[liberationtech] Piratebrowser?

[Greg Norcie]

IMHO, it seems like a needless duplication of effort.

Tor alone is pretty good at circumvention. It has a couple flaws - it's 
slower than a simple VPN, and obtaining bridges can be a bit of a 
challenge if you're in a regime that's actively blocking access.

But the Pirate Browser doesn't seem to attempt to solve either of these 
issues.

-Greg

On 8/11/13 10:14 AM, Ben Laurie wrote:
> On 11 August 2013 03:39, Griffin Boyce <griffinboyce at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 08/11/2013 12:51 AM, Tom Ritter wrote:
>>> Some other random stats for the curious.
>>>
>>> Tor v0.2.3.25 (git-17c24b3118224d65)
>>> Vidalia 0.2.21 (QT 4.8.1)
>>>
>>> # Configured for speed
>>> ExcludeSingleHopRelays 0
>>> EnforceDistinctSubnets 0
>>> AllowSingleHopCircuits 1
>>>
>>> # Exclude countries that might have blocks
>>> ExcludeExitNodes {dk},{ie},{gb},{nl},{be},{it},{cn},{ir},{fi},{no}
>>>
>>> #Selected user prefs
>>> user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://6kkgg7nth3sbuuwd.onion");
>>> user_pref("general.useragent.override", "PB0.6b Mozilla/5.0 (Windows
>>> NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0");
>>>
>>> -tom
>>    It's pretty surprising that the Pirate Bay went this route.  I have a
>> hard time believing that it isn't just some kind of publicity stunt.
>> They also released the browser as an exe when the site doesn't use
>> SSL/https. Which is kind of an interesting choice, considering their
>> stated desire to target Iran (of all places).
>>
>>    About a year ago, I wrote a quick Chrome plugin for torrenters to
>> bypass the common DNS blocks on TPB and similar sites.
> In the UK I thought blocks were IP-based, hence this piece of
> amusement: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sky-torrentfreak-blocking.
>
>> Users from the
>> UK and the Netherlands (both places where they have a large userbase)
>> had recently been blocked from accessing TPB.  I have a hard time
>> believing that Iran represents more than a negligible number of possible
>> Pirate Bay users.  It could be a scheme to get more of their users to
>> use privacy-protecting techniques, but a guide might have more of an
>> effect there.  If their only goal is to bypass censorship of this one
>> site, there are easier methods that are just as effective.  The plugin I
>> made was trivial to write and it wouldn't be difficult for the pirate
>> bay to do something similar (quite a few plugins exist already, and it
>> wouldn't be hard to just pick one to promote).
>>
>> ~Griffin
>>
>> --
>> "Cypherpunks write code not flame wars." --Jurre van Bergen
>> #Foucault / PGP: 0xAE792C97 / OTR: saint at jabber.ccc.de
>>
>> My posts, while frequently amusing, are not representative of the thoughts of my employer.
>>
>> --
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