17-Year-old Student Exposes Germany’s ‘Secret’ Pirate Site Blocklist

4 weeks ago

11 3 minutes read

In 2021, Germany joined a growing list of countries that have an institutionalized pirate site blocking scheme in place.

Several large ISPs teamed up with copyright holders and launched the “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” (CUII), which is responsible for handing down blocking ‘orders’.

While CUII doesn’t rely on court judgments, there is some form of oversight. When copyright holders report a pirate site, a review committee first checks whether the domain is indeed linked to a website that structurally infringes copyrights.

What Sites are Blocked?

If a website overwhelmingly hosts or links to pirated material, the site can be nominated for a blocklist entry. This can apply to torrent sites, streaming portals, and direct download hubs, as long as piracy is front and center.

Germany doesn’t publish an official overview of the domain names subject to blocking. The decisions are public and often mention the target ‘site’ by name; domain names, URLs, and even the requesting rightsholders’ names are all redacted.

This ‘secrecy’ is not an oversight but a feature that’s codified in the agreement between rightsholders and Internet providers.

“The domains of the blocked [pirate sites], other domains and mirror domains, the applicants and their violated rights, as well as the names of the auditors are not mentioned,” it reads.

Transparency ‘Leak’

Secrecy surrounding blocked domains is frustrating for journalists and others who have a watchdog function. After all, without knowing which domains are blocked, it’s impossible to check for errors and overreach.

While there haven’t been any obvious errors that we’re aware of, access to information related to blocking would provide much needed transparency. With no information available from official sources, Damian, a 17-year-old German student, got together with some friends and embarked on a mission to fill in the blanks.

After sifting through the data and running domains though extensive DNS resolver tests, Damian launched CUIIliste.de, effectively lifting the blocking veil by exposing all URLs without redactions.

“The CUII blocks domains. Which ones exactly? The CUII does not reveal this. But don’t worry – that’s why we’re here. We’ll do our best to collect and publish all blocked domains,” the site explains.

CUIIliste.de (translated)

275 (sub)Domains Blocked

Thus far, CUII has published 21 blocking recommendations on its official website, without disclosing any domains. According to CUIIliste, this resulted in 275 blocked domains, including subdomains.

The blocking transparency portal offers a searchable list of the domain names, which will be updated after new blocks are discovered. For the shadow library Sci-Hub, for example, all main domains (sci-hub.se, sci-hub.st and sci-hub.ru) are off-limits.

The 275 number is a bit inflated, however, as it includes many subdomains such as ww11.kinox.to. ww14.kinoz.to and ww15.kinos.to, which likely exist to counter blocking measures. If we delete all duplicates, we end up with a list of 104 domain names.

Transparency & No Censorship

According to CUII, the blocking efforts don’t amount to censorship, as they only target structurally infringing domain names. However, without transparency, that claim is difficult to verify.

Damian and his friends make this task easier and their goal doesn’t stop there. In addition to providing transparency, they also advocate against censorship and for freedom of expression. The German blocking efforts go against this, they argue.

“CUII is a private organization that blocks websites that it believes violate copyright law – without any court orders. In addition, their approach seems very non-transparent in my opinion,” Damian writes.

To address the alleged censorship part, the site also links to various options available to the public to circumvent the blocking efforts. This includes switching to third party DNS resolvers.

Netzpolitik reports that Damian spent his summer holiday working on the site. While this was a fun project, it has a serious undertone and is regularly disregarded by the mainstream press.

While it’s understandable that CUII doesn’t want to offer a portal with clickable hyperlinks to pirate sites, keeping the URLs secret is far from ideal. Or as the German news site Tarnkappe puts it: ‘It’s only metadata’.

When it comes to transparency, Germany and many other countries can learn a thing or two from Uruguay, which offers dedicated and complete transparency when it comes to pirate site blocking.

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The full list of all unique domain names blocked by German ISPs, as reported by CUIIListe, is available below.

astrotheque.net
bs.to
buffsports.me
buffstreams.sx
burningseries.ac
burningseries.tw
canna-power.to
canna.to
cine.to
filmfans.org
filmpalast.to
harleyquinnwidget.com
harleyquinnwidget.live
harleyquinnwidget.net
israbox-music.com
israbox-music.org
israbox.com
isrbx.com
isrbx.me
isrbx.net
jokerguide.com
jokerlivestream.net
jokerlivestream.org
jokerlivestream.vip
kinos.to
kinox.am
kinox.bz
kinox.click
kinox.cloud
kinox.club
kinox.digital
kinox.direct
kinox.express
kinox.fun
kinox.fyi
kinox.gratis
kinox.io
kinox.lol
kinox.me
kinox.mobi
kinox.pub
kinox.sh
kinox.space
kinox.sx
kinox.to
kinox.tube
kinox.tv
kinox.wtf
kinoz.co
kinoz.to
megakino.biz
megakino.cab
megakino.co
megakino.ink
megakino.com
megakino.vin
megakino.ws
newalbumreleases.net
newalbumreleases.unblocked.co
newalbumreleases.unblockit.app
newalbumreleases.unblockit.bet
newalbumreleases.unblockit.blue
newalbumreleases.unblockit.buzz
newalbumreleases.unblockit.cam
newalbumreleases.unblockit.cat
newalbumreleases.unblockit.ch
newalbumreleases.unblockit.club
newalbumreleases.unblockit.day
newalbumreleases.unblockit.dev
newalbumreleases.unblockit.how
newalbumreleases.unblockit.ink
newalbumreleases.unblockit.is
newalbumreleases.unblockit.kim
newalbumreleases.unblockit.li
newalbumreleases.unblockit.link
newalbumreleases.unblockit.ltd
newalbumreleases.unblockit.me
newalbumreleases.unblockit.name
newalbumreleases.unblockit.nz
newalbumreleases.unblockit.onl
newalbumreleases.unblockit.uno
newerastreams.com
nsw2u.com
nsw2u.in
nsw2u.net
nsw2u.xyz
nswgame.com
romslab.com
s.to
sci-hub.ru
sci-hub.se
sci-hub.st
serienfans.org
serienjunkies.biz
serienjunkies.eu
serienjunkies.info
serienjunkies.org
serienjunkies.us
serienstream.to
streamkiste.tv
taodung.com
tazz.tv
tennis.stream
ziperto.com