South African ISPs To Block Pirate Sites
It seems like the world will soon see an end to piracy. According to sources that spoke on condition of anonymity, The Southern African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT) has given specific directions to ISPs across South Africa to block internet access to websites that aid and abet copyright infringement.
According to the source, SAFACT has warned Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) across the region of South Africa that it would consider taking legal action against ISPs if they fail to comply with its proposal.
The federation has also listed a number of sites to be blocked by ISPs, mainly for assessing the effects of implementing the request. So we may see a longer list of sites that will inevitably be blocked by ISPs.
A majority of the sites listed by SAFACT are torrent indexing websites. A torrent index website provides searchable references to searches, allowing the searcher to locate files that other users of BitTorrent share on the internet.
Neither websites nor indexes actually host the files. Instead they simply show the searcher where to download the torrent. A torrent client like BitTorrent then loads the torrent file, and queries the trackers before connecting to the peer who is sharing the torrent file.
ISPs highlight a number of technical challenges when it comes to blocking the domains listed by SAFACT. For instance, torrent-indexing sites like Cloudflare hide the IP addresses of sites on its platform, making it virtually impossible to block them.
Consumers of torrent-indexing sites also complicate things as they are usually tech-savvy and therefore know how to bypass ISP filters with a Torrent VPN. In fact, many browsers have developed their own built-in VPN extensions that can render the SAFACT proposal absolutely useless.
According to the new SAFACT proposal, it is now the sole responsibility of ISPs to block all the listed sites, despite the fact that it is both costly as well as resource-intensive.
A number of ISP owners speaking on condition of anonymity have complained that SAFACT’s proposal is an ineffective approach to tackle the problem of online piracy.
Both SAFACT and the ISPA have refused invitations to give their comment on the report.
