For the first time, this also means that using a virtual private network (VPN) won't bypass these restrictions, as long as the server is based in the UK.

So a VPN will help? lol.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 41 points 3 days ago

Impossible. The only way around it would be to pretend to be in literally any other country than the UK, and no one would you lie in the Internet! /s

[–] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 3 days ago

This doesn't make sense.

They say "endpoint in the UK" and "VPN Server in the UK", and that they could not confirm whether outside the UK would still block.

Cloudflare blocks UK requests. If you use a VPN you choose which country you send the requests from.

Cloudflare as a separate entity from the VPN provider can't know where requests originally came from. That's the whole point of the VPN.

There is nothing new here. The article seems to misunderstand and to misrepresent.

[–] gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Any VPN worth using would provide their own DNS service

[–] VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Doesn't seem to be a DNS block. I just set Mullvad to the UK and visited one of the pages. Mullvad does run their own dns. Still got cloudflare 451.

The error message reads like the website is using Cloudflare CDN, so Cloudflare'd be able to block any requests originating from the UK.

Cloudflare's CDN is definitely used by a lot of torrent/piracy sites (e.g. 1337x, thepiratebay, Anna's archive), so we'll see what'll come off this.

[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hope they learn the hard way to stay away from overly powerful centralised systems, I can see that, probably, when they made their choice, the stance of the service seemed good enough to bite the bullet and have a convenient setup, but we've seen time and time again how corporate will comply with governments as they rightly have to do, only privately can you really not care, though you also take the responsibility for that. What we can hope is that decentralisation makes the crackdown harder to put into effect

[–] VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's not just convenience - depending on how you use it, Cloudflare is also pretty good at giving an additional layer of anonymity. They assign any user of your site to the closest CDN Server geographically, so it's is pretty hard to determine how and where your site is actually hosted. They also used to be pretty good about resisting takedown requests.

Oh well. I'd say time for a federated CDN, but the legal costs would probably be rather annoying for most volunteers.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 8 points 3 days ago

Also thanks for the sites list, UK.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

people can move onto proxies, if vpn odesnt work, but its more pricey i believe. theres a site that helps you with that.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't get the difference in this case.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 3 days ago

A proxy in this case refers to a site relaying the contents of another site. Think Redlib and other alt frontends.