violation is reportedly gaining in Europe:

To recap, the Commission saw great merit in an anti-piracy system where Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) would voluntarily agree to monitor their users and report the infringers to the industry reps or to the authorities, as well as possibly cut off their internet connection. From what we have heard from our sources at the Commission, a lot of the feedback they have currently received has been very supportive of the idea of filtering and monitoring. This has now emboldened some officials to push forward with plans to implement such voluntary EU-wide proposals, although nothing has yet been firmly decided. EU law clearly states that ISPs have no obligation to monitor and filter content, but the carrot they get from participating is that they are less likely to be sued by IFPI and others.

This is something that the Copyright Lobby has been slowly moving toward here in Canada.

UPDATE — In attempting to block access to YouTube, Pakistan ended up making YouTube inaccessible to everyone — not just everyone in Pakistan, but everyone! Martin A. Brown provides some of the technical details and a time line here (Thanks Steven!):

Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order (thanks nsp-sec-d) to block access to YouTube (see news item) started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider, PCCW (AS 3491). For those unfamiliar with BGP, this is a more specific route than the ones used by YouTube (208.65.152.0/22), and therefore most routers would choose to send traffic to Pakistan Telecom for this slice of YouTube’s network.

–

I’ve updated blockpage.com with a screen capture from an ISP in Pakistan from the Don’t Block the Blog Campaign. As noted, since most ISPs route through the Pakistan Internet Exchange which only blocks IP addresses, many users in Pakistan won’t have access to YouTube at all. Users of the ISP TWA appear to have partial access.

The Global Voices Advocacy blog has good coverage of the story and has also posted a copy of the blocking order. (Older blocking orders from Pakistan available here, here and here.) But what I found interesting is that the blocking notice contains a full url to a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3s8jtvvg00 and the url in the blockpage is http://www.youtube.com/watch? which suggests that while the front matter at youtube.com may be accessible all the videos are not since they are accessed via /watch?. But perhaps the blockpage is incorrectly printing a partial url, but still, its something worth checking. The proxy is only blocking the targeted video.

Finland’s filtering system, put in place to block access to images of child abuse (child pornography) is blocking sites that do not match this criteria. In addition to blocking an anti-censorship activism site, the filtering seems to be significantly overblocking. EFFi reports:

The censorship supposedly applies only to foreign web sites that are used to distribute child pornographic images and the block list indeed reportedly contains such sites. However, many of the censored sites are apparently legal pornographic sites. Most of the censored sites are located in the United States or in the EU countries which have strict legislation against child pornography. Many of the censored US sites contain the 18 U.S.C. 2257 notice. Many of the blocked sites are link farms, without actual independent image content. The block list reportedly contains disproportionately many gay sites.The censorship however extends not only to the adult sites.

An interesting issue brought up in this case concerns links. The website of the anti-censorship activist Matti Nikki was censored after he published the blocklist as hyperlinks:

Previously the list of censored sites on Nikki’s site had just the names of the sites, not links. To enter a censored site one had to copy the site name to the address bar of the browser. The site was censored after Nikki had made the names of the sites clickable links (after which there was no need to manually copy the site names to the address bar of the browser). According to the police FAQ (in Finnish) the block list includes sites with “a working link to a site containing child pornography”. There is however no apparent legal basis for the distinction between not censoring a site with a written site name of an alleged child pornographic site, and censoring a site with the corresponding clickable link.

This is an interesting case as it shows how the lack of transparency and accountability can lead to practices that impinge on freedom of expression despite the intended goal of protecting children.

(More screen shots of block pages at blockpage.com)