AT&T Blocks 4chan

[Rob King]

I have to say, despite the CP, and general douchbaggery that /b/ gets on with, sometimes what comes out of there can be very funny shit.

"First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out, because I was not a pedophile.

Then, they came for the pirates, and I did not speak out because I was not a pirate.

Then they came for anonymous, and I did not speak out because I was not anonymous.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me."

and

 

[Seraphyn]

Nothing really surprising. Though still disappointing to see that people still prescribe to the 'If I can't see it, it's not there' type of 'protection'. Censorship never achieved much good, if it in fact ever did.

 

[Chibibar]

Nothing really surprising. Though still disappointing to see that people still prescribe to the 'If I can't see it, it's not there' type of 'protection'. Censorship never achieved much good, if it in fact ever did.

Yup look at China and Iran. Both are currently doing some heavy censorship of their situation down there and look how the world react. I know why AT&T target 4chan. It is easier and not many people will be "against" the idea to "oh no. protect the children" but that is like letting "big brother" have the key to your house. While people might currently go "oh it is only 4chan" but what if tomorrow AT&T decides to block porn sites (the legit one) or even better. AT&T starts block competitor's site or even being paid to block X company site cause Y company don't want competition. What if small e-store is being block due to large e-store didn't like them stealing their customer and request that?

Censorship is censorship regardless of the material. People should be responsible for their action. (i.e. being a good parent like Ed who monitor his children internet usage)

 

[Joe Johnson]

I know why AT&T target 4chan. It is easier and not many people will be "against" the idea to "oh no. protect the children"

I'd say it's deeper than that. It's more of "we can do this, since most people have no idea what the hell 4chan is".
I know very few people, even semi-computer saavy people, who know what 4chan is.

 

[MindDetective]

AT&T is not under a moral obligation to protect people but neither are they obligated to allow free access.

 

[strawman]

AT&T is not ... obligated to allow free access.

It depends. If they are a 'common carrier' then they are obligated to provide unfettered access to all of the internet, except in those cases where they can show that such access degrades performance for other customers, or places an undue burden on the network. This is currently what they are claiming, if I understand correctly, that the server in question was the source of botnet attacks that degrade their customer's experience.

If they, however, start filtering or providing access limitation based on the service, content, or some other aspect of the internet, then they place themselves in jeopardy of losing their "common carrier" status. This means that AT&T customers can sue AT&T for things that are on the internet wholly unrelated to AT&T. Don't like that warez site? Sue AT&T because they are allowing you to access it, and they've shown they are capable and interested in filtering websites based on content.

Only if AT&T maintains that they are simply a communications provider can they claim they are not liable for the information that goes over their wires, including child porn, terrorist communications, etc - which are clearly illegal.

So they will have to reverse this, or they will be in much worse trouble down the line.

-Adam

 

[Shakey]

Looks like they removed the block. It was put in to stop a DOS attack on a customer.

Linky

This information has now been confirmed by AT&T itself, and, as of Monday morning, AT&T's block has been lifted. \"Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic,\" AT&T spokesperson Brad Mays told Ars.

\"Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.\"

 

[MindDetective]

AT&T is not ... obligated to allow free access.

It depends. If they are a 'common carrier' then they are obligated to provide unfettered access to all of the internet, except in those cases where they can show that such access degrades performance for other customers, or places an undue burden on the network. This is currently what they are claiming, if I understand correctly, that the server in question was the source of botnet attacks that degrade their customer's experience.

If they, however, start filtering or providing access limitation based on the service, content, or some other aspect of the internet, then they place themselves in jeopardy of losing their "common carrier" status. This means that AT&T customers can sue AT&T for things that are on the internet wholly unrelated to AT&T. Don't like that warez site? Sue AT&T because they are allowing you to access it, and they've shown they are capable and interested in filtering websites based on content.

Only if AT&T maintains that they are simply a communications provider can they claim they are not liable for the information that goes over their wires, including child porn, terrorist communications, etc - which are clearly illegal.

So they will have to reverse this, or they will be in much worse trouble down the line.

-Adam

Obviously there are consequences if they choose to filter access. I am just pointing out (perhaps a bit devilishly) that AT&T is not beholden to some ideal like "freedom of access" about which a lot of people's ire is up.

 

[Espy]

I think we could really worry if the government was asking ISP's to block websites.

 

I didn't see anything about "temporarily" originally but I admit I didn't read in copyeditor depth.

Still, this seems like a "oh fuck what do we do" screwup along the lines of Amazon and the Kindle. AT&T is too huge and needs to figure out better ways to deal with this.

 

[crono1224]

They clearly shit their pants, they had two problems.

First the legal way that people went about it probably caused enough calls/emails to flow in that it crapped out their centers, including protest and other things.

Secondly the illegal ways would more than likely just be a huge headache, I am sure that they would have no problem getting justice but still more work than needed.

 

[Chibibar]

They clearly shit their pants, they had two problems.

First the legal way that people went about it probably caused enough calls/emails to flow in that it crapped out their centers, including protest and other things.

Secondly the illegal ways would more than likely just be a huge headache, I am sure that they would have no problem getting justice but still more work than needed.

Their Lawyers probably got a gander and this and went "You did what??" Sir/Madam, we have to reverse this ASAP!"

 

[Shakey]

They clearly shit their pants, they had two problems.

First the legal way that people went about it probably caused enough calls/emails to flow in that it crapped out their centers, including protest and other things.

Secondly the illegal ways would more than likely just be a huge headache, I am sure that they would have no problem getting justice but still more work than needed.

It was just a temporary fix to stop a DOS attack and it was never supposed to be permanent. They just had some horrible PR that didn't get the word out right away.

In fact, AT&T wasn't the only ISP affected—it just had the unfortunate luck of being the largest and highest profile. Others, including unWired, also had to temporarily block 4chan because of what unWired described to Broadband Reports as "relentless ACK scan reports."

 

[Espy]

Assuming the attack stuff is true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then it sounds like they did things right, just didn't do much PR on it.

 

[Shakey]

Here's some more on it.

http://status.4chan.org/index.html#2174049422947602936

Here's what happened:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship—two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attention—so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I'll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.

It was just a whole lot of people overreacting to shitty PR.

 

[Shegokigo]

Less than a week. Damn my prediction skills are good. :slywink:

"Shitty PR" riiiiiight.

 

[Shakey]

:eyeroll:

 

[Shegokigo]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

 

[Mr. Lawface]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

The world around you is one where nothing is true and everything is a conspiracy.

 

[Shegokigo]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

The world around you is one where nothing is true and everything is a conspiracy.

/

Here Here! :uhhuh:

 

[MindDetective]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

The world around you is one where nothing is true and everything is a conspiracy.

But if that's true then what you said is not true because someone just wants us to believe there is a conspiracy and *head explodes*

 

[PatrThom]

According to the public statement, AT&T filtered that particular group of IP addresses because the DoS attack they are talking about '...appeared to come from their IP address(es).' I don't know how Internet-savvy y'all are, but if you have the means to launch a DDoS attack, it is trivially easy to additionally spoof the origin IP address to make it look like it came from whatever IP address you want...4chan, CNN, whitehouse.gov, whatever. Now, I'm just a hack, but I know about this...so you can't expect me to believe that the folks at AT&T don't know this, also.

The term 'convenient excuse' just sounds tooooooo good.

--Patrick

 

[Shakey]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

Did you even read what Moot said about it? He admitted that what they did to try and stop the DDOS attack against them unintentionally sent traffic to AT&T and other ISP's. This made it look like 4chan was itself causing a DOS attack on their customers. Instead of trying to contact 4Chan and get it straightened out on a Saturday night they just blocked all traffic from those servers. Everything was restored Monday morning when they figured out what was happening and 4Chan fixed their mistake.

In case you missed my last post, here it is in Moot's own words. http://status.4chan.org/index.html#2174049422947602936

-- Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:49 pm --

According to the public statement, AT&T filtered that particular group of IP addresses because the DoS attack they are talking about '...appeared to come from their IP address(es).' I don't know how Internet-savvy y'all are, but if you have the means to launch a DDoS attack, it is trivially easy to additionally spoof the origin IP address to make it look like it came from whatever IP address you want...4chan, CNN, whitehouse.gov, whatever. Now, I'm just a hack, but I know about this...so you can't expect me to believe that the folks at AT&T don't know this, also.

The term 'convenient excuse' just sounds tooooooo good.

--Patrick

Except 4chan admitted they were sending the traffic due to a mistake they made.

 

[Rob King]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a thinly veiled attempt to end net neutrality?

 

[Allen who is Quiet]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

The world around you is one where nothing is true and everything is a conspiracy.

THIS SENTENCE IS A LIE! :aaahhh:

 

[Mr. Lawface]

[quote="Mr. Lawface":1ryonifl]

:eyeroll:

Shakey, the world around you is exactly what they tell you it is. :eyeroll:

The world around you is one where nothing is true and everything is a conspiracy.

THIS SENTENCE IS A LIE! :aaahhh:[/quote:1ryonifl]

 

[Krisken]

 

[@Li3n]

So wait, it's over without any casualties... colour me disappointed.