Danbooru

Oh my God. Korea just blocked Danbooru.

Posted under General

Specifically anything that starts with the URL danbooru.donmai.us/post/index

It's about time for me to get a VPN.

If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, basically South Korea has enacted a ban on all internet pornography despite being rife with prostitution in order to "protect the children". We've got various Christian groups roving around the internet, monitoring other peoples' connections for "questionable" websites and reporting it all to the "cyber police" who will then add said website to the national filter.

http://www.koreabang.com/2012/stories/korean-groups-declare-war-on-internet-pornography.html

Needless to say, this is getting a bit ridiculous. Just thought I'd let everyone know.

Updated by Schrobby

This is completely ridiculous. It's like North Korea is rubbing off on the South.

In any case, I don't know much about the technical stuff, but I think people will find tons of ways around that ban in no time.

Fred1515 said:
This is completely ridiculous. It's like North Korea is rubbing off on the South.

More like Christian Fundamnetalists are rubbing off on them. I guess it's not that surprising though, if I recall the fundamentalists there also got them to officially remove the teaching of evolution from their public schools.

Updated

Good to know, but let's keep things relevant to danbooru....

  • To confirm, this is one way problem? No issues with outside dabooru users getting at Korean art sites, which the more common problem? (well, US users getting at JP sites)
  • This is all about Korean users finding it harder to access & use danbooru?
  • How large is this user base?
  • Can/should anything be done for them?
    • e.g. Putting some notice on about using the IP, hijiribe or sonohara in the address on the front page or top banner.
  • Might it be worth thinking about reviving safebooru? It'll hinge on the above questions, though I remember it went down for something like the ads not covering the running costs.

Updated

Wouldn't a notice on the front page make it quicker for them to ban the alternative means of access?

Depending on what their definition of "porn" is (they could go so far as to consider artistic nudity as porn, as the similar type people in like the US do), what we classify as "safe" may still get a revived safebooru banned. So this instance may not work as a good argument for a safebooru revival.

The type of people who would participate in tracking down and reporting such sites would likely be the type considered "highly motivated," and much like customer reviews you'll see for products, that usually means they represent one of the two extreme views on this matter (that is they're either strongly in favor or opposed to the subject matter). In all likelihood that probably means they're the type of people who classify anything with nudity as "porn," as they would go so far as to root around on the internet to report and and ban it, and thus very unlikely to hold thoughts that there is such as a thing as "artistic nudity" or a middle ground. So a "safe" rating here will likely do little good so long as there exists results for a rating:s nude search.

Updated

I think Safebooru also went down because it used the same database as Danbooru proper and the continuous rating filter on everything proved to cause a performance slow-down on everything. I found it useful in its time though.

NWF_Renim said:
More like Christian Fundamnetalists are rubbing off on them. I guess it's not that surprising though, if I recall the fundamentalists there also got them to officially remove the teaching of evolution from their public schools.

I can't believe this is actually true. You guys in Korea should start a petition at Change.org or something against those fundamentalists.

Anyway, I agree that we shouldn't do anything to attract too much attention from them. For now, posting some workarounds here like the IP thing that S1eth mentioned should be enough.

Specifically anything that starts with the URL danbooru.donmai.us/post/index

Interestingly enough, the move to 2.0 seems to have circumvented the nation-wide block (as well as any scripts I'd been running for the site in my browser).

Maybe South Korea's morality police were so dumb that they set up the national firewall to just block any site on which the Danbooru v1 software is detected?

Now that is just plain old fundie logic at work right there. "This site is immoral, therefore so is any site even tangentially related to it."

Shinjidude said:
I think Safebooru also went down because it used the same database as Danbooru proper and the continuous rating filter on everything proved to cause a performance slow-down on everything. I found it useful in its time though.

Wait wat, North Korea blocked safebooru to?

It's about time for me to get a VPN.

Gavotte, I know it may sound crazy at first, but if possible you should try to get them block Wikipedia. Wikipedia (and Wiki commons) has a lot of content about sex and fetishes etc, including pictures. Try reporting some "hardcore stuff" and hope that they block the whole site. That will create a public outcry and may bring down the entire system.

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